Thank you Gilman!

This entry is dedicated to the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship program.

I wanted to say that I really am grateful that I was chosen as a recipient for the scholarship.
This help was really what made this trip possible because, as I've mentioned before, I come from a very underprivileged family. And this scholarship helped me pay for the program, and completely paid for the expensive (for my capabilities) airplane ticket round trip!

From my position you have no idea how much help this was! It took a lot of financial pressure off of me. It felt so much better not having to take out a loan for study abroad this way, I didn't incur more debt than I already do for regular school. The scholarship allowed me to feel like more is possible for me.

SEE this is how happy I am:

I really encourage everyone in need to apply for this scholarship, about 1 in 3 of the scholarship applicants get the scholarship! That's almost half!
I think any time working on a statement of purpose is definitely worth this life experience and what they ask in return is just a project that will allow you to share your experience with others and encourage them to study abroad and telling them they have resources like the Gilman Scholarship to help them out.

APPLY HERE:
http://www.iie.org/en/programs/Gilman-Scholarship-Program/Apply.aspx#faq3

Guess what my project is? This BLOG! And honestly I enjoyed this the whole time, to share my experience, but it has also added to my experience.
I made me more conscious of what was going on during this time abroad and I think it has made me more attentive as i have people to whom I can tell my little stories. Hopefully they have helped you or at least been enjoyable and allowed you to see what an experience abroad in Bahia, Brazil is like, through the window that is me.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Some more happy pictures:

The Application Process

There were a lot of components including a statement of purpose, permission from all the counselors to make sure you’ll be on track, agreement to meet all future deadlines, a housing questionnaire, 2 passport-type pictures one for the EAP program and the other for the housing questionnaire.
The housing questionnaire is for your future host family to view [or several families; I’m not sure exactly how it works but they chose you after reading the questionnaire—and my picture sucked], so it asked your name, age, sex, then about what your diet is like, to what you’re allergic, hobbies, whether you liked children/animals, what things you couldn’t live with and a description of your family, occupation and sibling-wise.
And simply a lot of agreements to things such as the health insurance, and basically if anything bad happened to you abroad you wouldn't sue the UC or the program or anyone, agreements to register the trip at the US embassy abroad stuff like that.

The Program

28/aug/09
There are two programs that the school offers, one is a semester, 6 months at the PUCI, and the other is quarter long, (a bit over 3 months) and it is a language and culture program. So in this program that takes place in Salvador Bahia, Brazil, the courses are all about Brazilian Portuguese and culture; the culture course is called “Brazil and the Black Atlantic”.
And I went for that one. I really preferred this housing situation to the Rio program. In Rio it would be living in dorms or apartments or finding a place if you chose to do that instead. But in Bahia, we would be staying with familias Brasileiras. And of course focusing on the culture was very important.
Although it doesn’t cover any of my major requirements, I think it’s relevant to Cultural Psychology. But I did it for the experience, and because the 3.5 months were compatible with the quarter system over here so I wouldn’t be too side-tracked.

It fit well into my academic scheduling, which I had to do with my department and college counselor for the EAP application. But I just feel like I really really wanted to go to Brazil, I still really, really want to go to India too. May be on my last quarter. If possible, but who knows with all these cuts and fee hikes I can’t even be guaranteed to study at the UC at all. But it’s all good, I’m so grateful that I can have this opportunity. I got a good financial aid package and two scholarships, one need-based the other merit-based. So, although education shouldn’t be about getting good grades, and good grades aren’t necessarily correlated with intelligence, they really help if you’re in my situation, but I always wonder if I should focus my efforts more on something else other than getting As. I feel that I can be more productive and less selfish.
Oooh, I heard Portuguese finally. My first all day! Exciting. I feel like I’m getting closer. But of course convenience isn’t all of it; that was just what made me chose Brazil over India. And also because in this program they really facilitate involvement in the community; they have connections with local organizations and groups.
India was too long for me for now. I don’t know if I’m ready to go for 6 months, but like I was saying I am hoping to go and do fieldwork in India some day when I’m prepared with a more specific project than, ‘having to do with farmers in rural India’.

I know a few people who did two EAP trips. But after all this application process, visa, and all the other preparations, it’s not as easy as I once thought. Of course, it’s doable but it does take a lot of your attention for like a year or so. You’re constantly doing something for EAP for about a year. Not too much at a time, but still lots of deadlines to meet. Okay I’m going to get a sammmwich jk. Oh and I found an electrical outlet for FREEE!. I hope :/ anyway.

this is an aerial view of the coast of Salvador, Bahia (which means bay and now you see why) that I took as we were arriving.

