Editor's note: "Year One: Life at ASU" is a periodic photo series following five freshmen navigating their first year at ASU. This installment checks in on Eric Arellano's spring activities.
Eric Arellano’s choice of how to spend his first spring break differed from most other freshmen. Through ASU’s new Global Intensive Experience, he and 17 other students went to Cuba to live with and learn from the families, farmers, doctors and entrepreneurs who live there. In preparation, Arellano took POS 486: International Political Economy to provide background for the weeklong trip. The group traveled through the capital of La Habana (Havana); Santa Clara, famous for its memorial to the revolutionary icon Che Guevara; and the historic agrarian community of Trinidad, on the southern coast. Eric appreciated the trip for providing a new perspective on the world and specifically political economy often ignored in the United States.
He shared his and friends' photos from the trip below.
The following weekend, the socially minded computer science student traveled early Saturday morning to volunteer in a lower-income neighborhood near the Marc Atkinson Kid Street Park in Phoenix. There, joined with a few of his Next Generation Service Corps friends and around 100 other volunteers, he spent the morning scrubbing the playground equipment and repainting the curb as a part of ASU's Day of Service. Others in the group went around the neighborhood painting a community mural and removing dead vegetation and other debris from alleyways. The project was coordinated with the College of Public Service and Community Solutions, and was encouraged as a way for members of the Next Generation Service Corps to give back to the local community.
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