A serious case of wanderlust

Good (French, SWAG ’08)
Photo by Michael Bailey.

Anya Good (French, Studies in Women and Gender ’08) wandered through narrow, labyrinthine passageways in Moroccan medinas (marketplaces) where she dodged speeding mopeds, bargained with merchants and listened to lyric conversations in French, Arabic and English. She watched the sun rise over sand dunes in the Sahara and from a rooftop in the High Atlas Mountains. She rode on the back of a camel and befriended a six-year-old Berber girl by singing “Itsy, Bitsy Spider.”

Good was so smitten by these and other wonders that she can’t wait to wander the world again. “Anywhere,” she says eagerly. “I’ll go anywhere I can get a plane ticket.”

Good was one of 24 students who traveled to Morocco, ostensibly to study French. What she learned, however, was a whole lot more about herself and her place in the world.

“Sometimes you have to accept that you’re not going to know what’s going on,” she says, recalling a number of very unfamiliar situations. “It would be really small things, like we walked into a store during the call to prayer at 12:30 in the afternoon to buy something, and the store owner was praying. We didn’t know if we should respectfully leave, or if he was OK with it and we could stand there and wait. It was really interesting to watch people sort those things out. As you travel, you get more used to it, and you just have to go with the flow. I’ve definitely become more laid back after traveling abroad.”