A.S.A.G (American Study Abroad Girls)

Our stay in Zurmatt was short. A day of skiing for Tom and a day of hiking through the hills for me. We left a little late in the day (debating on staying to see if we could get in good with the locals and score a free night´s stay), but things were so good there that we would never have left if we didn´t get going. We went to the next hot Swiss town, Interlaken. A bunch of kids in Florence were all heading up there when we were heading to Venice, so we thought we´d go to see what all the hype was about. I bumped into a Singaporean who could have sworn that he´d been in a hostel with me the week before in Germany (don´t ask me), and he told me that he was in Interlaken when all the American kids showed up. He told me that when they came his whole experience went sour and he couldn´t even get a good night sleep because of all the noise that they made.

That is an interesting observation. Tom and I have noticed that the American kids, especially the study abroad kids, do nothing to take advantage of being in Europe. They hang out in their American appartments all day, chat on the internet with their significant others and go shopping, then they go out and get pissed with all of the american kids at night, make a lot of noise, and make a bad name for our country. We bumped into a girl in Florence, asked her for suggestions about seeing the city (mind you she´d been there for a couple months). She said, and I´m not exaggerating, "I really havn´t seen much of the city," followed by a dumb stare. I was dumbfounded.

Yes, I am convinced that much of what kids get out of study abroads is a month of getting wasted the same as they would if they had no parents in suburban america. Meanwhile, the parents think their kids might actually learn something by living in Europe for a couple months.