Fulbright Alumni Ambassador Archives - Page 6 of 8

Falling in Love with the Inferno: Adjusting to Life in Piauí

September 10, 2015

Ilana Robbins Gross, 2012-2013, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Brazil (second from right), visiting her students’ hometown in rural Piauí, Brazil – one of the many examples she experienced of people opening up their homes to her

Teresina, a small capital in the almost forgotten state of Piauí in Brazil, is known with affection, pride, and frustration as “the Inferno,” both for its intense heat and historic lack of opportunities.

Despite the roughly one million people who live in the greater metropolitan area, Teresina feels like a small town: everyone knows everyone or at least they know your people. A native New Yorker, I landed in Piauí as a Fulbright English Language Teaching Assistant (ETA), felt the heat (joy!), saw the mainly empty streets (panic), watched as people slowly ducked from shady sliver to shady sliver (behavior I was soon to adopt) and asked myself what the inferno was I going to do for the next nine months?

Once I had gotten over the initial shock, (mostly) adjusted to the heat, and accepted that people would stare at me no matter what I did since for many I was the first foreigner they had ever seen, I set about the business of becoming part of the community and falling in love with a city largely forgotten even by other Brazilians.

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U.S. Fulbright

Plasma Fused Cultures in South Korea

August 17, 2015

Nathan Taylor, 2013-2014, South Korea (third from right), with his lab coworkers, visiting scholars from Germany in Bukchon Hanok Village in Seoul, South Korea

Prior to my experience as a Fulbright Student, I had almost no connection to South Korea. Before my Fulbright grant, I had been working on my Ph.D. at Drexel University in Philadelphia for the last five years and had never lived outside of my home state of Pennsylvania for any appreciable amount of time. The only tie that I had to South Korea was my research interests and a passion for learning about different cultures. I was introduced the Plasma Bioscience Research Center (PBRC) at Kwangwoon University by my research adviser at Drexel, so I advise any potential applicants to reach out to their advisors for connections as well. After receiving the fellowship, I spent 10 months living and working in Seoul, South Korea.

The people I met in South Korea were some of the most hospitable people that I have ever had the privilege of knowing. From my very first day, I was treated better than I could have imagined. The day that I landed, I was taken from the airport to my house and minutes later (after a 23 hour trip without a shower), went to a dinner with all of the lab members I would be working with and a visiting lab team from Japan. It was quite jarring, but they wanted to make sure that I was introduced as soon as possible and included in the event that was happening.

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U.S. Fulbright

A World of Imagination

August 10, 2015

Julie Baer, 2011-2012, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Malaysia (third from left) with students engaged in one of their final Imagination Nation projects involving building moon landers which protect eggs dropped from the third floor of a building

Every Wednesday afternoon at SK Seri Bunian, a small elementary school in Pontian, Malaysia, my English Language club Imagination Nation, gathered together to delve into the world of our imaginations. My students walked into the classroom and picked up their passports which “permit the citizens of the Imagination Nation to pass without delay or hindrance, to any place as far and wide as their imagination will take them.” We transformed into robots and then became the engineers who created them. We flew around the world, saw how pollution and plastics harm our Earth, and then made recycling boxes to keep our school clean; we Skyped with a NASA Astronaut Educator Diane Sartore and made moon-landing devices. But when the clock struck 1:30 p.m., we were back in Seri Bunian.

To me, being a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) was much more than practicing sentence structure with my students. My English Language club and other school activities sought to challenge my students to think creatively. I wanted my students to harness their imagination, work determinedly to achieve their dreams, and turn the figments of their imagination into reality.

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U.S. Fulbright

Help Us, to Help You, to Help Others

August 6, 2015

Tiffany N. Burd (second from left, middle row) at the Community Support Worker Graduation Ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa

Receiving a Fulbright U.S. Student grant fulfilled a lifelong dream of working in one of the most challenging communities in the world: a South African township. The grant allowed me to research the strengths of an extremely impoverished community with an estimated 40% HIV prevalence rate. The findings of the assessment were used to plan and implement HIV prevention programs at a local community resource center, Butterfly House, which serves 400 orphans and vulnerable children.

I conducted hundreds of interviews with people living around Butterfly House and quickly realized their strength. While interviewing a woman in her shack, I learned of her community activism efforts. She had mobilized over five hundred women to sign petitions to shut down a local pub that had been serving underage youth. A man shared his interest in nutrition and his endeavor to build a community garden. Others spoke of their participation in neighborhood watches. The list continued to grow and I left each interview knowing that each of us had shared a moment of mutual understanding of the world.

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U.S. Fulbright

Chica in Costa Rica

August 3, 2015

Taylor Bernard, 2012-2013, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Costa Rica (center), with her host niece and nephew, Maria Fernanda and Esteban

My experience as a Fulbright English Language Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Costa Rica was nothing short of amazing. Upon my arrival in February of 2012, I knew instantly that the next 10 months would change my life forever. I served as an ETA at La Universidad Nacional in the rural city of Heredia. I assisted in over five different classes on subjects such as grammar, creative writing, and North American culture. A huge part of my job was assisting in student development in actually learning the English language. I participated in study groups, oral discussions/presentations, and even practiced with students through song! During my stay in Heredia, I also took advantage of staying with a Costa Rican family as an exchange student. It was an awesome experience as I was able to interact with natives of my host country and completely immerse myself in Costa Rican culture. My host mother was unbelievably welcoming and leaving her after my stay was one of the hardest things I have ever done. The 10 months spent in one of the most traveled countries in Central America were some of the most amazing months I have ever experienced.

Outside of assistant teaching, I was able to lead many class discussions and give presentations on several topics related to both North American culture and also different topics of choice. With a research interest in Afro-Hispanic culture and identity, I took the liberty of introducing the topic of “racism in Latin America”. With the help of the great Afro-Hispanic author Quince Duncan, Costa Rica’s first Afro-Caribbean writer in the Spanish language, I was able to successfully give a presentation on the topic (for the first time ever) at the university and open an intense discussion regarding racism in Central America. I was able to discuss the correlation between racism in Latin America and the institutionalized racism that exists even today in the United States. For me, presenting on this particular topic was the most memorable and influential experience as it allowed for the discussion of a topic otherwise considered “taboo” in Latin America. Seeing the emotion in my students’ eyes and reading their reflections on the topic was more gratifying than anything.

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U.S. Fulbright

From Bean to Cup: A Year in a Global Coffee Capital

July 30, 2015

Senay Kahsay, 2013-2014, Ethiopia (left) and friends enjoying a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony alongside Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile River in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

During the 2013-2014 academic year, I was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student grant to Ethiopia to study the coffee supply chain.

Growing up in two different cities with strong coffee cultures inspired my appreciation for coffee from a young age. As a child in Addis Ababa, I experienced the rich communal process of the Ethiopian coffee tradition. Later, when my family and I moved to Seattle, I observed the meticulous and creative craft of preparing and marketing specialty coffee. This inspired my desire to develop a better understanding of how my favorite drink travels from farm to cup. As a Fulbright Student in Ethiopia, I studied the country’s coffee supply chain. From my base in the capital, I made trips throughout Ethiopia’s coffee-growing regions to develop my understanding of the industry by surveying farmers, processors, cooperatives, traders and exporters. Through these surveys, I outlined the industry’s demand forecast and communication methods and identified opportunities for improvement. I performed these surveys with the help of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX)—a recently established marketplace that has revolutionized Ethiopian agricultural commodity markets by providing farmers with price transparency and other market information. My project provided the ECX with better visibility of the coffee supply chain.

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