Vision 08 Bridges Conference

I have so many stoies from the past couple days, I don't know where to start. so I guess I am warning you this will be a little bit of a longer post. :-)





So Dec 28-Jan 1st was the vision 2008 Conference for people involved with Bridges International. This included undergraduate and graduate students, volunteers with the Bridges Program, and Bridges staff. There were about 800 international students who are studying at schools all over the US that attended the conference, as well as about 50 American students and volunteers. About 500 of the students were Chinese, and in total, 50 different nations were represented at the conference.





The conference was held in Washington DC and Bridges Staff, and new staff (like me!) arrived a day early to talk logistics. Actually most of the planning was already finished, but it was good for me to start meeting people who are a part of Bridges who work all over the country. One of m y biggest highlights was meeting up with staff and interns from MSU!!!! Currently there are two interns working with Bridges at MSU, (who studied my year) and two full time staff, although, one of them is from Turkey and she will be leaving next fall to return back to Turkey.



It was so nice to see all of them from MSU, as I have been home since I was in Thailand, and have not actually been able to help out at all at MSU until I have all my support raised. I also got to meet up with some friends I met at New staff Training I had back in September. I am so excited that I am getting to know more people my age, and making new friends, I feel like I live in a cave in Waterford half the time!



Being in DC was pretty cool to me. I have never really been to DC before (except to spend the night) and so I never got to see all the touristy things. I really enjoyed seeing the Mall area, with the capitol building, the Washington monument, the lincoln memorial and the National Archives. I didn't get to really walk around these sites, I just walked by them. It was super windy on the day we went and too cold to stay outside long, so a group of us hung out in the National Art Museum all day. I LOVED IT!!! I secretly have this love of studying fine Art. so I really enjoyed being there.



But now onto the good stuff!!! My favorite part of the conference ended up being a random night for me. We had these things called "coffee house" it was a time to get to know other people. I met a group in the children of Abraham track. It included people from many muslim nations. I played blackjack with a guy from Saudi, a couple Kazaks and some americans. Well we ended up near a guitar and one of the american girls wanted to hear a russian song some of the students were singing earlier.

so with that group and the help of a chinese guy, and a russian, they taught us this russian song. then, invited those of us who weren't involved already to join their group to sing an african zoolu song in the talent show. At this point I thought one foreign song was enough for me for one night, so I politely declined, but wanted to watch them practice. well, as they were almost finished practicing, the girl leading it said the altos needed to be louder. they were trying to figure out how, and then I volunteered to help them out, since it was a pretty easy song, and I had already picked it up just from listening. I was pretty nervous to be in a talent show in from of over 900 people, but I decided I needed to get out of my comfort zone and just enjoy it. I had a great time overall and just enjoyed seeing the harmony (literal) of so many people from different nations working together. It was great!

more to come soon!