By: Kathleen Givan, SEAS ’21 Guatemala Health Initiative – Santiago Atitlán Six tips for a beautiful summer in Guatemala: Bring peanut butter Bring enough peanut butter for lunches the first month–but no more. You’ll discover quickly a tough gap between breakfast and dinner…where are you supposed to get your food?? For the first month, a…
By: Alexander Basescu, University of Edinburgh To be a foreign exchange student in the country you grew up almost feels more foreign than to be an international student in a foreign country. At seventeen, the decision to move to Scotland and live the Lizzie McGuire fantasy at a prestigious university, contradicting all expectations I had…
By: Xiong Her, GSE ’20 Visiting an elephant sanctuary in Thailand UNESCO – Bangkok, Thailand There are so many amazing moments as I reflect on my experiences, professionally, socially, and culturally, while living and interning with UNESCO in Bangkok, Thailand. For instance, on July 11 and 12, I assisted my team, Non-Formal Education and Literacy, on…
By: Ria Jain, Wharton ’22 Leap Skills Academy Pvt. Ltd – New Delhi, India Growing up, I learned to say “thank you,” and to say it a lot. I say it when a stranger holds the door for me, when a classmate says “bless you,” when a friend asks me how I’m doing, and when…
By: Fatima Al Rashed, CAS ’22 Fatima (right) enjoying a meal with fellow interns and colleagues Power Up Gambia Hospital – Bwiam, Gambia The Gambia is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever visited in my life. It is a place that I now call home. Everything is beautiful about The Gambia, but…
By: Stephanie Diaz, CAS ’20 Stephanie (right) with fellow GRIP interns Xavier Lee (left) and Rachel Chu (center) at the Penn Wharton China Center Cadence Translate – Beijing, China When I applied to intern at Cadence Translate, I was primarily interested in the unique role that the company plays in the translation and language services…
By: Heta Patel, CAS ’21 Guatemala Health Initiative – Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala At the wee hour of 5 am, my body jolted to the sound of my alarm going off. Although waking up early wasn’t unusual, (I’ve had to take the 6 am lancha or boat to go to work) today was no ordinary day. We were…
By: Selene Li, CAS ’22 Selene posing in a traditional Japanese yukata University of Tokyo – Japan Before coming to Japan for my research internship, I did not have that much interest in wet lab research. The idea of pipetting solutions with complicated names and helping a postdoc do the work that they did not…
By: Linda Wang, CAS ’22 Lien Centre for Social Innovation – Singapore As an international student, I’ve always known that there is a small chance I won’t be able to get a permanent work visa or a green card, meaning I’ll have to work and live somewhere outside of the U.S. after graduation. I’ve kept…
By: Anjalee Bhuyan, CAS ’22 Anjalee (third from left) shares a meal between conducting surveys in The Gambia Gambia Goat Dairy – Banjul, Gambia Conducting a baseline nutrition survey in the village community Sanyang, The Gambia was the goal of my two-month internship, so seeing the culmination of my efforts over the course of the summer…