Student Experiences

 

Both previous times this course has been offered, a student submission won Linfield College's study abroad essay contest.  In 2013, Beth Turner and Joey Paysinger shared first place honors.  You can find excerpts from their essays below, along with some memories shared by others who have experienced the course.  Complete essays can be read here. 

 

Of all the cities I have visited in Southeast Asia, the most interesting are the ones that put the least effort into making me feel at home. Though I like comfortable, spacious accommodations and broad boulevards, I can get that where I am from. I cannot get winding, ancient streets filled with unfamiliar local delicacies...I cannot get lost where I have cellphone coverage. Take me to a place where no one speaks my language, and I will remember it; take me to a place with swept sidewalks, and I will forget it. For someone seeking the unknown, that is the charm of Hanoi and the failing of Bangkok.

-- Joey Paysinger

 

It’s a happy coincidence that we’re in Phnom Penh during the start of the week-long holiday leading up to King Sihanouk’s cremation. It turns out that Sihanouk had passed away last October, but since it’s Cambodian tradition for the king’s corpse to lie in state for a hundred days before cremation...“I don’t care that he’s dead...He is nothing to me,” Veasna said, and I could hear bitterness and hurt in his voice. Veasna never got to know his father because he was murdered the Khmer Rouge, as were other members of Veasna’s family. His apathy towards Sihanouk’s funeral makes sense, then – how could he even pretend to mourn the man who first led the group responsible for taking his father out of his life? --Beth Turner

 

I was initially worried about taking on an extra loan, but choosing to take this course in SE Asia was one of the more important decisions I made in college...One aspect that continues to resonate with me today is the access you have to such diverse people with such drastically different perspectives. Here’s a picture: we had a meeting with a former general of the North Vietnamese Army in Saigon, a devout communist who talked about all the great things the North has done for the South and how much better their country is for it. Since he didn’t speak any English, we had a translator.  This translator was a man who escaped South Vietnam in a boat as a child, was raised by a family in Germany, and had returned to Vietnam to run his own tour company.  Access to a free, democratic society had given him the life he never would have had living under communist rule and you could watch as he listened to the general just how fundamentally he disagreed with everything he was translating.

--Collin Morris

 

When I asked if he ever met Ho Chi Minh, his eyes lit up and he became noticeably annimated as he described the two times he met Vietnam's revolutionary leader. 

-- Will McHenry

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--Everything from the kind-hearted people, the salty-spicy-sweet-bitter-fresh food that lines the streets, the lush tropical climate, the terrifying hordes of disorganized traffic that never stop honking- it drew me in, and still hasn't let go of me.  If I hadn't have taken the leap to go somewhere completely foreign and novel to me I would've missed out on what now will hopefully be the focus of my career. Now I will be pursuing a masters in international relations with an emphasis on Asia/ Southeast Asia.

--Leanne McCallum

 

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