Sean Hagan: Study Abroad in Latvia

honorsatiowa

Nov 3

During Sean Hagan's summer study abroad in Latvia, he engaged with a trifecta of study abroad challenges—an internship, life with a host family, and language study. Add to that self-directed exploration of regional sights and you have a powerful learning experience! Hagan's Russian studies consisted of four hours of immersive Russian classes each day, with no English spoken. His internship consisted of writing articles on various topics for SRAS (School of Russian and Asian Studies), the company that arranged his study abroad, including historical and cultural analyses, an overview of the development of Riga's districts from the year 1201 until the present, and a travel piece about a weekend excursion to the beach town of Jurmala.

I spent 6 weeks in Riga, Latvia, studying Russian, writing articles for School of Russian and Asian Studies (SRAS), and living with a host family. Some of my favorite moments from this experience were exploring historic industrial sites in Riga and weekend travel in neighboring Baltic states Estonia and Lithuania. Riga was full of abandoned factories, both Germanic and Soviet in design. Exploring these sites and the neighborhoods around them provided an opportunity to see through the layers of Riga's history. I've enjoyed urban exploration for the last year or so, and Riga had no shortage of sites to explore, from 19th century factories to crumbling Soviet military bases. Estonia and Lithuania had good night life and stunning architecture. Tallinn was characterized by its medieval castle walls, which made the place very charming and beautiful. Vilnius felt very historical and majestic, perhaps because of its central role in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, one of Europe's most powerful empires.

My biggest challenge during my study abroad internship was difficulty communicating with my host family towards the beginning of the experience. My Russian was rusty from a lack of conversation practice since my last study abroad, and for the first week or so it was difficult for us to communicate. At first, we struggled to understand each other on things as basic as buying a bus ticket and navigating the city. However, the language learning program was highly conversation-oriented with most of our class time spent conversing, so my conversation skills improved enough that we were able to have long conversations about a wide variety of topics. I improved a lot more than I expected. My biggest goal with this experience was to improve my Russian, so I was extremely happy about this.

Another important goal was to learn about Latvian and Baltic history. As mentioned before, one of the ways I did this was by exploring industrial sites and different districts around the city, but I also visited museums, churches, and the historic Old Riga. I spoke with locals and my host family, and through them I learned a lot about Baltic and Latvian history. I had been curious about this part of the world for a long time, so living there was an incredible experience. I met interesting people, got to explore a country with a rich culture and history, and greatly improved a language fluency that will advance my college and career goals.