HOW I CHOSE TO STUDY ABROAD IN BAHIA, BRAZIL

8/27/09
I have been terrible at this blogging thing. But I’ll try to catch up now that I’m sitting at the gate waiting for my plane to come take me to Sao Paulo. I am somewhat delirious from lack of sleep but here we go.
I think I’ll start with how/why I chose this program, because I guess that’s the beginning.
I knew that I wanted to study abroad since …may be elementary, such a long time ago. And my first year in college I almost immediately picked up a whole bunch of brochures at the EAP (Education Abroad Program) office. And I grabbed EAP brochures that were focusing on majors, I took those, and then I looked at all the country-specific ones, and I took practically all of them except for places like Mexico or too close to home. I had about 20 different brochures and decided to cut down before showing them to my mom, and I realized that if I were to go to even a fifth of these places, I would be studying abroad my whole college career. But I made friends and my ideas changed and I realized that obviously I couldn’t do them all, so I reduced them to about 5 countries, and then from there I chose which were most compatible with my studies. My top 5 were: India, Turkey, Thailand, Brazil, and Holland. And I had reasons for all of them mainly because the cultures and histories of the countries grabbed my attention. Holland also has a fantastic Cognitive Psych department, and I could study psychology at Hyderabad University in India too. At that time all I knew was that I wanted to be a researcher in psychology and I knew that I wanted to do my research in non-European-“Western” cultures because that has been the group that has been most represented in academia yet the findings are usually applied to the general populations of women/children/marriages/eating habits etc. etc. EVERYTHING!

So I have always been interested in doing research in the Middle East, South East Asia, Africa, and definitely in Latin America. So the way I cam more and more focused on Brazil is because since I find it extremely important for anyone doing research with a people, to know about their culture beforehand, know the context very well, and be able to communicate directly, so it is imperative to know the language.
A video I saw in a developmental psych class really impacted me on that decision because this American researcher was describing a finding with some Japanese infants, and when he was talking about one of the participants, an infant by the name of Aya I think, he totally called her a he. And “Aya” is among the most common female names in Japanese, it’s like “Anne”. He kept saying he was a boy. I mean, I know it’s hard to tell sometimes because they look very similar, and it was different language, but still, it doesn’t seem right to me that this researcher is using the infant to demonstrate some psychological finding but doesn’t even care to learn enough about the participant to know if it’s a girl or a boy?! Even though gender wasn’t necessarily the area of focus, I just think there’s something wrong with that.

Okay anyway, the point is that I don’t want to be that researcher, and so, since I knew that I wanted to do research in Latin America, I already speak Spanish, but Brazil is such a huge part of Latin America, so I decided to learn Portuguese.
Last fall I took Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers, and it’s a program that takes four quarters, and the professor kind of expects students to hopefully eventually go to the university of PUC (pronounced /pookie/) in Rio de Janeiro to take classes among other Brazilian students, and one can study major classes.
The thing is that throughout the quarter we were learning more than just Brazilian Portuguese, we learned about the music, the food, (we had a lunch in class with food from a local Brazilian cafe), we watched films in Portuguese (some brasilians others from Guinea Bissau), and we went into a little bit of everything, the history of slavery in Brazil, the current racial relations, gender relations, poverty in the favelas, and just about everything. And that really gave me the last push towards Brazil.

So far I have:

30/july/09

Done the application process for EAP, which is for UCs (University of California)
I had to prepare for that pretty much since Fall Quarter to turn in the application in January.

First I had to complete a "New Applicant Questionnaire" which was just to make sure I understood what the study abroad program I chose was all about. Then I went to a kind of orientation to answer questions about the program and we were then given the application.

I did the application as accepted and then, I applied to the Gilman Scholarship and I GOT IT!!!!
oh i was soooo soooo happy it was amazing.

had my travelers health consult at the health center.

gotten an injected live vaccine for yellow fever because it is very recommended for this area of brazil

and i got the oral typhoid vaccine which i am waiting to take later one. they are 4 pills, and i have to take them every other day until i finish them. It has to be on an empty stomach, and i can't eat until like 2 hours after. They are also very sensative to temperature so they have to be kept refrigerated at a certain temperature otherwise they'll expire.

the typhoid pills are the ones in the box, the other pills are for moderate diarrhea. later I'll give more details on all the information that I recieved at the healh consult. such things as dengue and all that good stuff that can only be prevented by these things that i also bought from the health center

They have a good amout of deet to repell mosquitos.

I still have to get my visa though...which is supposed to be processed 10 days after you turn it in.