Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Crystal Pihl - Story Detail - Pittsburg State University

Crystal Pihl, a graduate from PSU, studied abroad in Finland and Kazakhstan. Here is her story.

Crystal Pihl - Story Detail - Pittsburg State University

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Allison Keegan, Graduate student - Story Detail - Pittsburg State University

Allison Keegan, Graduate student - Story Detail - Pittsburg State University

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PSU Study Abroad in the News

PSU Study Abroad students and programs have been featured lately in several places. Check it out.

Allison Keegan was featured on the PSU web site as a banner story for her summer study abroad in Finland and South Korea. See the previous post.

Also the PSU Group program led by Dr. Steve Harmon that traveled to South America was featured in the PSU online magazine Universitas.
http://www.pittstate.edu/newsletter/universitas/index.dot?article=141775

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Allison in Finland & South Korea

Allison, a graduate student at PSU, has set out on a summer of study abroad. First she studied at PSU's sister university Jyvaskyla in Finland and now she is at another sister university in South Korea, Hanyang University. She has been writing a blog about her experiences abroad. Check it out at http://allisonmkeegan.blogspot.com/2009/07/abc123.html.

Here is her last post as a sample:

One benefit I've received from studying both Finnish and Korean language is that I've been able to feel what it is like to be a child learning the alphabet for the first time. This feeling is true especially while learning Korean, since the characters are completely new to me. When I first began looking intensively at the Korean language, all I could ensue was that all those funky looking symbols meant something to somebody...but that somebody was certainly not me. I imagine that as a child I once felt the same way. My family has told me stories of how I used to listen to a story over and over, and then recite that story from memory while flipping the pages pretending as though I were actually reading. I can imagine the excitement I must have felt thinking as though I could actually read what "big people" could read.

Here I am, 20-something years after I first started "reading", and I am right back to that same beginning. I feel the same excitement when I can read more than a line or two in a story. The only difference now is that I feel myself holding in my excitement so as not to appear overly giddy and childlike. However, I've never been too good at holding back my excitement...so I am starting to just embrace it and feel happy about the accomplishments my class and I are making.

While I know we are making accomplishments, we are still often very confused because this language is so hard to grasp. I sit in class and I see my teacher try to explain things to us, and oftentimes I can see the frustration on her face because we just aren't picking it up. I completely understand her frustration because in her mind she is explaining something that is very easy and basic, and yet we are looking at her like a deer in headlights. I've been on that end many times while tutoring or teaching in a classroom, so I understand and can easily empathize with her point of view.

I feel as though this experience has given me the opportunity to empathize a little better with children in my future classroom. I knew that this experience would give me a chance to learn what it was like to be in the minority, with the hope that I could empathize with children in schools that also feel like they are in the minority. To my surprise, this experience has taught me so much more than that. At some point in time, all the students I work with will feel left out, behind or confused in the classroom...and I hope that I will be able to draw from this experience and have a greater amount of patience and understanding.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Health Campaign

The ProPeru folks think there may be a strike tomorrow, which would be annoying but we would be fine where we are in Urababmba.

Today we went to Pancarhually, a small community of around 55 families, and gave health presentations off of posters we made the day before covering dental health, clean body and clean house and clean water issues, and women´s health, pap smears and STD's. Zach gave his in Spanish, while the rest of the group took advantage of the translators with the ProPeru group, especially for the women´s health issues. The community people asked great questions: if they were students in my freshman class they would all have gotten the A for the day, questions about the causes of cancer, the nature of diabetes, etc. We handed out toothpaste and toothbrushes, talked with some of the people about their most urgent concerns, and played some soccer, football with the local teenagers. We ended up with a tie with the mixed teams we had.

We are hoping to go back to do the health campaign tomorrow, but if the strike is on the roads will be blocked and we will be disappointed. After our health presentation some of the local folks took us to a very cool Pre-Incan archaeological site with some interesting petroglyphs. One of the community leaders had had family in the area for some time and pointed out the old salt road that the llamas had carried salt on when he was a child, and some alternate routes to Cuzco and Machu Picchu through the country roads that were the remains of Incan trails. Brian said he felt at home because we were in farm country: the wheat harvest looked good, and they were harvesting potatoes of a special variety that took up a distinctive flavor from their red earth, and sold as gourmet items for a premium price in the big cities.

Anyway, all are in good health and good spirits, and hopefully the change in the law stops the strikes from happening so we can do more of what we came here to do. We will see you soon!

Return from Machu Picchu

The ruins of Machu Picchu were incredible, fully meriting the title of one of the wonders of the world. There were other things to see, including the Inca Bridge, the Sun Gate, and the hot springs, as well as Wainupicchu (contributing further to my gray hair), and our group split up to explore different options. This morning we saw the ruins of Ollantetambo, a mix of Incan and pre-Incan ruins with some signs of Spanish conquest. There were big battles fought there between the Incan emperor and the Spaniards, as a way to lead the conquistadores away from Machu Picchu. Right now we are working on posters for a health campaign to educate people about the need for a clean kitchen, hand washing, tooth brushing, pap smears and well-woman checks.

