Alumni Story: Dara Walsh
My third year at UCSD I was an exchange student through the Opportunities Abroad Program at Chiang Mai University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I spent the summer before my year abroad at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, studying Thai. My mother is from Thailand and I wanted to learn the Thai language and learn about her country and their social issues. I studied interracial marriages, mixed raced children, tourism, prostitution, and the lives of street children. I also studied the lives of Buddhist monks and nuns and lived in a Buddhist monastery for a period of my research. I also studied the lives of mentally handicapped, deaf and blind students while volunteering at a school and working with the Special Olympics Program in Thailand. ERC’s encouragement of their students’ to study abroad I believe is their most important objective. Through international exchange, we as ERC students are able to bring back what we learned while abroad and help educate our fellow students on the lives of those abroad. This education of those at home that I mention, is actually one of Peace Corp’s goals. This brings me to my next thought.
After graduating from UCSD in 2004, I joined the Peace Corps and spent 27 months as a Health-Hygiene/Sanitation Volunteer in Morocco, North Africa. I learned a Berber/Arabic dialect called Tashalheet and lived in a very conservative Muslim rural village of 5,000 inhabitants. Most men and women are illiterate and the women wear a white sheet to cover everything but their eyes. Women turn away from oncoming cars and hug the walls of their compounds when men pass to avoid any interaction with men who are not their fathers, brothers or husbands. I worked in a local hospital and built local water structures, and also worked on other community and school projects. I also helped poor, sick people get the operations and medical care they deserved from the local hospitals. I believe that ERC prepared me for the inevitable challenges that I faced in Morocco. I had the appropriate coursework (MMW), community service, study abroad and intercultural exchange under my belt. I was as good or a better candidate for the Peace Corps in comparison to my peers and I was confident in my education and background that I had what it took to complete my 27 month tour. I just finished on June 1, 2006 and am taking time now to study French for the summer in France. The international education never ends. The friendships never end. The photos that you will see today, are those of me and of my CORE friends from the Dominican Republic trip. We have remained friends over the years. They visited me in Morocco, and I am writing to you from Italy which is where both of them are studying and getting their Master’s Degrees. I am sitting in the United Nations World Health Food Program office right now in Rome, waiting for one of them to get off work. Exciting opportunities will come knocking at your door, if you put in the time, energy and desire to dive in.
My parents have been amazing supporters my whole life of my international adventures and have exposed me to many different countries and peoples. Having grown up in a biracial home environment, I have always had the desire to learn languages and explore new environments. They have visited me in each place that I have studied or worked and have encouraged me to seize these opportunities.
