OSU Abroad « knowledge without borders

Charlie Thompson majored in Business and minored in Spanish at Oregon State University, and participated in the IE₃ Global Internship program in Summer 2008 at Asociación Ajb’ atz’ Enlace Quiché in Guatemala. Charlie is currently serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Dominican Republic.

“Tu eres Ingeniero en Sistemas,” I am told by Dominicans when I explain what I do in the Peace Corps, “you’re a Systems Engineer.” It is one of several unearned titles — along with Professor and Technician — that I’ve been given since arriving in the Dominican Republic more than year and half ago. I learned long ago that there is no use in trying to contradict such a proclamation. I may as well assert that not all Americans are white or that New York is not a synonym for the United States.

Charlie Thompson in Dominican Republic — Charlie (lower left front row) with friends in Dominican Republic

The problem with correcting these misconceptions is that people just don’t care. If you’re talking about the United States and call it New York, that’s close enough. Even after I correct them, most people still don’t make a distinction. When I learned about this phenomenon in my organizational science classes at OSU, they referred to a cultural dimension known as “uncertainty avoidance”. In cultures with low uncertainty avoidance, like the Dominican culture, people aren’t very concerned with specifics. In most cases, a general idea will do.

During my time as an intern with IE₃ in Guatemala, I experienced the opposite end of the scale of uncertainty avoidance. Guatemala, with its centuries of tradition dating to pre-Columbian times, has developed an elaborate system of cultural identities by which society is ordered. The country has 26 native ethic groups, each with its own language and traditional style of dress. The result is a population accustomed to recognizing and interpreting nuanced differences between people.

Despite this and other pronounced differences, I’ve found that my experience in Guatemala prepared me quite well for the work I do here in the DR. As with my internship site in Guatemala, my current host organization was also founded by Americans but employs almost exclusively host country nationals. My relationship with my supervisor, while it requires a different style of communication, quite resembles the one I had in Guatemala. You never know when the skills you learn might come in handy down the road.

Denise Risdon is a senior at Oregon State University, studying Anthropology and History. Currently, Denise is interning for Heritage Malta in Malta through IE₃ Global Internships for six months. Below, Denise provides an update of her time abroad. (This blog was originally posted on the IE3 Field Note page).

After having some time to settle in to my host country of Malta, I have absolutely fallen in love with it. This little island is truly a hidden gem in the Mediterranean. The beauty can be found everywhere in this country, especially in the people, the architecture, the gardens and harbors. The capital city of Valletta is like an open air museum, full of history at every corner. It is this history that has brought me to Malta. I am interning with Heritage Malta, the National Agency for cultural heritage. I am placed at the National Archaeological Museum which is situated right in Valletta. At the museum, I am working in the section for Phoenician, Roman and Medieval archaeology and I could not ask for better curators in this department.

The work I have been doing is interesting. Before I learned of this internship, I must admit that I had little knowledge of this tiny little island and since my arrival I have basically had a giant history lesson on the entire country. The most exciting project I have been working on has been excavating the Roman Baths at Ghajn Tuffieha, which is located on the western side of the country next to two of Malta’s nicest beaches. This site is presumed to be dated from 50 – 100 AD and it was discovered in about 1929.

The site has been closed to the public due to the excavations going on. I feel enormously privileged to be working on a site like this. I have had the opportunity to take part in preserving history for future generations. The site consists of a number of rooms and many of them contained intricate geometrical patterned floor tiles made of marbles and stone. Sadly, the site is in pretty bad shape, and needs serious work, but I am proud to be a part of this project.

I never thought that I would actually be able to work doing my dream job, but here I am, on the other side of the world, loving every moment of my adventure. Unlike most interns, I will be staying here in Malta for six months and I will be able to really see what life is like in this amazing little place. I will be able to dive deeper into this culture and embrace it. I await any opportunity that comes my way with an open mind and a smile.

Jordan Machtelinckx is an International Ambassador for the office of International Degree and Education Abroad. He is a student at Oregon State University, majoring in Civil Engineering. Jordan studied abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, through CIEE. Below, he provides a reflection of what he learned from his experience abroad.

Every day while I was studying at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and living with my host family, I was observing and learning. A foreign environment made my senses acute to absorb as much information as possible. Learning is inevitable in that context, but understanding the dynamics I was observing took time.

