Thank you to all of the new students that have been sending in photos.  It can take me a bit to catch up as they come in so thanks for your patience.  For new students that want to contribute, please see this entry for instructions.

The first set of photos were sent in by Sujata Bordoloi, an incoming MPA student with an Economic and Development focus.

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The first two photos are of a school in the Wau region of Southern Sudan. The rusty tank is a reminder of the 21 years of civil war. Children in Southern Sudan finally get a chance to return to normalcy albeit in very basic conditions. The school ground used to be a Church where children now gather under trees to learn. Resources are scarce and teachers lack the requisite training to assimilate newly enrolled repatriated children from neighbouring Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. It does not deter teachers and children from coming to school everyday with chairs and blackboards in 50 degrees heat – a truly inspiring sight!

First day at a temporary school for children from a slum in Martissant, Port-Au-Prince. This was one of the first temporary schools to have opened in PAP 7 weeks after the disaster. The earthquake of January 2010 in Haiti was more devastating than the 2004 Tsunami in terms of the thousands of people killed and millions rendered homeless and without basic services.

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The next set of photos were submitted by Ryan Arant, an incoming MIA student.

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The first photo was taken in Dahiya, the Hezbollah controlled Shiite “borough” of southern Beirut shortly after the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War.  It was taken during a thoroughly guided tour of the area and with the not so tacit approval of our hosts.

The second photograph was taken in the Palestinian refugee camp Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut.  This child was one of the tens of thousands of refugees displaced from the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli by a conflict between the Lebanese Internal Security Forces and the Fatah al-Islam militant group.  His face was painted as a show of support for “Palestinian solidarity”.

The third photo was taken in Syria about 50 miles outside of the city of Hama.  The man in this photograph (a shepherd named Amjed) not only invited me and my companions to spend the afternoon with him in his tent— he also rode his horse several miles into the desert to search for (and almost instantly find) a missing cell phone, used several days worth of his earnings to provide us with a meal, and managed to disinfect a series of wounds I had recently acquired in a fall with arak, the locally popular aniseed-flavored liquor (in the latter case completely against my will).

Today the blog kicks of the second annual new student summer photo series.  We welcome recently admitted students to submit photos and details about how to do so and what to include an be found in this entry.

The first set of photos come from Zhang Bingyuan, an incoming MIA student from China.

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The first photo shows my home in Suzhou city in the province of Jiangsu. It’s a very traditional Chinese garden and we raise lots of fishes in the pool. They often get mad about food, which is shown in the second photo.

This photo is my aunt Yuan Aihong. She is a Beijing Opera singer and that was her performing Drunken Yang Guifei, a renowned beauty of the Tang dynasty.

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The next photo comes from Karin Vazquez, an incoming MIA student that will focus in Economic and Political Development.  Her comments are below.

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Just like you, one day I will devote some time to taking photography classes. In the meantime I would be glad to share the photo attached with other SIPA students. Believe it or not, it was taken by accident during my honeymoon trip to Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina) last year. I was trying to focus the road sign when the poor little boy came up to the car window begging for money.

A quick note: in Boznia-Herzegovina road signs are in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. Due to the continuing ethnic disputes, however, the cyrillic scripts in the road signs close to the country’s border with Croatia are all spray-painted out. The opposite happens in the border with Serbia, where the Latin scripts in road signs are covered with spray-paint. Reconciliation is clearly another generation or two away.

Begginer’s luck or human tragedy? I would say both, unfortunately.

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And the final photo today comes from Anoushavan Hambardzoumyan, an incoming MPA student.

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