Built on East Art Gallery Street in 1996, the 24-hour bookstore is known by many readers as their “spiritual home” and a place in which to soak for an entire day. A bubble bath of 90,000 books stacked in a space of 1400 square meters. There are at least twenty different annotated versions of Journey to the West, one of the four great classical novels of China. A 513-page guide to polyphonic Mandarin characters can be found in an aisle devoted to dictionaries. Copies of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant are tucked away in random nooks. Books with titles like The Story of Art and The Story of Time convey the immense ambition in this place.

I wanted Bowland College, but I got Furness College instead. All students at Lancaster are divided into colleges. Not like “College of Liberal Arts and Sciences” or “College of Nursing”; they’re social colleges, not academic colleges. Think Hogwarts.

I have now lived in Edinburgh for two months, and I recently had a week off of class and had the opportunity to travel around Europe. Now that I have seen a little bit more of the world, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on my identity as an American, specifically a black male American, abroad.

On the way to Houhai, the streets are empty, the crowds are sparse, the city is hollow. The street vendors left a week earlier to villages and families they visit once a year. The office workers have just left, most visit families, some avoid families by visiting other places. The bosses are fishing on an unnamed island. Houhai is an island of ice in an ocean of cement.

As a University of Iowa senior studying political science and psychology, Jake Murphy long has been intrigued by Cuba. The island nation’s political and economic isolation from the United States since the 1960s has made it a sort of “forbidden fruit” for Americans, Murphy said. “So when (President Barack) Obama announced the relationship would be renewed, and they were relaxing some embargoes, I was in shock,” he said. “It was finally happening, and I thought it was so cool.” So cool, in fact, that Murphy wanted to go and experience the country and its culture during this transition, and before America’s influence affects substantial change.

Before jetting off to Ireland, I, equal parts nervous and excited, read loads of articles, books, and travel guides to learn everything I could about the place I would be living for a year. Besides learning about all the places I wanted to visit while in Cork, I was also very interested in knowing more about the accent.

When UI student Heather Barney studied abroad in Havana, Cuba, this January, she expected to expand on her Spanish-speaking abilities, learn more about the country’s history and culture, and investigate the types of medical schools and careers Cuba has to offer to foreigners. What she didn’t anticipate, however, was that she would be one of several students featured in a news story by Telesur, a Venezuelan broadcasting company

I got on a plane to LAX with an overweight suitcase as opposed to a dream in my cardigan.

The University of Iowa is one of the top producers of Fulbright students for 2015-16, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. Top-producing institutions are highlighted annually in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Twelve University of Iowa students were awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant to conduct research, attend graduate school, undertake creative projects, or serve as English teaching assistants abroad in the 2015–16 academic year. This is the greatest number of placements the UI has ever secured in a single calendar year, resulting in a tied ranking for 27th on a list of peer institutions.

I don’t really know how I feel about the word accomplished. It takes me back to a Jane Austen novel where women were seen as accomplished if they could read, sing, sew and or play music. Am I accomplished? I am a third year college student, with a decent GPA and two part-time jobs. Also, I am studying abroad in Prague right now. So, I guess that I could say that I am accomplished for my age.

We take the 11 a.m. bus. Take the noon or 1 p.m. and you risk not getting a seat. There are no 2 or 3 buses, and I have no idea why. But by 4pm, the sun is getting ready to set and it’s too cold to wander around town. So we take the 11 a.m. bus.

The Fulbright Lunch & Learn series will continue with "A Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Ambassador: Fredrika Bremer’s Travels From the Stockholm Archipelago to the Caribbean." Featuring guest speaker Adriana Méndez Rodenas, a professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at the UI, this event will take place on March 4 from 12:30-1:20 p.m. in 1117 UCC.