Throughout my life and over the course of my travels, I’ve learned that at least half of the lessons I learn come about after my return home. After cultural immersion in South Africa, I didn’t realize how much I had learned until I got back into a familiar environment that, for the most part, remained constant during my absence. My home culture in Oregon acted as a control to help me understand what I had learned in my absence and measure how I had changed.

The most obvious way I saw that South Africa had changed me was in the form of patience. Not just temporal patience, but particularly situational and interpersonal patience. After having my outlook and personality stretched and reshaped during my immersion in so many cultures over the course of six months, I noticed that I couldn’t really find anything in my daily life back in Oregon that bothered me anymore; personalities, attitudes and actions that I didn’t understand before and that I used to find irritating now seemed to float by me without effect and usually resulted in only a smile on my face whose source I couldn’t identify.

Stunned at first that just about nothing managed to annoy me, it stimulated me to figure out why. Where did this patience come from? What had happened in the last six months to make me reach some sort of peace that I could see only indirectly? Even as I write this, months after my return and having pondered the thought constantly, I can turn up only a basic, indefinite answer – one that provokes additional questions more than it provides an answer to the original one. That answer is simply that I have become closer with myself, better friends with myself, even.

Throwing myself into an experience in which I had to provide all of my own strength and motivation has resulted in better self-understanding and acceptance of who I am. That’s logical enough. And I could have guessed that would happen before I left. But I didn’t expect it to result in a fundamental change in my daily outlook upon my return to Oregon. I still have a lot of understanding to reach with my experience in Cape Town, and a lot more travel in the future to stimulate more of this personal philosophy. As usual, the disparity between the plethora of questions and the handful of poorly articulated answers will serve as motivation to continue to explore physically, metaphysically and philosophically. But for now, I am quite content with this newly found peace, this traveler’s Zen.

Monica Larson is an International Ambassador in the office of International Degree and Education Abroad at Oregon State University. She is also a senior pursuing a degree in Zoology and a minor in French. Monica shares how her fascination with the French culture as a little girl took her half way across the world to study abroad at the Université Catholique de l’Ouestin in Angers, France, through AHA, and Contemporary French Studies Program in Paris, France, through CIEE.

Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by the French language. When I was younger, I thought the language had an intriguing sound. Little did I know how far that intrigue would take me – turns out it was half way across the world. I took French in high school, and my family participated in a program where we housed Charles Molia, who was from France, for one month during the summer. The month we had with him could not have been better. Since then, our family has met his family, and we are all very close and regularly talk to each other. This experience only enhanced my fascination with the French.

After this, I tried to learn as much as possible about French culture and society, but I knew that I would never truly get a grasp on it unless I went to France. For that reason, I studied abroad in Paris and Angers during the summer after my sophomore year. In Paris, I took a French film course and explored the city as much as possible. I was there for Bastille Day (French Independence Day), so I was able to compare it to our Independence Day. I find it extremely interesting how cultures are so different from each other, but we are still closely linked to one another. I think it is a necessity to learn about the different cultures around the world, because there are so many different perspectives and we can learn so much from one another to make the world better.

In Angers, I took a language intensive program and learned French along with people from all around the world including Greece, Mexico, China, Ireland, Ukraine, Japan, Columbia, India, and Pakistan just to name a few. I not only learned about the French culture, but also values and beliefs from other cultures from international classmates. I saw different issues in a whole new light. It gave me a chance to discern what I value and believe. This is a great example of things you learn while studying abroad that were not the original goal, but great surprises.

From studying abroad in France I gained countless memories and friends that I will have for my entire life. Also, I learned about myself and what I want to do in life. I realized that I want to work in France one day at a zoo or aquarium.

I would definitely recommend studying abroad to anyone who is thinking about it because it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity that you will never regret and always remember. In fact, I am planning on going abroad again. I am in the process of applying to the OUS program in Lyon, France, and will be there for a year. I am very excited to return to France to see what new adventures lay ahead.

Larry Becker is an Associate Professor in Geography and Director of the Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Program at Oregon State University. He spent a sabbatical year, August 2010 – July 2011, at the University of Poitiers in west-central France as a visiting scholar. Below he shares a brief glimpse into his life abroad.

From our university apartment for visiting researchers, my wife (Oregon State Geography instructor Laurie Yokoyama Becker) and our 12-year old daughter (Malia) looked over rooftops, across the shallow Clain River to the Roman era city center of Poitiers.

