Bank’s effort part of Iowa City area’s continuing efforts to better welcome Chinese students. Hills Bank and Trust has become the first Corridor bank to offer Mandarin as a language option on automated teller machines. The Hills-based bank updated the ATM in the lobby of its Old Capitol Town Center office in mid-December. The bank plans to install Mandarin on other ATMs across the University of Iowa campus as part of software upgrades.

Since the start of the protest movement widely known as the Arab Spring, in 2011, conditions in most Arab countries have spiraled out of control. With the notable exception of Tunisia, which just held its last round of successful parliamentarian and presidential elections, other Arab countries that were affected by the protest movement have fallen into a vicious cycle of violence that is threatening other countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.

I have been in Spain for roughly two weeks and have spent 25% of that time lost. Maybe this is an exaggeration since many of my meanderings, as Tolkien might say, were spent with intention. However, this was definitely not true of my first day. My first experience of feeling misplaced was immediately upon arriving in Madrid. The second (third, fourth and fifth ad infinitim) have been in Bilbao, a clean and beautiful city whose streets seem to snake like tributaries of the Mississippi river even though I’ve been told by everyone who lives here “it’s so small it is impossible to get lost.” In every Spanish city I have visited so far I’ve found it very easy to lose my way, and the only difference between my first day and today is that now I do it on purpose.

Luis Germán Vargas, originally from Bucaramangaro, Colombia, graduated from the University of Iowa in 1972 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Today he lives in Cali, Colombia where he works as a Projects Engineer for Colgate Palmolive.

Originally from Hong Kong, Agnes graduated from the University of Iowa International Writing Program in 2008 as an Honorary Fellow in Writing. Since then, she has accomplished a wide range of achievements. She was awarded the Nosside International Poetry Prize (Special Mention) in 2008 and some of her poems have been translated into German, Italian and other languages.

A store clerk in the Central Services Section at the Ankeny lab, Lovan was among employees who participated in a program to promote cultural understanding among the diverse staff at the lab. University of Iowa’s Human Resources/Staff Language and Culture Services funded the project, “Collaboration between the Lines: Connecting Cultures to Build Bridges between Work Shifts, Management and Staff at the University of Iowa State Hygienic Laboratory."

I don’t know how to answer the questions you’ll ask me about being abroad for four months. You’ll ask if it was amazing, and then you will ask me if I miss it. And I will say there are a few things that I miss in particular – getting to see mountains every day, and I honestly miss hearing the Icelandic language. The landscape is surreal, so I miss that, too. What I could do without is missing my friends and family in the United States. But now I just miss the friends that I made abroad.

On January 20, 2015, Joan Kjaer and her WorldCanvass guests kicked off the University of Iowa's first theme semester "Food for Thought" with a discussion on food and its relationship to community, heritage, and identities. This is a "ReCap" of the event with access to see and hear the full program.

Getting off the plane at O’Hare was surreal. Was I really back in Chicago? Costa Rica felt like a dream and I had just suddenly awoken to the brisk winter of the Windy City. To be honest I wasn’t excited to be back, not as excited as I should have been or excited as my friends were. I had found a sense of happiness in Costa Rica that I was scared I would lose the moment I stepped back on to U.S. territory. But as I walked through the airport, I promised myself I would hold on to that happiness and optimism I had gained in Costa Rica and carry it with me wherever I went.

Harold Van Beek is an alumnus from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His family is here with him which includes his best friend and wife, Astrid, their son Laurens, who will attend the University of Iowa next year, and two dogs, Kiba and Mocha.