Working on Capitol Hill is everything I expected; it's interesting, exciting and fun! Though this is an internship, my responsibilities are serious, relevant and important. Kiersten, the other intern, and I are in charge of organizing and distributing faxes (which are actually scanned and emailed to us), giving Capitol tours, sorting mail, answering the phone and writing response letters to constituents. It's intense work and we're almost always busy. We started work on Monday, July 7 and gave our first solo tours on Thursday afternoon. Tours are nearly 2 hours long. We go through the [View Full Entry]

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Teaching English When Leshia, Patrick and I signed up for this trip, we were told we would be working with agriculture and public health. So all the preparations we made this past semester were relating to those projects. Upon arrival in Z, we discovered that somewhere, somehow there had been a large misunderstanding and our ONLY project would be teaching English. This was not easy for me to accept. I had big plans to set up experiments with hydroponics systems, grow medicinal plants and learn about fruit and vegetable production. My suitcase was full of old, faded jeans and t-shirts, beca [View Full Entry]

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Thursday, May 31st, was the worst culture shock I have ever experienced in my entire life. We got to Z and pulled up to the Community Foundation, which has become our home base. There, we met our host families, met a ton of people that we of course didn’t remember five minutes after meeting, talked to the people in charge of us and then left with our host families. It was incredibly overwhelming. We were not at all prepared for what awaited us at our home stays, or in Z, really. First of all, the scenery is lovely. Z is perched [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Mexico City, and without even leaving the airport, we boarded a bus bound for Puebla. The trip took about 2.5 hours, an hour of which was just getting out of Mexico City! Wow. I can now say I’ve been in the largest city in the world. What a mess of people and cars and trash and culture. Wow. When we arrived in Publa we took a taxi from the bus station to UPAEP, or rather, La Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Puebla. How is that for a mouth full? We met with the director of international programs, and [View Full Entry]

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Upon returning home from Spain, I was desperate to find a way to leave the country again. That way came in the form of K-State International Community Service teams! The K-State Community Service Program sends students around the world each summer. The sites change occasionally, as do the projects at each site. This summer, students are going to Botswana, Africa; Brazil, South America, and Mexico. There are 6 students each in Botswana and Brazil, and 6 students in Mexico, but at two different sites. Myself, my friend Leshia (with whom I went to Spain) and Patrick (an 06 K-State grad, Americorp [View Full Entry]

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I left Spain Thursday, May 17, 2006. I left my hostel early and got the Madrid airport at 7:30, my plane left at 11:25ish. I couldn't check in until 8:30ish, so I got my luggage out of storage, where I'd left it the day before and did a quick re-packing job to transfer things I'd want for the flight to my backpack. The airline baggage weight limit and scales were in kilograms and I couldn't really remember the conversions from Kilograms to Pounds, so I had no idea what my bags weighed, but they felt pretty light. Each one had to [View Full Entry]

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After leaving the airport I got back on the metro to go to the train station to catch a train to Segovia. I'm not sure why I decided to do this, mom and I had some communication difficulties when she changed my flight and I wasn't able to fly out the same day as Leshia and Megan, but I also didn't want to have to ride to Madrid myself. I hate goodbyes and thought it would just be easier to get them over and done with. I took a commuter train, which took nearly 2 hours, but it was ok. Of [View Full Entry]

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Now that I'm home, so much of the past semester seems like a bizarre blur. The semester came to a blinding, crashing end, one I definitely wasn't prepared for. Just like you can never really be ready to leave your friends and loved ones, I'm not sure I'd ever "be ready" to leave Sevilla. Unfortunately, I didn't have a choice. The last three weeks of the semester I spent soaking up as much Spain as I could. In between studying for finals, packing, last-minute shopping and goodbyes, my friends and I managed to have some adventures. Here is a quick summary... [View Full Entry]

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To take advantage of our second spring break, a week off of class for La Feria de Abril, my friends and I made plans to go to Italy. It was amazing, of course, but also one of the most difficult weeks of our lives! We were just hit with so many unexpected challenges, making the trip not exactly less enjoyable, but just...challenging. I went to Italy with my 6 "best Spain friends." I'll introduce them briefly. Leshia: Is a K-State student! She and I met in Leadership Class our very first semester. We were acquaintances, but not really friends. We didn't [View Full Entry]

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I really wanted to go to Barcelona this semester, and it just hadn't happened. Some of my friends went while I was in Ireland and it was hard to find another weekend that worked, since Barcelona is so far from Sevilla. So when I learned that most flights to Rome went through Barcelona, I arranged my flights to allow for, yep, about a 30 hour layover there. I arrived Friday night from Rome, and was really worried I was going to miss the last bus, since, of course, the Barcelona Airport is also way outside the city (are you seeing a [View Full Entry]

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