Similarities and differences between the Scout staffers and the Klin staffers

Becky Klugiewicz

Upon first arriving in Ljubljana, we did not know what to do. We met the Klin staff (Sašo, Igor, Zaria, Miha, Jošt, David, Gašper, Jelena, and Erter) at the train station and had no idea what to think of them.

The Slovene students spoke to each other quickly, and in a language in which we knew but five or ten key phrases. But in the time we spent with them, we learned how different, and more importantly how similar, we are with these students.

College life is different at the Faculty of Social Sciences than it is at Bradley University. They attend all of their classes in the same building. The buildings for different majors are scattered throughout the city. A journalism student will never have a class with a science or engineering student. Students who live in other parts of the country usually go home for the weekend, and few students live on campus. Our concept of a campus with students of various disciplines interacting with each other is completely foreign to them.

Our Slovene guides had no problems walking all over the country, while my feet were tired and blistered.

By the end of the trip, I learned that I have more in common with the Klin staffers than we originally thought.

They love sports, music, partying and shopping just as much as we do. They eat pizza, drink Coke, drive faster than the speed limit, keep up with fashion trends and talk on their cell phones just like we do.

The simplest thing brought us together and really solidified us as a group, a unit, one and the same. By teasing each other about politics and dancing, we learned that they have the same sense of humor we value so much in our American friends.

Leaving Slovenia was the hardest part of the trip. We wanted to stay, and cried many tears when we had to say goodbye to our friends. We no longer considered the Slovenes to be “them.” They were people we shared experiences with, both good and bad. We had eaten, laughed, danced, toured and shared our personal thoughts with these people. We were no longer two different groups. We were now one group that was forced to split up too soon.

But the ending is not a sad one. We still talk via e-mail, and we can hardly wait until our friends visit us next semester.

Becky Klugiewicz is a journalism major at Bradley University. She loved dancing in Slovenia a little too much. Direct questions, comments, or new dance moves to rklugiew@bradley.edu.