|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Rice Thresher
Phone:
|
by Rachel Rustin thresher editorial staff
The two best friends will stay in Vietnam as part of the Freeman Awards for Study In Asia. The award was developed to encourage undergraduates to study in east and southeast Asia. Participants must remain in programs for a minimum of four weeks. Students who study for a summer receive $3,000; those who study for a semester receive $5,000. Levy's interest in Vietnamese culture was first piqued by the country's films, and she convinced Ketner to apply for the same scholarship. Levy will be studying in Ho Chi Minh City before traveling to Hanoi, visiting the cities along the coast on the way. Levy said she will also make a photo documentary and keep a journal, which will be published online. Levy will spend next year in India on a Wagoner Fellowship. Ketner will travel with Levy to Vietnam and conduct a linguistic analysis of Vietnamese. She is looking forward to the experience, especially after having traveled abroad to Germany. She said she enjoys being out of the country and traveling to new places. "I really like not being in America," Ketner said. "I've never been to any of eastern Asia, and I've studied abroad in Germany, and I've been in other areas of eastern Europe, but that's all the same and I wanted to do something else." Ketner said after she gets back from Vietnam, she will move to Czechoslovakia to teach English for a year, then get a masters at Cambridge. Three other students also received Freeman Awards, and they are each planning to study in China for the fall. Lovett College sophomore Muneeza Aumir is currently deciding between two programs, but she wants to study minority stereotypes in one of China's most diverse provinces. Aumir said she decided to go to China because she felt she should know more about a country that contains one-fourth of the world's population. "I really want to study abroad and I'm really excited about going to China," Aumir said. "It's the perfect opportunity. I love to travel and I love the idea of going to a new place and new experiences and this is maximum exposure." Aumir will also get to experience a home stay as part of the program. "You actually get to live in a country, which is very different from visiting it," Aumir said. Hanszen College freshman Toby Riotte will also be headed to China this fall. He will participate in a language immersion program after finishing his second semester of Chinese. The scholarship will pay one-third of his costs for the trip, which includes traveling for a month at the end of the fall semester. "When I get back, I'm going to continue Chinese here, I'm going to be taking French, hope to get an MBA in business and go into international business," Riotte said. Riotte is majoring in Asian Studies, and he said that without this program, he could not have gone abroad. Baker College sophomore Megan Francis will also go to China this fall in order to trace her roots; Francis's mother spent part of her youth there. With the $5,000 grant, Francis will study at the Beijing Foreign Students University, learning about Chinese culture and language. Francis hopes to gain a more worldly perspective from her experience. "There is a world outside of the United States of America, and I want to gain a perspective of how other people see life," Francis said.
- back - |
|||||||||||
|
Search the Thresher pages:
This document may be distributed electronically, provided that it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice. However, it cannot be reprinted without the express written permission of: The Rice Thresher, Rice University MS-524, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA. The Thresher Online Project -- ethresh@listserv.rice.edu |
