Anna Narehood
Anna Narehood traveled to Lüneburg, Germany for three months. Anna had been dreaming of traveling to Germany since she was a freshman in High School. Although there were many challenges, including flying on an airplane for the first time and being away from her parents for an entire summer, Anna achieved her goals and feels that she became a better person because of this experience. Anna participated in two German Language courses as well as Government and Politics in Germany and Environmental and Natural Resource Law at Leuphana Universität in Lüneburg, Germany. In her Government and Politics course, she learned and applied the differences of government in America to those used in Germany. During her free weekends, Anna traveled around Europe and saw places such as The Berlin Wall, The Milan Cathedral, Prague, Geneva, France, the Netherlands and part of Holland. During Anna's stay in Lüneburg, she stayed with other international students in an international house. This house was built by a contractor specifically for international students so they have cheap housing while studying abroad. Her landlord spoke little English, but through broken German she was able to express her deepest gratitude toward him for creating homes like these for students like her. Her roommates came from various parts of the world, including Austria, Turkey, Japan, Canada and France. Throughout her cultural immersion and language skills, Anna was able to experience Germany on a deeper level not just through pictures or stories, but on a personal level. Germany is now her second home and has a special place in her heart thanks to the Vira Heinz Program.
CEE Title: Hard Conversations: Addressing the –isms
Hard Conversations: Addressing the '-isms' began with introductions of all of the 2016 Waynesburg Vira Heinz Cohort. We then began an activity that had yes or no questions to help our audience determine which station they would be interested in going to. Each of the cohort members had determined three questions to go with their station. When the questions were completed, we then went to our stations and everyone had the chance to go to three our of the six stations. The stations were Sexism, Tourism, Terrorism, Poverty (ism), Racism, and Domestic Violence (ism). At each of our stations, we shared our own personal stories of how our specific topic was seen in the country where we studied abroad. In some instances, the leaders of the stations ended with what people could do to help the problem in the US. In other instances, we wated to make people more aware of what was going on in the world so that they could spread awareness to others. The individuals had 15 minutes at each station before being told to switch. At the end, we concluded with a debriefing and asked if anyone had last minute questions or comments.