Sunrises and sunsets reflected on the faces of the 900-year-old Notre Dame La Grande. This view resembled what the attacking Protestants would have seen in the late 16^th century depicted in a wall-sized painting from the 1620s in the city museum. A strong sense of place is ever-present!

Malia walked daily to school in the center—passing near the site of an enormous Roman amphitheater and a street that 800 years earlier was gated at night separating the Jewish residents from the surrounding Christian population.

The streets of today, though, caught her eye, with mouth-watering éclairs in windows and narrow passageways to share with cars. I walked away from the city center in the opposite direction past a prison where French resistance fighters died during the WWII German occupation, and Walmart-sized mega-stores to the 1960s-era campus. My colleagues in the Migration Studies Center where my office was located welcomed me and invited me to lunch for the best cafeteria food—choices of fresh fish, boeuf bourguignon, and salads.

For research, I traveled to Mali. I interviewed villagers outside the capital Bamako to understand changes in their livelihoods. The biggest change I found in a village where I lived 25 years ago, is that the sorghum and millet farmers are selling their ancestral land to urban speculators and those seeking a retirement home.

I flew to the north on the edge of the Sahara to visit Timbuktu with a German aid agency that invited me to visit a rice farming project. Laurie remained in Poitiers teaching Oregon State E-campus courses from our apartment. Returning to France, my family and I traveled by train to Toulouse, the Italian coast, Rome, Naples, and the Carnival in Venice.

Quelle année! We met Oregon State students on a study abroad in Poitiers. This is an experience for Oregon State students and faculty alike.

Elizabeth O’Casey is a graduate student in Public Policy and an International Ambassadors for International Degree and Education Abroad office. She recently returned from Thailand working for the Peace Corps as a Teacher Collaborator and Community Outreach Organizer. Below, she shares an entertaining experience that gives insight into a completely different culture.

My Peace Corps friend, Todd, recently moved into his own house. He’d been living with a host family for the previous months and he was excited to have a space of his own. Eying the growing basket of laundry, he resolved to do laundry the next day.

A new day dawned and he got to scrubbing his sweaty, dusty clothes. In Thailand, many rural folks do laundry by hand, in a big black bucket out behind their house. It’s a process that stretches on for hours. So Todd was feeling pretty good about himself, hand washing the whole lot. He had rung the jeans, shirts, and underwear out with a Mr. Clean-like fervor.

He walked out onto his front porch and looked around. Where to hang the laundry? He spotted a white cloth rope that was tied to the perimeter of the house. Perfect. He began hanging his clothes on the rope. He knew socks are generally despised in Thailand. So, he hung them far away from his shirts and pants. The Thais see the feet as dirty and go so far as to wash socks separately to make sure the filth of the socks doesn’t mix with the other clothing. There is a strong concept that the head is (sacred) and foot (dirty) in Thailand. So, my friend considerately hung his socks in a separate area of the cord.

Seconds later, a neighbor came running up to him frantically, and began tearing off his underwear (from the line he hung it on, not the ones he was wearing, don’t worry!), jeans, and shirts. She pointed horrified to the socks, and motioned for him to take them down. He followed her request, incredibly confused. He stared as his pile of freshly-washed laundry lie in a heap at his feet. She returned minutes later, offering him a pole from which he could hang his clothes, explaining his mistake.

What happened? Well, Buddhists believe the white cord is a sacred Buddhist instrument. It’s used in every religious ceremony. Sometimes, the white cord will be tied around the wrists of people attending the ceremony to ward off the bad luck and spirits, and to protect the wearer. Sometimes, the white cord is held when the monks are chanting. Other times, the white cord is tied around the entire house, blessing the occupants, warding off evil spirits, protecting the house from ghosts. The cord is blessed by the monks. And my friend was hanging his socks and undies on this sacred cord.

It would be rather like a Thai exchange student coming to the states and using the church cross as a place to hang his underwear. Funny, but also sacrilegious; no doubt any number of little old ladies from within the church building would take up their crochet needles and go after that ‘crazy Thai kid’. So, the white cord is kind of like that. Sacred. Blessed. And an important Buddhist symbol.

