Today is the eve of my departure on my next big adventure, this time to the island of Zanzibar, Tanzania. I will be starting an internship with Search for Common Ground, an international peacebuilding and conflict transformation non-profit that is working to end violent conflict throughout the world. This internship will make up the final semester of my graduate degree program at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, where I am studying International Policy Studies with a focus on Human Security and Development and receiving a Conflict Resolution Certificate. This trip is not only my latest adventure to a different part of the world, but it is the next step in the fascinating, unconventional path that I have taken since finishing my BA. As can be expected, I am both nervous and excited for this huge step!

I want to catch everyone up briefly on what has been happening in my life over the past decade and what has led up to this point where I am heading off to Africa. After finishing my BA in Film Studies at the University of Southern California, I shipped off to South America to serve as an Early Elementary Education Peace Corps Volunteer. I kept a blog during that experience as well and I’m hoping to maintain a similar framework for this blog. After returning from the Peace Corps I went through a long and very difficult readjustment/job hunting period that was complicated even more by the fact that it was perfectly timed with the 2008 economic crisis. After a summer spent living at home and working at a coffee shop, I eventually moved back to Los Angeles and got a job as a Spanish teacher at a small charter school in a rough, inner-city neighborhood. This was an extremely difficult position, but I stuck on for a second year, although in a different position, as the coordinator for the After School program at the school. At the end of this year, the school was in the process of being shut down and I had already started my plans to go to graduate school.

However, as things have a tendency to work out, the school didn’t shut down. Given that I was one of the few remaining employees, I helped the transition into a new administration and was offered a job as a guidance counselor and made up part of the administrative team. I worked as a guidance counselor for two years and, although the school was always an extremely tough place to work, I really enjoyed that job and that position. However, after two years, I needed to go back to graduate school, either to receive my guidance counseling credential or to shift careers. While I loved counseling and could see myself happily working in this career path, I felt like that wasn’t my calling, so I decided to shift gear and return to graduate school.

I began my program at the Monterey Institute in August of 2012. My classes were excellent and the friendships that I developed will hopefully be life-long. However, the classes I took in the Conflict Resolution track and with my professor, Dr. Pushpa Iyer, were truly inspiring and led me to my current internship position and a hopeful future career in conflict resolution or human rights. In addition to my classes, I went on unforgettable research trips to Gujarat, India (see our blog for this trip) and Cuba, I did an independent study project in international LGBT rights, and I completed an excellent internship at Global Exchange in San Francisco.

Now, however, I am beginning my final project in graduate school and hopefully the first step in a future career. Africa is a completely new continent for me and will definitely be a step away from what I am accustomed to. I will need to learn Swahili (although English is widely spoken in Zanzibar) and adapt to life in a very different culture. However, it is a transition that I am looking forward to and I’m quite certain that it will be an excellent and memorable experience.

This blog will serve as a journal, a way to keep in touch with friends and family, and also a professional document to discuss some of my observances, experiences, and findings from my internship in Africa. I hope to come up with a balance of personal stories and material that will eventually support the report that I am writing as my final deliverable for graduate school. Please feel free to follow along and comment on my entries!

Tomorrow I will head to the Seattle Tacoma International Airport to begin the first leg of my 5-leg, 2-day long flight to Zanzibar (Seattle to Vancouver to Toronto to Addis Ababa to Dar Es Salaam to Zanzibar). I don’t anticipate much sleep these next few days! I will be in touch shortly with my first impressions.