Pepperdine students plan Spring Break Tokyo trip
It isn’t every year that Pepperdine students are given the joy of Spring Break, but this February is our lucky month. Knowing this isn’t an opportunity one should pass up, senior Hillary Viets and juniors Melissa Meister and Stephanie Prince decided they wanted to do something special. On Feb. 21, this adventurous trio is hopping on a plane and heading to Tokyo.
According to Viets, it worked out perfectly.
“Stephanie’s brother lives in Tokyo, so we’ll have a place to stay and, of course, we found some really cheap tickets,” she said. Though this is the first time Meister and Prince have traveled to Asia, it’s a second chance for Viets to see all the things she missed her first time overseas during the summer of 2000 on a Pepperdine Asia Business Tour.
With all that there is to do in Tokyo, Hillary is already busy at work on an itinerary to fit it all in. They plan to take a train and travel to Hiroshima, Miyajima, Osaka and Kyoto. On one particularly exciting morning, these three girls plan to go to the world’s largest fish market, Tsukiji, at four in the morning. Here, they will see the daily tradition of selling fish to the restaurants for the day’s dishes.
Also on the list of things to do includes seeing Mt. Fuji and the Tokyo National Museum, going to Tokyo Disney, touring the Diet (the Japanese congress) and experiencing the outrageous nightlife at Roppongi.
For such a momentous opportunity of a spring break at Pepperdine, Viets, Meister and Prince are definitely going to make the most of it.
——————————————————–
La Nacion, one of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s leading dailys, featured the Pepperdine Argentina program’s reaction to the country’s turmoil on Feb. 10.
Reyna Hernandez, Matt Duffy and Bryan Betdorf told their stories of how and why they decided to go to Argentina after the Christmas break despite news reports that the country had hit a financial crisis and protests were rampant in the streets.
“If I hadn’t (returned),” Hernandez said. “I would have felt like a coward.”
Hernandez is one of 50 Pepperdine students who are attending the program.
“The parents of the students and the directors of the university called me to see what was happening,” said Rafael De Sanzo, a representative of North American studies in the country.
Sanz continued to say that the students had returned Jan. 15 despite the problems that faced the country’s leaders and citizens.
Both program directors and students have made safety a top priority, though all say that American media images have portrayed the problems worse than they are.
February 14, 2002
