ON YOUR MARK
Learn to dance the flamenco, explore the art of Picasso and Dali, save your Euros for France-brightly colored posters tempted students last fall to travel to Spain, France, or "Amazing Mexico." Called Maymesters by students but listed as Fleximester courses in the PC catalog, these experiences abroad provide a popular way to fulfill PC's intercultural requirement. Writing assigned during these courses enhances students' learning, just as it does in classes on campus.

GET SET: WRITING BEFORE THE TRIP
Most professors meet with the Maymester class during the spring semester to introduce the location and begin the academic requirements, including papers and presentations. Jim Wetzel and Jim Stidham met once a week with students enrolled in National History of Ecuador. In one course project, students became natural history experts, conducting research, writing a short paper, and presenting a report to the class. Some chose animals such as marine iguanas, the Frigate bird, or Galapagos boobies, while others delved into Ecuadorian culture's myths and folklore. Wetzel collected their papers to create a field guide and carried copies to Ecuador. He admitted students probably did not consult the guides on the trip, but the experience of writing and listening to the others present the topics prepared them for what they encountered.

On the 2008 History Department's Encounter Afar over spring break, senior Justin Doyle traveled to Istanbul with Rick Heiser and Roy Campbell. "We had two papers due in the course," Doyle said,"one for each semester. Collectively they were worth 30% of our final grade." An oral presentation for 30% of the grade was also a requirement for the Istanbul trip. Two students worked together before they left campus to learn about a site and prepare a fifteen-minute talk. In Istanbul the pair acted as "tour guides for that particular location,"
according to Doyle. "For example, my group had the Church of St. Savior in Chora. Even though we had a tour guide that day, he was informed not to speak until after we were through."

Senior Lori Garvin said that her class Chile: Land of Contrasts with Clinia Saffi and Margarita Ramirez "did the majority of the coursework during the second half of the spring semester. We met once a week for three hours listening to lectures, watching a film, and discussing literature." Students also wrote a long paper about the works they read, in Spanish of course, with the option of handing it in before or after the trip. Bob Bryant assigned a major paper to students in Holy Land, Holy Books, and Their People. He wanted the paper "to provide students an incentive to become our traveling seminar's 'expert' on at least one of the sites, to consider its historical and contemporary significance."

GO: JOURNALING ABROAD
Almost all students spent time "journaling" on their way. Travel and journals go together so naturally that professors took them for granted. Until asked reminded about journals, two professors said that students did no writing on the trip. Yes, certainly they expected students to keep journals. Each professor has somewhat different guidelines and expectations for this type of writing. Jerry Alexander and Terry Barr's students kept journals while riding on the bus from Prague to Berlin. Rather than collect and evaluate the journals, however, Alexander and Barr asked students to use them to write a reflection after the trip.

On the Galapagos Maymester, Wetzel provided each class member a three-ring binder with 50 pages for a journal or field notebook. The notebook included a plastic pencil pouch for small objects the students collected, such as feathers or seashells. Students wrote about the material covered for the day. If the guide on a hike told them about the nest building of Frigate birds, Wetzel expected a summary. They could tape items to the pages or sketch and label what they saw-perhaps pointing out the differences between masked and blue-footed boobies.

Bryant assigned journals "to encourage the students to keep a record of their personal experiences throughout their 17-day trip to help them process the sensory overload of the experience and provide a personal record of the experience and things they learned along the way of particular relevance." Parker Young, a student on that trip, used the journal to write about what he saw that day, "such as ruins and locations pertaining to the Bible."

Journals "help students process the sensory overload of the experience." Bob Bryant

On the trip to Chile, Saffi used the journals as one way to help students learn Spanish. "During their stay abroad," she said, "students are required to speak to and exchange cultural information with native speakers, using every possible opportunity to practice the language." She expected to see "specific expressions" from conversations with native speakers' descriptions of an excursion or a specific cultural experience. "The diary should also include a listing of at least ten new words or expressions in Spanish that students have learned," she added. She counted the content as half of the grade for the journal and the vocabulary list as the other.

STUDENT REACTIONS TO JOURNALS

Doyle said his journal in Istanbul "was not anything major, just about a page a day, but it was supposed to catalogue our travels during that day. We would include not only the sites we saw, but also the people we met, and what we did with our free time while there." Counting 10% of the final grade, the journal was "probably the most useful" of all the course requirements, according to Doyle, because it involved "discovery and exploration in a foreign city."

In Israel Young and his classmates wrote on the bus and back at the kibbutz. He found that the journals "reflecting back about the significant places we visited" were more the focus of the class than the research paper. One entry Young wrote after seeing Peter's house in Capernaum expressed his thoughts about how personal the relationship between Peter and Jesus was.

Garvin said that the journal on the Chile Maymester gave her the opportunity "to reflect on each day's events and the cultural lessons I learned daily. The writing provided a creative and cathartic outlet for expressing my thoughts on all the newness and excitement surrounding me during my time in a foreign country." Sophomore Cameron Cook immediately thought of his journal on the drive to Weimar, one his favorite parts of the Prague-to-Berlin trip: "The rolling hills and farmland that we passed were gorgeous and different from anything I had ever seen before. I just wanted to stop the bus and sit out on one of those farms and write in my journal."

"I just wanted to stop the bus and sit out on one of those farms and write in my journal." Cameron Cook

Mellette Johnson, who went to China last May, said, "I am so grateful that we had to keep a daily journal. Sometimes at the end of the day it was hard sit down and do it, but now looking back I am so glad I did. I have gone back and read my journal a couple of times and really enjoy the details I had in my entries because many of them I'm sure would have been forgotten by now." The students appreciated journals for both the process and the product.

WRITING BACK AT HOME
Saffi assigned a final reflective essay of at least 350 words with students' impressions and reactions to the experience in Chile. She wanted students to give special emphasis to cultural aspects they learned, especially those different from American culture. Choosing to write his major paper after the trip to Israel was the right choice for Young: "It was good to be able to see the places and then write about it rather than doing extensive research before the trip. The paper was about any site that we visited of our choosing. It required us to go even more in-depth about the site's history and significance. We had about a month to write and turn in the paper. I found some really cool apocalyptic biblical prophecy about the Mount of Olives."

Whether before, during, or after the trip, writing enhances the Maymester experience. Bryant added that "the journals were especially helpful for celebrating this trip's successes and for collecting ideas of ways to improve the next trip."

by Jill Frey, Justin Doyle, Lori Garvin, Lauren Johnson, Amanda Sutker, and Parker Young