When senior graphic design major Rebekah Rose handed in her one-semester application to the University of Ulster in Ireland through the International Student Exchange Program, she was excited.

“I’ve never left the country before,” Rose said. “I wanted to really get some more multi-cultural experiences for my career purposes. I mean I don’t only plan on going to Ireland, I hope to go to other countries as well, just for more experience and knowledge.”

The study abroad fair, held yesterday by the Office of International Education, provided all ESU students with at least two semesters of university-level work opportunities to participate in programs from more than 200 universities of 57 countries.

“(Study Abroad has) lots and lots of benefits,” said Michelle Cunningham, graduate student in clinical psychology and Study Abroad student advisor. “It makes you more marketable to employers for one, makes you more marketable to universities if you plan on higher education, and I think the biggest value in studying abroad is the personal growth you experience.”

The programs vary from two weeks during summer break to two semesters during the school year.

ISEP allows Rose to pay tuition, room and board to Emporia State and then travel to Ireland and attend the university. She will also need to pay some application fees and the travel cost.

“It’s not much more than attending ESU for a semester, and it’s actually cheaper than going to someplace like KU for a semester,” Cunningham said.

Various scholarships like the Fulbright, the Critical Language Scholarship and ESU travel grants are available to all eligible applicants. Travel grant applicants need at least a 2.5 GPA and two recommendation letters, Cunningham said.

“I had a good time, it was really nice to be a part of the English Village program,” said Naomi Gonzalez, senior communication major who went to the English Village Program & Summer Study Abroad last year in South Korea. “It opens up your mind to different cultures and it teaches you how to interact with different people, like European and Australian students.”

But Gonzalez also gave some advice to future students who want to join in the program.

“I talked to teachers before I left and made sure they would transfer (my credit hours) back,” Gonzalez said. “If you don’t do your research you will probably have a lot of difficulties when you come back and you have to transfer your credits. Make connections with your professor.”

For more information about these programs, contact the Office of International Education at oie1@emporia.edu.

Tianhai Jiang

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Eric Hemphill

Last semester I participated in a study abroad program in Nijmegen, Netherlands. I blogged about my time there for The Bulletin’s Web site. But I feel like there were not enough people who received the message I was trying to send to all ESU students—study abroad!

In the spring semester of 2009, I was enrolled in a class which was required for all students planning a study abroad. In total, the class had nine participants. This, to me, is a shame. I can tell you flat out, deciding to study abroad through an ESU exchange program was the greatest decision I have ever made

I know that money is the main argument against studying abroad. But with exchange programs such as ISEP (International Student Exchange Programs), or AIFS (American Institute for Foreign Study) available through ESU, studying abroad become more affordable. For the same rate as one is currently paying to go to Emporia State, one could study for a semester or year in any number of countries in Europe, Asia and South America.

Also, there are several scholarships available to students who wish to continue their education abroad. The Gilman scholarship, which is available to those who receive the federal Pell Grant, grants the recipient up to $5,000 to help with their study abroad expenses. In addition, a scholarship unique to ESU is the Provost Airfare scholarship. This covers some or all of the airfare expenses to and from the student’s destination. In my experience, airfare was the biggest expense I incurred during the entire process, which gives ESU students a distinct advantage in this regard.

One other large deterrent for those considering studying abroad is that there is the assumption that knowledge of a foreign language is a prerequisite. While this may be true in some cases, all of my classes were conducted in English, and an increasing amount of universities are using English in classrooms as English asserts itself further as a major language in academia. Many of the students I met were studying to further their fluency in English, which meant that other native English speakers and I were constantly asked questions about the English language. In fact, this got me interested in teaching English as a foreign language, which is a program offered at ESU.

Adversely, I would suggest studying abroad for the purpose of increasing one’s knowledge of another language. Knowing a foreign language is an incredible asset in nearly every profession in today’s world and can create a plethora of opportunities for a person after graduation. If one already knows another language, what better way is there of increasing this knowledge than to learn by submersion? Learning Spanish in Spain, Mexico or South America can help one learn a language far better than simply learning the language in a classroom. And guess what? ESU offers study abroad programs in all of those countries.

Studying abroad also gives you the opportunity to improve the world’s opinion of America. During my travels, I met Europeans who get their views of Americans from MTV or American movies. Though there may be Americans who prop these stereotypes up, I have met more U.S. citizens who break that stereotype than fit into it. By going to another country and meeting new people, we can help break stereotypes that have hurt how other countries view America for years. Likewise, any stereotypes we have of Europeans or South Americans can be broken by going to these places and meeting some of these people.

Achieving a global perspective, which is immensely important in understanding global politics, or a general knowledge of how the world works, is the number one way to combat the hunkering view that many from other countries have of Americans, and America in general. To better the world in any way, each individual in the global community has to understand the conditions and places in which others in the community live. Without that understanding, progress and compromise is impossible.

