This time last year, I had visited the Edinburgh Christmas Festival three times and the Budapest Christmas Festival once. I had eaten crepes, done my Christmas shopping, ridden the ferris wheel and the carousel, shivered in the cold, and had some yummy hot chocolate, all at the various Christmas markets I had gone to. In my mind, nothing is more European, and we also don’t really have anything like it in the United States. I feel like it’s similar to our state fairs, but cuter and Christmas-themed (I also much prefer the cold of a Christmas market to the heat of the Oklahoma and Texas state fairs). That’s why when…

For the past few weeks, the World Cup has been taking place in Qatar. While parts of the World Cup are still confusing to me (I still do not know what the different groups meant before they entered the single-elimination bracket), I have loved seeing the world come together in this way. The last time the World Cup happened was four years ago, and I did not pay attention to it then. This is the first time that I have watched the World Cup take place and seen all that goes into it. Thirty-two teams started, and at this moment, France and England are playing to figure out who will…

Mahsa Amini was 22 years old when she was killed in Iran while in police custody this past September. She was arrested for wearing her hijab incorrectly and was severely beaten. Police claim that she died from previous health conditions; her family disagrees, saying that she was in good health. Her death sparked protests around the world, including one on OU’s campus. I watched it take place as I walked to class one day, with many international students and people from Iranian heritage coming together to protest the Iranian “regime’s treatment of women,” according to Forbes. Women have been taking off their hijabs in protest as well as cutting their…

I signed up for OU Cousins, and while I did not end up getting matched, I did end up getting to know some international students. This past spring, my roommate Megan suggested that we take Ballroom Dancing as a class this fall, and little did I know how much I would enjoy it. We have learned classic North American dances such as the waltz, the two-step, the swing, the cha-cha, and line dances, as well as Latin American dances such as the tango and the merengue, but I was not expecting to meet so many international students. In our class, we have students from Germany and South Korea as well…

At the beginning of October, my friend Julia and I got to attend the Greek Festival in Oklahoma City. While this was not an official OU event, there were many OU people who participated, such as my friend Margo Gianos: she performed in some of the dances, and her family sold food and were sponsors. We also ran into many OU students who had come out to participate, including my friend Mikita as well as some musical theatre majors who lived on my floor my freshman year. This event was 25 minutes away from Norman, but our community was interested in learning about another culture, and so many people went…

Through social media and online events, the OU Italian Club was as active as ever in Fall of 2020. Over Zoom, Baccano had game nights, movie nights, cooking classes. By attending these events as OU students, we were able to connect with other students while learning more about the Italian culture in a fun and productive way. On October 8th, the club put on a cooking class where we learned to make gnocchi. I loved how at this event, you could attend on Zoom from both OU’s Norman campus and OU’s campus in Arezzo, Italy. This allowed for a truly immersive experience where you got to know people who were…

In March of last year, the United States began to go on lockdown. A year later, as vaccines roll out in the U.S., we are one of the countries that is beginning to open back up. But how has the response of the United States to Covid-19 varied from other countries? How has Covid affected the world as a whole? Let’s take a brief look at the timeline of Covid-19 in various countries and how different cultures vary in their responses. The first outbreak was in Wuhan, China. While we don’t know the exact date, we do know that the first few cases were at the very end of 2019,…

For the past couple of months, fires have taken over the country of Australia, having killed 27 people, including volunteer firefighters, and millions of animals, including endangered species. The fires started in August, and have only continued to grow. Not only was 2019 the hottest year in Australia’s record, but it also is having one of its largest-ever droughts. All of this, combined with lightning strikes and people purposefully starting bushfires, have made these fires so big. Due partially to strong winds, the fires have consumed even more than the 2019 Amazon fires. Australia is doing everything it can to save both its people and its country. The country-continent itself…

Around this time last year, Chinese scientist and researcher, He Jianku, was performed the first-ever gene-editing experiment on twin baby girls, Lulu and Nana. The dad of these girls had HIV, and these parents wanted to ensure that their daughters would not be born with HIV. They consented to Jianku editing the DNA of their daughters to take out the gene that would ever cause them from having HIV. This was something that no one had done before. Over the past semester in Comp 2, I have been researching both the history of genetic engineering and the controversy and ethical issues that come with this advancing technology. According to Merriam-Webster…