SUSI experience! July 6-7, 2011

Wednesday, July 6: River Rafting

This was the first time we go to the Food Zoo, a dining place next to Miller Hall where we will have our breakfast for some of the following days. There we can pick our own meal from the provided buffet tables. There are lots of choice from bread, eggs, potatoes, meat, cream soup, fruits, cereals, and drinks. After breakfast, we walked to NAC 201 to have a class with Dr. Celia Winkler about multiculturalism in the US. She explained about population progress from the past up to the future predictions, population distributions along with the religion, race, and age distributions. Later we discussed about American culture encompassing mutual values, national celebrations, and other recent social issues that affect public mindset. All participants seemed to be very interested because this topic is actually our basic ground for understanding American as the object of the next topics in this program. Then we depart for the rafting trip in the Blackfoot River, which was totally fun.

We had 4 boats each carried around 7 people, and this was the first experience for many of us. The river sometimes was calm, but in certain points the water turned so wild and it bumped us all around the boat. Halfway the river we stopped for lunch by the riverside before continuing the rafting adventure for another hour. In the evening, we visited the FLAT House to have dinner with some UM Environmental Studies students. We met Kate, Dave, and Micah who already prepared barbecues and other food for us. The people who live there demonstrate sustainable living, have experiments on energy conservation, and also they educate people in Missoula about appropriate environmental technology. In their lawn they grow vegetables, make compost, have their own chicken cages, and they apply solar-cell as their energy source. They also design the building in a green way so that they use less energy than the ordinary house, thus they also save their money. They show us how they made the wall of their model-house from hard-pressed hay and clay, where to place the window so that they can get enough sunlight, and how they put Styrofoam in their ceiling to manage the temperature inside the house. This was a great learning experience for us, to learn so many things from the people who have big commitment in leading a green lifestyle.

Thursday, July 7: Orientation Continues

We started the day with breakfast at the Food Zoo before going to NAC for a class with Dr. Christopher Muste on US Government Structure. He explained about the governmental system in US, where they have local government in city level, state government, and federal government in national level. In the USA, they also have tribal government in each native American tribes. Besides, the federal government is also divided into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. We discussed the power distribution in the government, and how people see the power as well. In US Constitution there is a very strong phrase ''We the people...'' that implies how the power of the people is so big that there is a need of the governing bodies to control it, when basically they fear it too. Almost all participants asserted their queries to Dr. Muste and also we share how the government work in each of our countries. After the session concluded, Dr. Broberg gave us an Introduction to Environmental Regulation. He showed us some regulation related to environment such as the Environment and Species Act of 1973, and elaborated them with linked issues like over-fishing, river pollution, decreasing number of Grizzly bear, and many others. We then talked over several approaches to those regulations: the 'command and control', 'incentive-based', 'verified-loss compensation' and educational approaches. Dr. Broberg emphasized the issues about Grizzly bear recovery attempt, because Grizzlies are considered as Montana's animal and so people have a big concern about them. After the class we had lunch on the Oval, it is a kind of park where people often held their activities, and then we have group project discussion for each country with Dr. Broberg in the Rankin Hall.

At 4 p.m. We biked to Van Buren pedestrian bridge to meet Dr. Christ Brick, the Science Director of the Clark Fork Coalition. Dr. Brick escorted us along the Kim Williams trail by the river while we talked about the mining industry that was once polluting the river, and how the coalition worked together with the community to revitalize their beloved river. The session finished at Caras Park where we had our dinner at the Downtown Tonight event that is held every Thursday night. We enjoyed the music while eating foods we bought from the vendors there before we left at 7 p.m. to continue our course to Big Dipper ice cream which is said to be the best ice cream place in Missoula, and then we continued to Rockin' Rudy, a shop that sells cool stuff we can buy as souvenir.