This past year I had the chance to leave UW-Madison and study abroad in Lima, Peru for my junior year. For a year I took classes in Spanish with other Peruvian students and lived with a Peruvian host family. It was a phenomenal experience and I am so lucky to have been given this experience. I hiked to Machu Picchu and swam in the Amazon River. I struggled to speak Spanish every day until I became proficient. I backpacked for two months through Chile, Argentina and Bolivia during school vacations and I made lifelong friends from all over the world. There is something so valuable about being taken away from everything that you know and everyone you love and put into a completely foreign environment. I discovered what it was like to be an outsider in a culture and have people stare at me while shopped for groceries and walked down the street. I experienced minority status, in most of my classes I was the only white person and always the only American. I saw poverty on a daily experience unlike nothing that I had ever seen just on my way to school. Most of the time it was hard and difficult and I missed my friends and family but it was also rewarding and wonderful. All the experiences that I had allowed me grow in a way that would have been impossible if I had stayed at Madison. Thank you so much to the AAUW for helping me make my dream of studying abroad reality!

Thanks,
Mari Vangen