Two weeks after finding out I was headed to Paris for my internship, I land in the Orly airport – frantic, frustrated, and with only $300 to my name. During this whole internship process, I couldn’t help but to continuously feel like nothing was going to work out; I was watching my peers land internships all around me, watching their excitement grow at the same … Continue reading Mixed Feelings and Lots of Macaroons
Generosity: this word pretty much sums up my first day in Peru. 15 hours after bidding farewell to Philadelphia on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, I walked out of the Lima airport into the thick fog that fills the streets on winter mornings. I was greeted by Einsten (yes, Einsten, not Einstein), a friend of my Airbnb host who operates a taxi service part-time. As we … Continue reading A Warm Welcome to Peru
The matchmaking is over. After hundreds of emails, interviews, and general running around, the IEDP internships are about to begin! The 2017-18 cohort will be all over the map – from right here in the USA, down to Peru, over onto the African continent (Senegal, South Africa, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia), through the Middle East (Jordan and Lebanon), and into Asia (India, Cambodia, China and … Continue reading Ready, set, go!
Summaries appear in several ways, though they always depend on the situation. For this internship, they can be formal, shaped into final reports and reflections both written and spoken that are shared with supervisors and professors. As I’ve found with family members, the summary is often confined to a few sentences that use far too many blanket statements. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll have an … Continue reading Internship reflections
Well, the final week is over, and I have two days to go before I leave Cambodia. Cue the sentimental music? Well… Though I am saddened to be ending my contract with AAC and saying goodbye to my wonderful coworkers, I don’t necessarily want to dedicate this post to a review of my internship. I simply wanted to further enlighten my readers (all 17 of … Continue reading Work.2
You know the game. Name a movie and within six degrees of connection, in some way it ends with Kevin Bacon. Perhaps the game requires some updating for today’s context, but the principle remains the same, that the world grows smaller every day. I’ve found the Six Degrees principle can even be applied to international development. There are many things that you can learn as … Continue reading Six degrees
From my office desk, I can see cars and motorbikes jamming along Preah Monivong Boulevard and the ephemeral downpours soaking the street as I read through Cambodia’s Education Sector Plan for 2014-2018. I’ve grown increasingly familiar with that document: most of my work revolves around analysing policy and the constraints the country’s education system has in implementing it. As I mentioned in my last post, … Continue reading Work
This past week has been an emotional one, seemingly throwing all of the feelings that one can experience within the span of six days. Writing about it feels like pulling teeth. I go back and forth between wanting to talk about it and not, knowing that sometimes people don’t want to be burdened by the weight of these conversations, especially when happiness and good events … Continue reading Impact
Expat (ˈeks-ˌpat). Noun. An expatriate person, or someone who has withdrawn (him/herself) from residence in or allegiance to his/her native country. In GK’s migration class this summer, one of our assignments was to write up and present our personal or familial migration story, and this word turned out to be a tricky thorn in my side when writing up my narrative. See, in some ways, … Continue reading Interrogations
I mentioned in another post that the first of possibly several field visits was to happen in the third week of my internship. Now that I’m on my fourth week, it’s already taken place; it seems that this is as good time as any to talk about it! AAC is part of a larger federation of country offices whose work is to collaborate with local … Continue reading Oddar Meanchey
The International Educational Development Program 