Welcome to my first blog! Hopefully that doesn’t scare you away -- we are, after all, just amateurs. As far as I’m concerned, we shouldn’t be concerned about it. If being an amateur, poet, singer, songwriter, actress, writer, and human has taught me anything, it’s that we must all go through this stage on our path to greatness. Or, in my case, heightened mediocrity.

The African Studies Program (ASP) and UI International Programs invite you to attend an upcoming baraza titled, "Producing Communities and Commodities:Saraficom and Commercial Nationalism in Kenya." Featuring guest speakers Melissa Tully and David Tuwei, the lecture will take place on February 26, 2016, from 2:30-4:00 p.m. in the UCC 2390 Executive Boardroom.

Dr. James Zogby will visit the UI for "How we should be discussing the Arab world and Islam in 2016," a lecture in which he will discuss the significance of political discourse regarding the Arab world and Islam. The event is free and open to the public, and will take place on Wednesday, January 27, 2016, from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in 1117 University Capitol Centre. It is co-sponsored by International Programs, CIVIC, the UI Honors Program, the UI School of Journalism and Mass Communication, UICHR, and the UI Department of History.

The African Studies Program (ASP) is hosting an upcoming baraza and lecture with UI professor Brian Ekdale on the emerging media genre of "slum tourism." Baraza is a Swahili word that means a deliberation meeting help by a collective group of knowledgeable individuals. The talk, titled, BARAZA: Ironic Encounters: Posthumanitarian Storytelling in Slum Tourist Media, will take place on Wednesday, October 14 from 11 a.m.-12:00 p.m. in 315 Phillips Hall. This event is free and open to the public.

I had the plane ticket. The suitcase filled with Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein storybooks. I was ready to teach English in France.

"The time has come for me to say goodbye to the University of Iowa where for 12 years, I had the opportunity to explore a tiny tributary of the might river of knowledge. With the exception of my village in Africa, Iowa has probably shaped my life more than any other place I have called home." As he moves on to new places, International Programs faculty fellow Leo Eko reflects on the special place one small Iowa town holds in his heart.

A photo exhibition of Wang’s work will run through May 12 in the Adler Journalism Building Resource Center. Photographs include representations of bicycle repairmen and construction from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

On "castle rock" in the Bay of Biscay, as I bit into a sort of hand-held omelet, I wondered: who invented this ingenious snack? I mean, who in history was the one to discover that you could even eat an egg, not to mention fry it with potatoes and onions into a graspable food item. The true genius of it struck me because Josu, my hiking companion, had prepared this himself and though I had eaten this same thing in nearly every restaurant in my neighborhood, there was something notable about this one.

This year marks the tenth year of exchanges between the University of Iowa and China Daily, China's largest English-language newspaper. In honor of this long-standing collaboration, International Programs and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication will hold a tenth anniversary celebration on Friday, April 24 from 3:00-4:30 p.m. in the Adler Journalism Building rotunda.

A symposium to highlight the evolution of photojournalism, “From Local to Global — Photojournalism in the New Millennium,” will introduce the work of noted international photographers and distinguished scholars to the University of Iowa campus and community. The symposium, with presentations on topics ranging from representations of rural Iowa and rural China to documentation of global events to cutting-edge digital photo projects will take place on Friday, April 3, 2015, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m in the rotunda of the Adler Journalism Building.

On my third day in Spain, I learned about the expert pickpockets of Madrid. It wasn’t simply through Ibon’s sound advice to get a money belt or to sling packs in front of our bodies where we could see them. No, I had to learn the hard way. I’m blaming it on the fact that I’m from a town where we don’t even lock our bikes. I implicitly trust everybody. However, belief rarely lines up with reality and in less than a week abroad I found myself wallet-free. Still, I’m optimistic that not every lesson that day was lost on me. Before I was so swiftly and silently robbed, I absorbed some stories about Spain’s long and complicated history, which, on more than one occasion, involved miracles.

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.