Then and Now

One of my students just emailed me a makeup assignment because he missed class today. He wasn't in class because he is in Nicaragua for a week. He is visiting a friend who is working construction at a new resort there. He will be spending his days on a surf board.

This is the first time I've ever had a student submit an assignment from another country. I confessed I was jealous when I emailed a reply.

Before he left, we talked about how Nicaragua was not exactly a vacation destination when I was in college in the early 80s. During those years of counter-revolution in the aftermath of revolution, however, several of my more radical family members (including my 80-year-old grandmother) traveled to Nicaragua for political and humanitarian purposes (not necessarily in support of official U.S. interests).

As an international relations undergrad and because I was intrigued by the work my grandmother and cousins were involved with, I ended up writing several papers about U.S. foreign policy toward Nicaragua and human rights issues there. My grandmother even flew out from Chicago to speak about her experiences with Witness for Peace in Nicaragua at a peace symposium I helped organize at BYU (my own small but passionate attempt at being radical).

If I'd had a chance to go to Nicaragua as a college student, I'd have jumped at it. But I'm not sure surfing would have been on the itinerary then.