In the Spring of 1999 I decided to go study abroad.
When I first began to think about where I wanted to go, I knew that I wanted
to not go on an Earlham program. Why did I know that? Well I will
tell you... Earlham is a great college that has given many opportunities
to grow and be challenged, but there are aspects of this place that I do
not like. When you go on a program here you hang out with those people
you get to know, and basically become friends, and then when you get back.
If you do not make a point to see those folks, you will not see them.
I as also not interested in any of the programs that were offered at Earlham.
I was interested to meet new people and find out what another school's
thinking would be like. I had done lots of research at the local
library, but I was not sure if any of these programs were good and the
universities or colleges that they were being run out of were credited
places, but I knew American University was which was close to home.
My mother is a professor at American University and so she was happy I
would be choosing this program, because it would save us some money.
AU offered two programs to Brussels, Belgium one that focused on Policy
in the European Union and the second involved International Marketing.
I really wanted to get into the International Marketing program, but I
had not taken the classes to get into, and so I went with the policy program
which turned out to be very interesting. We got the chance to have the
Spokesman for NATO (Jamie Shay) come and teach our European Security Seminar.
Although he was busy taking care of Kosovo, he served as a wonderful professor.
I also learned about Policy in the European Union, a very intrinsic system
or rules and laws and lots of policy.
While I was in Europe I did not spend all my time
studying. I had the chance to travel with friends that I made.
And the program also arranged trips with an educational focus and some
fun attached too, we are of course college students with wild hearts in
search of fun. The most interesting place we went to was St. Petersburg
(formally known as Leningrad) in Russia. I had lots of fun traveling
to other countries and visiting them.
After studying abroad and two weeks of vacation,
I went to Mali in West Africa to start an internship. My mother had
been in Mali since January and so I got the chance to visit my mother.
I had an internship with a place called Indigo. They sell West African
art in Mali and they export items to the US, Europe and parts of South
America. The first week I was driven around Bamako, the capital of
Mali. Mamadou, the owner of Indigo, wanted me to put images and create
links to the images on his web page. Now, the interesting part is
that I had never done anything on web pages before, but I had a week to
start learning. I was only going to be in Mali for about 5 weeks and had
to produce something. I have been taking French for 12 years
and so it was easy to get around, because I speak French so well.
One thing that was hard was speaking to people about technical assistance
for the web page.