Please describe any travel or experiences that have prepared you for the Global Engineering RAP. This can include international travel and study abroad or any travel or experiences within the US that have showed you new perspectives, cultures or languages. If you have not had the chance yet to travel, please share where you would like to travel and why. When I was a junior in high school, I elected to go to a semester school that would travel to Chile. We lived there for a month and a half in small refugios with triple bunk beds and quinchos nearby for cooking and classes. A Chilean family was living on campus with us who would help take out trash, and cook us dinners. We often would visit their local shop in a town nearby where they sold us empñadas, dulces, and sodas, and we would try to speak with them and other shop owners in Spanish. We would ask them about their lives where they grew up, what they do for fun, and about their families not only to practice our conversational Spanish but to genuinely learn about the lives of people in another country with different cultures and perspectives than our own. On weekends we traveled an hour to Coyhaique where we went grocery shopping, bought ponchos made from guanaco wool, purchased empañadas from the fire station, and listened to an artist tell us about her son and husband and see it reflected in her work. Guanacos are only found in Chile, while the fire station sold empeãdas to make money for their employees, and the artist’s family lived near the río Baker where we had just spent a week paddling down. We took a two-week expedition into the backcountry of Patagonia where we would often camp on gaucho’s land. We paid them both with money and conversation. There was one man by the name of Enrique who owned his own waterfall along with cows, horses, puppies, and chickens. He told us that he inherited this land from his father and has been living there his whole life, and gave us advice on our journey ahead. On one of the last nights of school, Segundo Segundo, our main bus driver, and his family came to campus and we had a large asada with them and the parents of our two Chilean students. We didn’t use utensils, ate large quantities of sopapilla, and of course had the lamb they had been cooking all day. Some of my vegetarian friends even ate the meat and it truly made me understand the value of that experience and the sharing of their culture. Throughout my time in Chile, I also learned about an herbal drink called maté. I still drink it to this day, pulling it out in school and at work and passing it around, sharing as it is meant to be. This past winter I worked in Aspen where many of my coworkers were from Argentina. One of the first ways I connected with them was over maté shared during pre-shifts and slow hours of the day. From this small act of sharing cultures, I was able to begin to make some amazing friends that I hope to see again soon.

This past fall I spent 6 weeks in Japan, traveling to all the major cities, and eventually to the north island where I worked for 3 weeks. Through this experience, Japan has become one of my favorite places in the world. As a tourist, I saw the orderliness of their society, from which side of the streets to walk on, to the modesty in clothing, to bowing as both greeting and gratitude. I truly admire the respect each person showed to one another through these simple actions. As someone who began to live there, I learned about the true generosity and kindness of each person. I learned about hard work and determination as I watched a few 80-year-olds work on a farm all day and then push beers my way that same night around the dinner table. One of my roommates was Japanese and was learning English, so each night we would sit on chairs with no legs and trade words back and forth so I could learn Japanese and he could learn English. We also would watch TV shows together either in Japanese with English subtitles like the Japanese comedy “Last One Standing”, or vice versa like the live-action “One Piece”. We also shared a lot of culture through food. I taught some people how to make chocolate chip cookies, while in turn, I learned how to make takoyaki.

I have also just arrived back home from backpacking for a month in New Zealand. While I wasn’t around many people for the majority of my trip I was able to learn a lot about Maori culture and learned to appreciate the way they perceive and live life. The day before we left for the backcountry, two Maori people came to teach us about the balance of war and peace. They gave us wooden staffs and taught us how to strike them, but they also passed around flutes and other instruments carved from wood and animal bones and showed us the beauty and tranquility of music. My favorite part, however, was learning about their connection to nature. We introduced ourselves with our names as well as which mountain and which body of water we felt most connected to. This is how the Maori seek to understand others, by understanding the nature each individual is connected to. We learned how the tops of mountains are sacred because each mountain is the head of a god, and to stand on top of a mountain is to stand on top of a god. This insight was such interesting food for thought as we began our 28-day trek in the mountains. Additionally, my two leaders were Australian, and while I didn’t learn much about their culture, I picked up many phrases that they spoke such as “primo” and “far out”. They became a part of my vocabulary, so now I have brought them back home, connecting me to these people from the other side of the world.