Visiting developed places can educate a student, but visiting developing countries educates the spirit. This past December, Texas A&M International University freshmen enjoyed the holidays at temperatures up to 90F while learning and vacationing in Ghana, Africa.
Fifteen freshmen, along with two chaperons, were selected through the “Reading the Globe” Freshman Experience initiative to participate in a journey through the African continent on Dec. 27, 2009.
For two weeks, students worked together examining Ghana’s history and cultural characteristics. The group visited the capital Accra, as well as Kumasi, and Cape Coast, and within the cities, took tours of museums and land marks.
They enjoyed the beautiful coast surf of the Gulf of Guinea and the stillness of its southern plains. Also, the students sat through lectures detailing the customs, traditions, and history of Ghana and Sierra Leone.
“I was impressed by the pride the people of Ghana take in their country” Sandra Pruneda observed.
The group’s visit to the Cape Coast Castles made a great impact on the students. Ghana is a country full of slavery archives and offered students a brief on their own country’s historic background.
The castles, Julio Obscura explains, “Were the last place slaves would see before going across the Atlantic.”
The traveling group also visited an orphanage which enlightened their vision of the world. Pruneda said the group wants to start a fundraising effort for the Ghana orphans.
“I have new awareness of issues happening around the world, no longer am I limited to caring about what happens in the United States only,” Pruneda said.
Pruneda was not alone in that experience.
“It made us appreciate what we have back home,” Obscura said. “This trip was a beautiful experience, life changing and it opened my mind in many different ways, it also taught me life lessons that will make me a better person.”
The college experience is one of the last stops before reaching adult maturity. Experiencing one single culture will help students deal with situations in the immediate environment, but learning about other cultures can give them the tools to handle so much more.
“You never know when once in -a-lifetime opportunities will come around and change the way you view the world,” Pruneda said.
TAMIU, along with the University Seminar courses, have sponsored remarkable personages and his or her experiences from which traveling opportunities have flourished for already two years.
In the year 2008-2009, TAMIU introduced the “Reading the Globe” TAMIU Freshman Experience initiative with Gerda Weissmann Klein and her holocaustic story recalled in “All but my life.” This year, the experience shifted towards completely different coordinates.
TAMIU chose Ishamel Beah and his biographic book “A long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier” for the 2009-2010 school year, from which the Ghana trip was made possible.
It is programs of this kind that allow TAMIU to evolve towards great recognition.
“I believe that TAMIU really lives up to its name as an international university with this program,” Carolina Gonzalez said.
Opportunities of this kind offer students an early motivation to launch their college journey as energized as possible. Pruneda felt like a winner by being allowed to take the trip.
“I never thought I would win, but I figured I had nothing to lose,” Pruneda said.
Being able to experience and understand the world as a result of hard work conditions students to keep working harder knowing it will be rewarding.
As these kinds of opportunities add up with the years, TAMIU students will be better educated in the academic theories as they will be in their applications in the real world.