Freshman embraces Irish background by performing at Celtic festivals and Renaissance fairs.

Mission resident and USF senior Anita Buitrago was never aware of the daily contributions made to improve community life until she landed an internship that opened her eyes to her own backyard.

Living in a foreign country? Showering from a bucket? Eating cow tongue? None of these experiences have stopped freshman Kathryn Butera from enjoying her senior year of high school while studying abroad in Panama.

Through study abroad opportunities and service learning trips, senior Ivana Rosas has seen many countries including Nicaragua, El Salvador, and France. Rosas, an international studies major focusing on the environment and development, considers herself a citizen of the world.

Gabriel Avina, a sophomore and Asian studies major, knows how important and how different cultures can be, having spent most of his life living in Asia.

After traveling to Lima, Peru with the University Ministry’s Arrupe Immersion Program in the spring of 2008, and witnessing firsthand the struggles that street children face, senior Hannah Mora has singlehandedly organized her own drive to donate funds to an emergency shelter built to house rescued victims, an international project created by the Not For Sale Campaign.

Junior Kevin Kunze has recurring nightmares about having laser eye surgery go awry. Though he wears contact lenses to correct his vision, he would not consider getting his eyes permanently fixed with the slightly risky procedure. “It’s not worth the risk when you count on your eyes for your future,” he said. He’ll certainly need them for his upcoming project, his first feature length film, Id, which he hopes to start filming as soon as this month.

Unlike the typical USF student, whose weekend agenda is to explore the city and take on its many adventures, Steff Scholl, 20, has a different recipe for weekend excitement.

While the country Saudi Arabia may invoke memories of genies and princes in the Disney film “Aladdin”, it is also the home country of Fares Alrahji, a sophomore computer science major at USF.