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My name is Toma Longinovic
and I'm the director of the international study abroad program
for croatia and I am the director
and main teacher and caretaker of the entire program there
I also teach in the Slavic Languages Department
and comparative literature so this is one of my favorite things that I do at
UW-Madison.
We took classes in this
old Italian historical building kinda right in the center of the old town
so
even the environment we were learning in was pretty awesome and in the course
work itself consisted of studying
like old texts are about the region itself and it's development
following
the Italian and also like the other slavic influences that took place and
basically what we would do is we would read articles
we'd go through them at our home for our homework and then we'd come into class and
we'd discuss them and summarize
talk about them on what we thought from our point of view and then Toma
would then talk to us about what they meant and why he kinda thought they were
important and how they were again today
culturally relevant.
Just being in the location
there is a sort of embodied knowledge
and you are using the whole city and the whole region
as a book. So instead of learning from the text,
which we also read, you have the opportunity to match what you read in
the text directly against the reality that's surrounding you
so this kinda embodied knowledge is what really I think is appreciated
by the students because it's very different
to actually have all the sensory input the smells and
you know the colors
you know actually seeing all the architecture, the sculpture, the art
meeting people
having an opportunity to converse with experts
about the region directly you know who are you know the local experts
is something students truly appreciate.
We also have setup the meal plan at a local restaurant so the students
can actually order ala carte and that's one of the
major benefits really of this place, they don't eat in a hotel or or
in a cafeteria but actually at an actual restaurant
where they're very well taken care of. So we stayed in Villa Vienna
which is almost like an apartment-style housing.
We had two people to a room
where everyone obviously had their own bed and you had your own little kitchen area too
which is really nice
when we went to like a market or something we could bring food back
we didn't cook much since we had the Mussolina Restaurant
Toma, a native of this area that we are going to you, he had so many
friends who you know
owned a pizza place, owned a painting shop, every every kind of thing
he was able to better help us assimilate into the culture for our time there was
able to help
organize activities that we wanted to do and really knew what we should be
getting out of our experience
and our month there. So he was able to maximize
not only the efficiency of what we did but also really gave us a lot of
opportunities that I otherwise would not have.
Overall he was really helpful
with anything that we needed, and it was really convenient that he's a native speaker of the
language
which made it a lot easier for us in town
even though most people did speak English. As far as the rest of the people on the trip,
my group got really close there was
12 of us I think
and we ended up being like a close knit family by the end of the trip.
I think it's really important that students discover this part of the world
and most of my students when they go there
are so shocked by the natural beauty and the historical
richness of the location that they always say
we had no idea this was where we were going to
because usually there is this
still embedded perception of the region as
you know conflict-ridden and violent and actually
this particular location in Istria never saw the actual warfare
so there is not destruction or any scars that are visible
so the students are just really quite amazed by the
by the beauty of the place on the location and also the opportunity to
learn
a lot more about this region