In the Beginning

My adventure, like all others, starts with a back-story. This one happens to take the form of a summer study abroad info session during the fall of my freshman year. After having lived in Ghana for six months, spending a lot of time following the development of the continent, and even writing my Georgetown application essay on the side effects of the African ‘brain drain’, I found myself sitting in a room full students interested in going to… Ecuador.

Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service makes the top of the list for international studies every year. It is a wonderful school, and I cannot imagine myself studying anywhere else. One factor that sets the school apart from many others is its proficiency requirement- all students must be proficient in a language by the time they graduate. Although already well familiar with my love/hate relationship with languages, I accepted the Georgetown entrance letter and became determined to take Spanish as a bull takes the red bandera.

Unfortunately, the bull often misses the flag. That fall, I was barely holding onto a B- in my 102 Spanish class. That’s right, after three years of grammar school Spanish, four years of high school Spanish, many family vacations south of the border and having a father who is fluent, my SAT II scores placed me in the second semester of the beginner level of the language, and I wasn’t even doing well.

Fearing what five more semesters of said topic would do to my mental health, not to mention my GPA, I desperately looked for a solution. That solution came in the form of professor Veronica Salles-Reese and her study abroad info session.

“While in Ecuador, you will not speak a single word of English. Your teachers will be watching you, your host families will be watching you, the entire country will be watching you. I have ears everywhere.”

Direct emersion. Six weeks of studying Spanish, speaking Spanish, listening to Spanish, dancing to Spanish… That is what I needed. Obviously I wasn’t learning in the classroom- seven years of that later and I could barely tell you about the weather. Direct emersion seemed the only way.

“For those in the School of Foreign Service, you will take the proficiency exam at the end of your stay. No matter what level you start at, you will be fluent by the end. No one has failed before.”
Sold. I could earn nine credits, live in a foreign country, and was almost guaranteed to never having to take Spanish again. It was as if I had been given a ladder to climb over the biggest obstacle that stood between me and graduation. My GPA was given a crutch, and most importantly I could spend the next three years focusing on my true love- Africa.

“Now, if you’re having trouble convincing your parents to pay for this program,” Veronika continued, “propose it to them like this: it is cheaper to take nine summer credits abroad than it is to take nine summer credits at Georgetown. And if you take a few classes the following summer, whether at Georgetown or abroad, you could even graduate a semester early- and save your family boat loads of money.”

Wait. Hold it. It could be financially responsible to spend not one, but two summers, in another country? Not only that, but I could take a semester off, take a break from school, and still graduate on time! Graduating early was definitely out of the question (second semester senior year, wouldn’t miss it for the world), but I could take a semester off, work abroad, get a better idea of what I want to do with life. Brilliant, flawless plan.

So that is how an info session on a summer in Ecuador led to a six-month adventure in East Africa. Six weeks with Georgetown’s summer program in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; a week climbing Mount Kilimanjaro; a week volunteering in Arusha; fifteen weeks interning with the Children of Kibera Foundation; a final week back on the coast: in short: the adventure of a life time.