Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Where in the world to go????

My Community Health Nursing Master's Program requires that I do a practicum. The professors are pretty open to a variety of experiences so that we each are able to find opportunities that will provide up with experiences that are applicable to our future interests. I started out thinking about going to Uganda and was excited about the prospect of being able to go to this country. However, the pieces weren't really fitting together just right, so I had to start embracing the idea that I would have to go somewhere else. There are lots of places that I would love to travel to and see and explore, however I knew that I would have to be pretty particular about where I go so that I can get a good practicum experience. I started thinking about ways to go back to Guatemala. My heart is there, however, I just wasn't sure about organizing the details of an internship. This semester is quite busy and I'm not sure that I'm going to survive it, so the thought of trying to organize my own internship just seems impossible. So, another option that was presented to me was going to Mexico and working with a partner university to Indiana University. One of my professors is working on a community based program that they are trying to implement. So, I am going to start incorporating research on the program and program implementation into this semesters assignments and then follow through with a potential 4 week internship with this mexican university. I'm still a little torn by not going back to Guatemala. However, God is giving me peace that I am making the right decision. The best thing is that I'll still get to use my spanish. I feel like I hardly get to speak spanish anymore these days. I am taking a spanish class this semester but it's online so I still don't get much of the conversation part. Anyway, that's the projected plan. Still have to make sure that I will be able to get the time off work but I will start working on that soon! And, I'm going to look into some scholarships and grants through the university as well. There are still some other countries where some of my friends are living that I really need to go visit, unfortunately now is just not the time . . . hopefully one day soon!!!! But for now I have the prospect of going to Mexico, and really I haven't seen much of Mexico so this could be very interesting!!!