Here’s the thing about living abroad: you get the best stories. Go to a place you know nothing about, and you’ll come home full of tales about this once far away land. Before I went to Thailand, I knew three things: It was hot, the beaches were beautiful, and the food was spicy. I came with suitcases full of hilarious, and at times, unbelievable stories. I encountered stories of embarrassment, like hanging undies on Buddha’s spirit. I had stories of unexplainable oddity, like the school closing early because elephants were loose in the village, and I had stories of heart, like when I walked into a classroom of 10 first graders who ran up to me holding hand-picked bouquets of flowers.

You may leave the states with a suitcase full of clothes, but I can promise you this: You’ll return home full of incredible stories that are a direct result of you living out your wildest dreams.

Elizabeth Ragan is a senior at Oregon State University. She is pursuing a degree in Public Health and Anthropology with a minor in French. Elizabeth recently returned from Kampala, Uganda, where she interned for Prometra Uganda through IE3: Global Internships. Below is a reflection summary from her blog.

My final day in the village. Waving goodbye as the last truck of traditional healers rounds the corner of the dirt road and disappears out of sight. I know that they’re going home, and I’m going home too. But I’m struggling, because I can’t help but feel like I’m going home and leaving home all at the same time.

As the sun dips below the surrounding hills, I set off down the road, needing to walk, needing to think and clear my head. All of my senses are magnified, like I’m trying to absorb every final memory with bound determination. The sounds of the night seem to keep time with the rhythm of my breath and the pounding of my heart, my heart which is in a silent struggle between happiness and sadness.

Making my way through the airport. Some internal instinct or motor memory instructs me through the motions, but I feel like a stranger in my own body, like I’m observing myself from a distance. Security checks, customs, gate transfers, coffee shops, loudspeaker announcements, the whirring sound of suitcase wheels on hard floors, small talk and strangers. I’m in a transition between worlds and I can’t help but feeling sickened at just how easily I’m slipping right back into it, all of the excess, the naivety, the ignorance. People living in their comfortable bubbles, happily ignoring the world around them. The population around me has changed so dramatically in the past 24 hours, from the morning I left Kampala on my way to Entebbe to where I sit now in Heathrow.

3am, laying in my bed at my parents’ home, staring at the ceiling. It’s not just the 10-hour time change and jet lag that is keeping my mind awake. The middle of the night and I have become familiar companions over the course of the summer, my mind busily milling over all of the experiences that I had, trying to make sense of it all. The one thing I simply can’t get myself past is the disparity and the blatant ignorance. How great the divide is between being concerned about when you’re going to get the new iPhone 4, that new pair of leather boots, or new dining room furniture, and the fear of not being able to feed your family or losing yet another child from a preventable cause.

We’re brought up in a fast-paced world. Our society has taught us to be concerned with what’s in front of us, and I’ve found that you have to work hard to learn about the problems of low-income nations. I force myself to remember all of the problems that Americans do face, like recession, unemployment, unaffordable health care, declining social services, rising costs of higher education – all serious problems that leave people powerless. But then I take these things and line them up to the concerns of people in Uganda, like infectious disease, hunger, clothing, drought, shelter, clean water, primary education. I believe that it’s our responsibility to be a world citizen and to treat everybody as human and to fight for their basic rights. We must become critical of ourselves and the lifestyles that we lead, accepting that our actions and decisions have ramifications that will trickle down far beyond our perceived reality.

Coming to a country like Uganda does something powerful to you. It is indeed a rare opportunity, one that many people will either never get the chance to take, or may decide not to take out of fear or apprehension. But there is great potential in taking such a step. If you allow it, Uganda will lay bare to you all of your weakness, misconceptions, ethnocentricities, and the blinders that America and all of the comforts of home have been allowing you to wear your whole life. Then you will be given an option, approach a crossroads of sorts. Do you stay on the same path that you have been walking along up until this point, knowing that you are ignoring what your eyes have been opened to about the world, or do you change your direction and become a person that has a deeper understanding that in this world, we are all human, and we are all connected. Travel the world, learn about the struggles of the people, and as a consequence, learn about yourself.

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” – Nelson Mandela

OSU Abroad

knowledge without borders

From IE3 Global Internship to Peace Corps

IE3: The Hidden Gem of the Mediterranean

CIEE: Cape Town, Africa

Study Abroad in France

France: University of Poitiers

Peace Corps: Thailand

A Summer in Uganda

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