Anna Poirot was awarded $1,500 for travel to Norway for one year under Steamboat Rotary youth exchange program. Her program included attending local schools and living with several host families. This is a later, follow up the report she sent in January 2016.
I’m not sure whether we had contact about this before, but I spent the last year in Cape Town, South Africa, studying at the University of Cape Town, working for a tour operator, and studying anthropology, linguistics, Xhosa, ethics and human rights, and many other things. Funnily enough, I was contacted by my old Norwegian teacher from my time in Norway, saying that she would like to meet up because her husband and herself were on a tour of South Africa at the time. I met up with them in the city center, and spent the day sightseeing and chatting in Norwegian–I am still able to do this quite well!
I’m not sure whether we had contact about this before, but I spent the last year in Cape Town, South Africa, studying at the University of Cape Town, working for a tour operator, and studying anthropology, linguistics, Xhosa, ethics and human rights, and many other things. Funnily enough, I was contacted by my old Norwegian teacher from my time in Norway, saying that she would like to meet up because her husband and herself were on a tour of South Africa at the time. I met up with them in the city center, and spent the day sightseeing and chatting in Norwegian–I am still able to do this quite well!
I am now back at the University of Colorado as a student of anthropology and linguistics, and am graduating in May this year. I am very excited to start the next chapter in my life, which will hopefully involve the Peace Corps, a backpacking trip to Nepal, and the everlasting application process for graduate schools and jobs in all of the wonderful places that I hope to one day live in and visit. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Boulder, but my experiences abroad have given me the travel bug, and I am afraid to say I do not see myself staying here post-graduation.
As far as my benefits from my study abroad experience through Rotary in 2012 goes, I cannot express to you the gratitude that I still have for you and your wife for giving me the opportunity to participate in that program. Even now, years later, I discover new ways to use my skills learned abroad every single day. While in South Africa, I used my knowledge of Norwegian to help me understand bits and pieces of Afrikaans, and be able to learn new languages (as said before, I took Xhosa, and also South African Sign Language). In both my experiences in South Africa and Norway, I have gained a profound understanding of the connectedness of the world. I met more Norwegians in South Africa than I have met anywhere else in the world, travelling just like myself, and the stark contrasts between the cultures and countries has helped me shape myself as a person and how I understand the world.
Despite what many people have often tried to tell me, I have found a plethora of uses for my Norwegian, and they go far beyond simply chatting with Norwegians that I meet along the way. Learning Norwegian helped me understand the world from a different perspective–one with a different sense of humor, a different sense of humanity. I gained an appreciation for languages and cultures which led me to study linguistics and anthropology, and helped me realize how truly important each and every person and language is in this world. Being given the opportunity to explore and understand different countries and cultures has given me a positive and perceptive view of the world and of myself.