Everyone is well and happy, thrilled by the magnificent ruins but happy to be back at work.

Monday, June 8, 2009

We are back from the Inca trail. We saw around 300 patients over the course of 2 days, and were able to deliver a lot of health care with our donated medicines. All of our students worked hard, and even those without much Spanish were able to be effective because they made great efforts to communicate with our excellent Peruvian health care professionals. There was a good bit of fun too, with some freeze tag and charades with our Peruvian friends, and a lot of good natured teasing and joking in 2 or 3 languages, and even some scary Peruvian mountain spirit tales. We also got to see some pre-Incan ruins not open to the public yet, most impressive!
We are off for Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu now, and will be back in 3 days with some fabulous pictures and a great appreciation of the accomplishments of the Incan civilization.
More later!
Dan

Friday, June 5, 2009

Off to the Inca Trail

Hola Julia!
So far it´s been a great trip: the whole group is really pitching in, and the people without much Spanish are working and practicing and are making great progress: I am really proud of this bunch. Today we head out for the Inca Trail by backpack for a health campaign in the rural countryside. This is a wonderful opportunity to see a part of Peru that you´d never see as a tourist. We´ll be staying in the villages for 2 nights and 3 days. Everybody is excited to begin the health campaigns.
We´ll be in touch in a few days.
Un abrazo!
Dan

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Urubamba: Biology group program

We are in Urubamba right now and it is INCREDIBLE. Last year we stayed at a Vo-tech school and it was adequate but a little, uh, rustic (Peruvian toilets, for example). This hostel is geared towards Americans and it also had hot showers (I got one anyway, not everyone was so lucky) and a beautiful Peruvian-style courtyard which features a pair of parrots. Breakfast this morning was again llama bagels, drinkable yogurt, and a variety of fruit for which we had no names.

We did our health orientation last night at the Pro-Peru office here in Urubamba. We went through descriptions of the common parasites and how to identify them in stool and blood samples. We also talked about the importance of our women´s health campaigns. They gave us the results of last year´s campaign- there were 2 cases of confirmed cervical cancer, but both women responded well to the treatment and are cancer-free now. The payment for their cancer treatment came in part from the fee dollars that we paid to ProPeru, and we were the group whose campaigns identified the women with cancer. It is humbling to think that we are actually saving lives- and it also makes us feel very guilty that we are not doing enough.

Some of the students went out last night to explore Urubamba a bit more. They met other volunteers, from Duke university and from the University of Pittsburgh. It is pretty cool that everyone else who does this is from a big, prestigious school. PSU is awesome. :)

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Arriving in Cuzco: Biology program in Peru

The flight to Cuzco was awesome- we stayed awake the whole time so we got to really appreciate the mountain scenery. I was sitting next to a couple of students from Ireland, and they were kind enough to snap some great pics for us through the window of the Andes beneath us.

Our hotel in Cuzco is great. The beds are hard and it's a little noisy, but the accommodations are clean and there is even some hot water. Yay! Dinner last night was Pizza Wasi which is just plain awesome (we had it last year and it was a favorite). Breakfast this morning was at the hotel, and it consisted of the yogurt drink that Peruvians love so much, mate de coca, and the bread which we in Pre-Meds in Peru affectionately refer to as "llama bagels" (apparently the real name is bread of Cuzco, lame.)

Okay, so we are getting ready to go explore the Plaza D'Armas. We saw a cool monastery with a very interesting art museum inside yesterday, which we had missed last time- there might be other treasures waiting to be found, we'll find out. :) We leave this afternoon for Urubamba where will begin setting up our health campaigns by organizing our medicines and miscellaneous supplies at the ProPeru office there.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Arrival to Peru: Biology in Peru group program

News from Lima from Emily:

We've landed in Lima and are camped out in the airport waiting to see if we will successfully make it on to our StarPeru flight. So far, everything is going really well. Customs and immigration were much easier this time than last time, despite the presence of medicos in masks checking for signs of swine flu. There were graduate students in line in front of us who had much more elaborate scientific equipment than we had (like a small refrigerator, I kid you not) and it was interesting watching them go through. I am very pleased that our students have been generally very up-beat, flexible, and open-minded.

Our favorite thing so far: our Delta flight had little interactive screens for each seat, so you got to watch whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. Megan and I sat next to each other and had dual epiphanies about how, as pre-meds, we hadn't had time for television in years. So I got to indulge my very low passion for crime dramas, something that I would normally be much too serious and busy to do. In between shows I watched our progress on the real-time map: we flew over Cuba and over the Panama canal.

Okay, back to the very uncomfortable airport seats... Hopefully I can catch a few hours of sleep before it is time to navigate our domestic air carrier!!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Safe travels


Many of our PSU Group Study Abroad programs are off in different parts of the world or getting ready to go. Have a safe and exciting trip! Send back Gorillas Gone Global virtual postcards to post here for fellow gorillas to read.