Anyway, I love the Chinese History and Modern Development of Environmental Health study abroad program, because it allows us to have a genuine experience abroad by forcing us to interact with native Chinese citizens throughout the country. Additionally, this program offers and optional internship session that begins immediately after the month-long class ends, and runs throughout the rest of the summer. This factor is what truly sold the program to me, not only would I be able to study and travel throughout China, but I would also have time to settle into one location in China, really connect with the people, develop some more useful skills, and be able to really dig deep into the culture.
In years past, students were offered two separate internship opportunities; one oriented to business majors, and one oriented to science and humanities majors. Business majors had the option of being placed with one of several Chinese companies based in Shanghai or Beijing and working for as long as they were able. The second program was in conjunction with the United Nations' Panda Mountain conservation project. Students were sent to rural China to the UN's village and base, and could work directly with villagers to implement various measures to preserve China's panda population, teach the villagers about conservation and environmentalism, or participate in an oral history project where stories from the villagers are recorded and preserved.
When I first began researching study abroad programs, I got really excited about potentially being able to save pandas while in China. I mean, it doesn't get much more Chinese than pandas! And so, I was kind of counting on using the internship program to round out my study abroad experience. However, when I began talking to my East Asian Studies advisor, who runs the classroom portion of the program, he mentioned that the Panda Mountain program might fall through for the next year, due to some bureaucratic mess with the UN. But he assured me that there would be an equally amazing opportunity available, and that the UW International Internships office would be able to help me find something.
Fast forward to earlier this year, after weeks of emailing back and forth with the department, I finally finished filling out an internship application to work on the Hua Xia dairy farm outside of Beijing (see the link at the bottom). I was applying for one of three internship positions. The first involved directly working with the cattle and learning how the farm is run, the second was to help work with Monsanto representatives while ordering organic forage for the cows, and finally the third option, the one I most wanted, involved researching the USDA's organic certification requirements and potential green energy technologies that could be implemented on the farm. I will admit, the irony of leaving Wisconsin to go halfway around the world to work on a dairy farm is not lost on me, but I was truly excited. It would be an amazing experience, and the farm is located extremely close to Beijing, so additional travel on my off days would be fairly easy.
However, it is exactly one month before I leave for China, and I haven't heard back from the owner of the farm. No one in the International Internships Department can get into contact with him to get an answer. And I'm not entirely certain what is going to happen. I have been promised a definite answer at least five times over the past few months, but each deadline came and passed without a word. Yesterday was the final deadline, when I was supposed to hear from my International Internships advisor about what is going on, but I still have yet to receive any word. As a type-A person who has spent over a year planning and anticipating this trip, this is beyond frustrating. I understand that communication back and forth between China and America is slow at best, however this seems ridiculous. My advisor has promised to help me try to find something for the rest of the summer, and to help cover application costs. However, applying for a summer internship across the world about two months before you would begin working seems a little fraught.
And so, I am frustrated. I will keep you updated with any new developments. I love the idea of this opportunity, however, having two internships fall through in the course of a year is awful, and I don't really have enough time at this point to line up another option. Out of the entire process of preparing for this huge adventure, this has been, by far, the most infuriating thing I have come up against.
Here's a link to the farm's bio: http://www.huaxiadairyfarm.cn/about.asp
And here's a link to the Panda Mountain project: http://www.uscef.org/about-panda-mountain.html
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