Back in November of last year (2022), I applied to the English Language Fellow Programs which is run by the U.S. Department of State and Georgetown University. It is a prestigious program only open to Americans with Master's degrees and experience in English teaching. After a lengthy application and interview process, I received an email saying that I had been accepted and matched with a project in Vadodara, India!
I will be teaching English to students in the Environmental Science program at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and conducting some teacher training workshops for the local English teachers there. The program goes for 10 months, often with the option to extend to a second academic year. Teachers can only do this Fellows program one time in their lives, so this is literally a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me.
This past week they flew us out to Washington D.C. and put us up in the Hilton hotel for the Pre-Departure Orientation. This was the first time doing the orientation in-person after Covid and it was an amazing week of training and networking with all the other fellows both new and returning.
My days were filled with meetings and workshops all designed to prepare me for my project in India. It was fun to be in a room full of people from all over the country who do the same job I do, all going to various countries around the world.
I am part of the South Central Asia region which includes everything from Kazakhstan to Sri Lanka (the yellow section on the map in the picture). I am the only one assigned to India because the two people that were there this past year were not able to get their visas renewed, so they were allowed to extend their second year in a different country. One will be going to Kosovo and the other will be going to Cote d'Ivoire. I had a chance to sit down with them and get tips on living and working in India. They were posted in different cities than mine, so I still don't know a lot of the specific details about my project, since this will be the first time a Fellow will be assigned to my university. The training classes were excellent and I felt privileged to be part of such an intelligent and well-traveled group of people.
In one of the sessions we met with the diplomat over the region and he spoke about the importance of soft diplomacy and the cultural exchange that happens in the fellowship program. The U.S. wants to show these countries that there are alternative allies and ways of doing things that are not necessarily influenced by Russia or China. As the largest democracy in the world (and one of the few in that region), India plays an extremely important part in that.
We took a group photo and you might be able to spot me on the second row on the right behind the guy with the white shirt and tie and the girl in black. I haven't found where it's posted online, so I just took a picture when it popped up on the slide show on the last night.
I also had a chance to wander around in the evenings and take in the sights of our nation's capitol.
The Capitol building and the White House were beautiful.
As were the Supreme Court building and the Library of Congress.
The Washington and Jefferson monuments were fun to see.
On Wednesday during the lunch break I walked over to see the media circus and protesters in front of the courthouse where Donald Trump was being indicted. There weren't as many protesters as was portrayed on TV. Most of the people seemed to be tourists taking pictures of the courthouse like me.
I had some interesting thoughts and feelings as I watched the spectacle. Ultimately I came away feeling gratitude that I live in a place where both sides have the freedom to protest and criticize the aspects of the government that they don't like, and where multiple media companies have the freedom to report on the events happening in our country without being subject to heavy-handed governmental restrictions. I left D.C. feeling that despite all of our faults, the United States is a great country that has ideals worth sharing with the rest of the world. I don't pretend to know more than the Indian people. It was made clear to us that this fellowship is meant to be a cultural exchange more than anything. In fact, I fully expect that I will get more out of this experience than I could ever put in.
Next stop: India!
No comments:
Post a Comment