Conservation Impacts on the Global Scale

This is a follow-up post to the Vietnam Retrospective. Our travel group visited Vietnam and Cambodia in one long trip. The 4th day after our experiences in Vietnam, we left to explore its neighboring country, Cambodia. We met our tour guides, Tana and Untac, both of whom, I would find, are great conversationalists and very knowledgeable concerning Cambodian history. As I would learn more about, Cambodia has a bloody recent history like Vietnam. Our tour covered two sites from the Khmer Rouge, S-21/Tuol Sleng and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields, which were once places where some of the worst crimes known to humanity were committed.  However, on the other hand, our group also was able to learn and experience how Cambodia is growing stronger as a nation and changing in the wake of the Cambodian genocide. I was especially happy to see the persistence of traditional Cambodian art and culture through the efforts of Cambodian Living Arts, an organization that teaches young Cambodians trad

Now that I'm back home, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my experiences over the Vietnam/Cambodia school trip that I participated in for the last two weeks.  Martin and I wrote two blog posts during the trip that you can see here:  https://polygipvietnamcambodia.blogspot.com/2019/ . However, I feel a lot of what I could have said was not on the blog posts because of the time constraints (We could only write for a small portion of the time) and now that I've had a chance to reflect on the trip, I have more insight to contribute concerning our adventures in Vietnam and Cambodia. I'd like to be as honest as possible with what I say, so apologies if I sound overly negative about an experience.  Without further delay, I'd like to first talk a bit about Vietnam and my experience there.  Upon first stepping outside the Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon airport, I was immediately greeted with intense heat and humidity, which would be the norm for virtually the entire t

I'm still working on what exactly I'd like to do for my project and how to execute it. I've been exploring some ideas, though, and the activities/opportunities I participate in during the summer will surely inform the final vision for my Capstone Project/grant proposal. When I started the Global Scholars program my vision for my project was going to be something along the lines of conservation or epidemiology. I think, however, my final project may lean more towards education than anything. I'm deeply interested in making science and math more accessible for others, and I think this is an objective that holds importance for students all over the world. However, I'll still give a brief update on my progress in the fields that are possible projects for Global Scholars. Epidemiology: I'm still looking around for good connections relating to epidemiology (though I've gotten two from Sean Liu, a fellow Global Scholar), but I'll be taking part in a biology