Last summer Ngozi Taffe \u201997 (BUS), \u201902 MBA, \u201920 Ph.D.\u00a0stepped onto Spain\u2019s storied Camino de Santiago trail with her daughter\u00a0Sidney \u201924 (CLAS),\u00a0a political science major. They laced up their boots in the small town of Sarria in Galicia and, over the course of 10 days, walked 70 miles to the medieval cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. Along the way they passed through ancient oak and chestnut forests, working farms, and cobblestoned villages that have sheltered pilgrims since the time of the Crusades.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first I thought, this is crazy,\u201d says Sidney. \u201cWalking 100 kilometers? I wasn\u2019t sure I could do it. But you get out there and you meet other people and you hear their stories, why they\u2019re walking, the things they\u2019re dealing with, and it becomes this intense bonding experience. When you reach the cathedral in Santiago, it\u2019s very emotional. There\u2019s such a huge sense of accomplishment. People are hugging and crying, and you feel so connected because you\u2019ve all walked the same path.\u201d<\/p>\n
Falling in with different people is a big part of the Camino experience, says\u00a0Alex Chang \u201994 (BUS).\u00a0Chang is the founder and owner of Fresco Tours, which led Ngozi and Sidney\u2019s trek. \u201cOn the trail, people wish each other, \u2018Buen Camino,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201c\u2018Good walk.\u2019 You bump into a man from Belgium or a woman from Japan and you learn a little bit about their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chang first went to Spain while still an undergrad, spending the summer after his junior year studying Spanish art and culture in Madrid. At the time, the classes seemed a bit outside the scope of his marketing major, but decades later he points to them as a critical piece of his education. \u201cLiving in Spain, exploring the culture I was immersed in, it really affected me.\u201d<\/p>\n
So much so that Chang returned after graduation to work in the Madrid office of a global market research company. He had no intention of staying beyond a year or two while he figured out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. But an answer began to emerge on his first Camino de Santiago trek \u2014 ironically, he\u2019d gifted himself 18 days hiking the fabled network of pilgrimage routes that arc across Europe as a way of saying goodbye to Spain before heading back to the States.<\/p>\n
Months later, the Camino was still with him, and he had Spain on the brain often while trying to settle back into corporate America. What had really fired him up, Chang realized, was sharing his passion for different cultures. He connected the dots back to UConn, where one of his favorite activities had been giving tours to prospective students as a Husky Ambassador. It was a way of letting people in on the magic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s part of my personality, I guess,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just feels right.\u201d<\/p>\n