Perhaps the greatest reason to study abroad, and a reason that cannot be given a value, monetary or otherwise, is to better oneself. There is no greater way to increase one’s sense of self-confidence or individuality than to embark on a journey with no one but oneself to lean on. Having no parents or friends to fall back on may seem like an uncomfortable situation, but for me, it was what made my experience abroad the greatest experience of my life.

If you’re a fan of meeting new people, trying new things, achieving goals, or simply making memories that will last a lifetime, I urge you to go to the Office of International Education (located on the bottom floor of Memorial Union, next to the Post Office) or log onto their website at www.emporia.edu/oie, and ask about information for study abroad. I cannot promise you it will not take work to get yourself abroad, but I can promise you that once you get to your host country and the experience really starts, you won’t regret it. You can thank me later.

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It has been 11 days since my last post. The reason being not quite black and white, but not quite complex either. I have not posted in 11 days because for the last 11 days, the excitement and nostalgia has been slightly diminished by a combination of weather, school and general laziness.

Shortly after my last post, I realized that I had in fact been here two months, and that during that time not much studying had been done on my part. I countered this by catching up on my reading for the next few days, as well as preparing for several assignments that were to be due the next week (i.e. last week). All this studying was accompanied by weather that seemed to follow my mood. Rain, wind, cold, and more rain ravished Nijmegen for more than a week. This didn’t help my mood any, and made going to class even more grueling than before. The 20 minute bike ride to campus stretched into what seemed like hours, what with the wind perpetually against me… and rain, did I mention rain?

Anyway, these things made the weekend seem more of a recuperation period than a time to tire myself out with travel and sight-seeing. And thus, no travel and sight-seeing happened. So, after two weeks of work in my two months abroad, I was tired. And for some reason, not just tired, exhausted. This made no sense because at home I did this amount of work every week, yet, for some reason, I was truly exhausted.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t sit around my room all last week, but rather, I remained in Nijmegen, and, after some much needed study time, met with friends, drank a beer or coffee to warm ourselves from the cold, complained about the weather (especially the rain), talked about everything, and nothing in particular, and ultimately, relaxed. Perhaps some of the best times I have had here are days when all we did was relax. In this way, last week may have been the most successful week of my stay.

So, here I am. It has been a little over two months, which is still unthinkably hard to believe, and I still can not get over how amazing it is. I mean, I am still quite literally in awe…

I think in all languages you get to a certain point wherein words fail. Not just fail. They nose dive and crash and burn and leave no survivors behind. This point shows itself solely during truly emotional experiences – an unfathomable summit in time where every attempt to explain something comes out watered down or convoluted.

Regardless of how well you write, there are just some things that a person cannot convey with words. There is no substitute for the real thing. And, unfortunately, for a lot of the people reading this, everything I am trying to explain will just be gibberish. And for that, I am sorry. Because I really hoped I could put across how truly amazing all of this is. But unfortunately, no matter how many times I attempt to tell you everything I am feeling and seeing and doing, I will fail. Because of this, I simply cannot explain how surprisingly captivating it is to sit in a bar after biking 20 minutes in the cold, windy and rainy city, and talk with friends about everything, and nothing at all. I just can’t elucidate.

So, I hope that you have experienced this feeling in some way – the feeling that there are some things that just can’t be communicated. And I hope you cherish those times more than any other, and hold them close to you, until the very end. Because when that bright light is upon you, and your life flashes before you eyes, I guarantee, these will be the memories you see. Until then, take pride in the fact that the uncommon occurrences of the failure of words are just a sign that life is being lived to the fullest. So smile. I’ll be right there smiling with you. For reasons I cannot explain.

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The River Waal. Eric Hemphill/The Bulletin.

So I have been writing and re-writing this first entry for some time, and I cannot seem to produce something that I feel explains the emotions I am going through fully. I have been over and over it in my head, and I just don’t think our language, being imperfect as all forms of communication are, includes the words to describe some things. This being one of those cases, I will have to make due with what I am given in the way of the written word. Here are the facts:

Nine very long days ago, I boarded a plane with my friend Andrew Thomas. We flew twelve hours, including a layover in beautiful Newark, NJ, and landed in Amsterdam, Netherlands, at approximately 7 p.m. Central European Summer Time. This time zone is about seven hours ahead of Central Standard Time, meaning our bodies registered our arrival as being somewhere around midnight on Friday, Aug. 14.

It took sometime to get from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to the central train station in the heart of Amsterdam. Arriving there was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. The city is so full of energy, even at seven in the morning, that it more than made up for two exhausted yet wide-eyed Americans’ lack of proper beauty sleep.

According to the map on the Web site of the Amsterdam Renaissance Hotel, which Andy’s father graciously booked for us, the walk to the hotel from the train station was short and fairly straightforward.

However, for two college kids on their first trip to Europe, it seems things are seldom this easy. We walked through the streets and canals surrounding the train station for nearly 30 minutes before a striking realization dawned on us—we were lost in the biggest city either of us had ever been to, 30 minutes after arriving. We must have made a circle around the hotel five or six times before we finally started to panic and began to ask directions from anyone who didn’t look as though they would have “Shanghaied” us on the spot.

