When I was little, I had penpals from all over the world. I started when I was in fourth grade, with a Frisch’s kids magazine that invited you to send in your address and interests. From there, I made many stateside penpals who introduced me to something called a Friendship Book.
Friendship Books (or FBs for short) are little booklets where people write in their addresses and interests and pass it on to their penpals, who do the same. If you receive one and find out that someone in England likes the same band as you do, you can write to that person. When the booklet becomes filled, it’s sent back to the person who started it, unless it was started for someone else.
At one point in time I had over 200 penpals. Some only sent a few letters, but others I have kept in touch with over the years. One of my most cherished penpals and friends is a girl named Litsa, who lives in Athens, Greece. Strangely, she was also the first person that I ever e-mailed. A horrible earthquake struck Athens and I was so worried about her well-being that I asked the Computer Science teacher if I could use her account to e-mail Litsa.
We would send each other envelopes and boxes full of goodies. My mom once baked Christmas cookies and we mailed them to her in a tin. Though they were crumbled when they got to Greece, Litsa and her family still enjoyed them.
Like most of my international penpals, Litsa was always worried about her English. She had better English than some of my classmates, and I later found out that her older sister was helping her write letters to me, which is why she didn’t write about things like boyfriends. (Ah, childhood.)
Even though I have had more interaction with people my age that live in foreign countries, I have yet to actually leave the US. My family doesn’t travel and we didn’t and don’t have enough money to live the US if we wanted to. Penpalling was a way for me to see the world outside of my small, cornfield town.
With the internet comes an interesting paradox for people like me. I once watched a live webcam of the main street of the town where my friend Paul lived. I can bring up photographs taken by travelers, read first-hand accounts…
To my parents, who would have never imagined the ability to do such a thing so easily, this is enough. It’s enough for them knowing that the internet connects places and people all over the world.
My generation grew up knowing that we could e-mail someone in another country, see live broadcasts from another country, and play a computer game with someone sitting over 2,000 miles away.
For us, it’s not enough. We desire more, to see it for ourselves. To take touristy pictures in front of landmarks to be able to say, we were here. This is our world. We are a part of it.
There is not a better opportunity for me to be part of the world than to study abroad.
For one, I could get grants and scholarships to help me with the financial aspect. I don’t have enough money to travel. That’s one thing that I’m really worried about, but I know that if I don’t take this opportunity now, it may never come again.
There is also the comfort that goes with the whole atmosphere of studying at another university with kids your own age, and sometimes even traveling with kids from your own university.
So what’s the problem?
I don’t know where to go.
I would love to visit all of my penpals, Litsa especially. But other countries beckon me in a more academic sense, Ireland in particular. I was planning on traveling to Ireland last summer and it never got off the ground.
I happened to be waiting outside of a classroom this fall semester and a study abroad poster caught my eye. Normally they do, but usually after I read them, I decide that the program isn’t right for me or simply doesn’t interest me.
But this one was different.
India.
(http://www.cas.muohio.edu/tibet/)
I’ve had my heart set on this trip from the moment I laid eyes on that poster. I e-mailed one of the professors in charge, asking if they would accept a Creative Writing major on a “pre-med” program, and they said they would love to have me.
All I have to do is apply, pay the $250 deposit, and sit back and wait.
I haven’t told my parents. They would laugh at me and dismiss my dreams. They would be entirely negative and I’m sure my mom would start talking about how impoverished the Indians are and you wouldn’t want to go there, you could get malaria or something.
I see things differently.
The program, while designated for those that are “pre-med”, is right up my alley. You take Tibetan philosophy courses and guided meditation classes. Even this sounds fun: “to learn about Tibetan medicine, mind-body healing, and the role of deep meditative states on health and illness as a contrasting model to the western biomedical scientific model.”
You live and interact with monks. I don’t think you could find a safer place.
Plus, it’s India. Most English majors travel to places like Ireland and England, but going to India is a unique opportunity and widens my background. I studied Buddhism in the 8th grade, and so actually going to where it is practiced would be amazing.
Everything involved with this India study abroad program seems almost TOO perfect; I am so worried everything is going to fall through, starting with me not getting accepted.
I guess for now all I can do is wait until the information sessions, which should be coming up in January.
Studying abroad, traveling abroad, means more to me than I feel it does to a lot of people. Those to whom it means a similar amount are the ones who have been blessed with enough money to do so at a young age, or parents who are travel-savvy.
I think I’m going to go make a prayer flag about this goal right now.
