Carly Peterson is hard to miss, this lanky tall teen is constantly participating and making herself known. This champion of the pickle spit and walk on varsity tennis player did more with her summer than most students. At the end of her Junior year she wanted to go abroad to do service work but was clueless on how to begin.
Projects Abroad is one of the first organizations that comes up when you search “going abroad for service work.” Projects Abroad is a program that’s mission is to send young people to experience the world abroad while also providing aid to developing countries. Through Project Abroad Peterson had many options of countries to travel to including locations in Africa, Europe, South Pacific, and South America.
Nepal has an average GDP per capita of $1,400, compared with that of the US which is $53,041 according to the World Bank, the standard of living in Nepal is well below what we here in Orono are assumed to. In addition to this, Nepal is a country with a literacy rate of 45 percent according to National Geographic. In an attempt to aide this country that struggles with education and literacy, Peterson decided to tackle her service teaching English in Nepal.
“I expected to not have any difficulties almost. I thought it was just gonna be a breeze,” senior Carly Peterson said.
Peterson was to be teaching a community school which according to her lack the structure of school we are accustomed to here. She was responsible for planning her own lessons to teach the students of Nepal English.
“I talked to a lot of teachers here on what the best ways were to teach children English. I talked to Mr. Smalling and Ms. Wooley and I bought coloring books and read a lot online about how to teach abroad,” Peterson said. With her preparation here, Peterson was ready to embark on her trip, she traveled alone from the Minneapolis airport to Nepal.
“I’ve never really been scared to travel on my own and I just had a blast,” Peterson said, “I was walking through the airports, like this is awesome. I felt very independant with the whole thing.”
Project Abroad placed her with a host family for the five weeks she was in Nepal. The family was a normal host family for Project Abroad and Peterson shared a room with three other girls she became close friends with.
The average day started with Peterson getting up at 7:30 a.m., walking to the school she taught at which happened to be a 40 minute walk. Classes began for the community school around 9:30 a.m. and from then on Peterson was with a class of third graders sitting with them and helping them with whatever they needed. For the first week she was their she acted as a teacher’s assistant to learn the ropes of the school, until she took over a classroom with another volunteer.
“They beat the kids, a lot. And I’ve never witnessed that in my own school so I remember the first time I watched this kid get thrown out on the ground and hit with books over the head, I just was speechless,” Peterson said, “for not doing his homework. This teacher came back in said ‘did that make you uncomfortable?’ and I said no. You can’t be like yeah the was really awful of you do to that because that is just their culture and that’s just being ethnocentric in a way.”
Although no longer common in the US, beating is still very common in underdeveloped countries such as Nepal. However, Peterson stated that she never felt unsafe, “I feel more safe there than I do walking around Minneapolis.”
Not the breeze she expected, Peterson will be the first to share with you about her stories about “back in Nepal” as her friends tease her.
“I want to go back and be a coordinator, so I would go back and be there for six months. I don’t know if I would go back to Nepal but definitely though this organization,” said Peterson.
