Hello from DC!
1 week down. 33 new friends. Filled with extremely packed days!
What a crazy, long week and a half already! I arrived to DC last Thursday with my mom to a room full of unfamiliar faces, my future travel buddies. After a quick family orientation, I said bye to my mom for the next four months and joined the other 33 members of my group in the William Penn hostel in Eastern Market, our home for the 2 weeks in DC. Right away, we all began to feel comfortable with one another and as a group set the standards for our group dynamic as we travel, grow, and learn together for the next few months. It almost reminds me of camp how quickly everyone is bonding when we all spend such intense time together!
A little about the group and program. My IHP Health and Community program is comprised of 34 students, 29 females and 5 males, and we happen to be the most diverse group ever! The group is filled with students mostly from schools in the Northeast and of every religion, race, and ethnic background. I already can tell that I am surrounded by an awesome group of people and will learn so much from each and every member of the group.
Through the semester, I will be taking 4 courses, taught by 2 traveling professors. The classes are: Health, Culture, and Community, Research Methods, Globalization and Health, and Public Health: From Biology to Policy. They all seem extremely interesting, and both of the professors, Sara and Shanti, have fascinating backgrounds. Because I wont have a computer, I will have to write all of my assignments by hand (cool and weird at the same time)!
For the first three days of the program, we had a very intense orientation, filled with discussions surrounding preparation for abroad, getting to know one another, and setting the rules and expectations of the group.
Each day begins around 8:30 and ends after dinner, and is filled with a mix of classes, guest lecturers, and site visits.
We officially began the IHP program this past Monday with MLK Day. Our group divided up to volunteer around DC as part of the MLK day of service. I volunteered at the DC public library dusting shelves, so fun! Other highlights of the week include: hearing from Ruth Levine, a global health figure from the Center for Global Development on Tues 1/19, meeting with the N St. Village and Africa Fighting Malaria NGO on Weds 1/20, hearing from Stan Dorn at the Urban Institute talking to us about the US Health Care reform on Thurs 1/21, hearing from guest lecturer, Robert Hecht who gave us a Global Health 101 (great speaker!), having a Q&A during dinner with volunteers from Metro TeenAIDS organization, doing neighborhood visits, and having a Q&A with Joni Podschun from So Others May Eat.
It has been such a great opportunity to hear from all of our guest lecturers. I especially loved our visit to the N St. Village NGO that provides housing for low income middle aged women of DC - we got to join them for an aerobics class! (I may try to teach a dance class for them next year when I'm back). I also greatly enjoyed hearing form the Metro TeenAIDS volunteers who do outreach work to youth of DC to inform them about how to stay safe and avoid getting HIV - also another organization I may want to get involved in.
We had a free weekend this weekend - so nice to relax and see Ariel and all of my friends at school! Everything is really intense, but I am loving the program and people already, and can't wait for all of the adventures I have ahead of me. Time is already flying by and by Wednesday at 5:30 pm I will be on a plane to South Africa!
Happy Reading,
Jess
(email me to keep in touch - jbscheer@gmail.com)
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