Eventually, with the help of an extremely nice tour guide, we found our hotel and settled in for a quick nap that turned into a kind of jet-lagged coma. We slept for about seven hours before getting up and wondering the city for a few glimpses in to the supposed soft drug capital of the world.

At around nine o’clock the next morning, after lying awake from around 4 a.m., we dressed and enjoyed the best breakfast either of us had ever had. We packed our 100 lbs or so of luggage each and set off back to the train station to catch the one-hour train ride across the county to our home for the next 5 months—Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Nijmegen. Eric Hemphill/The Bulletin.

The train ride was highly efficient and the scenery throughout gave us a nice indication of the landscape of the country. In a lot of ways, it resembled Kansas – rolling hills and farmlands mixed with the occasional town or village. A kind of inaudible melody erupts from the countryside and quaint European farming villages.

We arrived in Nijmegen at around two o’clock CEST (that’s 7 a.m. CST, for those of you keeping track), and were greeted by members of the International Student Network here at Radboud University Nijmegen. From there we were escorted to campus to stand in lines for two or three hours until we were finally given our keys and allowed to go to our rooms… I was, in a word, exhausted.

Over the next week, the number of emotions I felt were more than in any other point in my life. Fear, resentment, elation, homesickness, anticipation and curiosity are just a few. While these emotions swirled in my head, the rest of the International students and myself were carted all over the city that week and were shown all the aspects of Nijmegen and the Netherlands which were important to get a handle on in order to live in this city. A city tour, a pub crawl, a trip to Amsterdam and a beach in Zanvoort and a weekend trip to the farming community of Putten were all included in the festivities of the orientation week.

We were being taxied around so much that there was not much time to think about home, or much of anything for that matter, so the emotions subsided to the back of my mind while I took in the sites, and had what was quite literally the time of my life.

There were moments, however, in which the nostalgia of the situation truly hit me. I had actually done it. I was in another country, learning so much so fast that I was fairly certain my head would explode if any more was crammed into it. Different people with different cultures and different languages all came together and bonded under pressures of being in a new place, seemingly completely alone. These people formed instant friendships despite historical animosity towards one another, or the difficulties of language and social dissimilarity.

This, to me, was the biggest accomplishment this week—the fact that these people from all different backgrounds and cultures could all come together and create bonds that I hope will last for a very long time. Sure, it may have been just one big party, but it was the most celestial party I’ve even been to. I don’t know if there is a god, but if there is, I imagine this is how he meant for humans to act towards one another. Learning and teaching with people you have only known for a handful of hours. No bickering, no animosity, just uncommon people finding common ground in their similarities and differences. This was the start of what I sincerely hope will be the greatest time in my life.

-Eric Hemphill

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2009 First Annual Meeting Reception and Recognition

The First Annual Meeting Reception and Recognition to celebrate the visit of the Saudi Cultural Attaché and the graduation of the first Saudi graduate student from the King Abdullah Scholarship program will be held from 2-4 p.m. Tuesday in Webb Lecture Hall.

The meeting and reception is sponsored by the Saudi Club, the Office of International Education and Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission.

Custom Car Show

The 12th Annual Super Custom Car Show will be held May 3 at the Student Recreation Center. Proceeds from the show go to the Emporia State General Academic Scholarship Fund.

Registration begins at 11 a.m. and ends at 1 p.m. Costs to register are $22 for cars, trucks, low rider bikes, sound off stereo and miscellaneous. There will be $1,000 in donation prizes for participants to win.

Categories include Antique, Classic, Domestic – ’81 to ’95 Domestic, ’96 to ’09 – Street Rods, Hot Rods, Low Riders, Muscle Car, Sport Compact, Euro, Trucks, SUV, Under Construction and miscellaneous.

Trophies and cash prizes will also be awarded, including the ESU President Best of Show two-foot trophy with $100 cash prize.

Entertainment includes the National Anthem sung by Miss Kansas, Emily Deavers, a D.J., a Mexican dance group, Karate demonstration by Topeka Martial Arts instructor, Ronnie Moore, piñatas and break dancing by Arapnaphobia Records from Wichita.

In case of inclement weather, the show will be held at the Flint Hills Mall (1632 Industrial Rd). The show is free to the public. For more information, contact Gilbert Rodriguez at 620-340-0353. Emporia Brown Express Athletic Club and ESU H.A.L.O. are hosting the car show.

Study Abroad and International Student Reception

A reception to recognize honor international students and study abroad students will be held at 3:30 p.m. April 30 in the Kanza Room of the Memorial Union. The students will be honored in the following categories: International students who are graduating in May and August 2009; All students who have studied abroad from Summer 2008 through Spring 2009; International students on one semester or short term programs; International students and study abroad students who have received special awards; Intensive English Program awards.

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