My Experience in Cochabamba Bolivia

During my Fall semester of my Junior year, I decided to study abroad for a semester in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Living in a city was definitely a new experience for me, especially riding in a Trufi (taxi) to class every morning. However, I learned to navigate quickly and was able to be independent. I was fortunate to have a great homestay family who welcomed me into their life and invited me to everything. As a result of traveling to Latin America before, my abroad experience was less of a cultural one. Instead it was an amazing academic experience. The SIT program gave me the opportunity to learn from a non-western ideology and to constantly question what I think I know about the world. The most valuable things that I took away were from conversations about colonization, decolonization, and race relations in the world. I soon became extremely aware of how little I really knew about the way the world work because I had learned about it in such a western and white narrative. There were obviously so many other voices that needed to be heard. And throughout this program I was able to hear them from government official, indigenous leaders, and my own peers in the group. What I learned in Cochabamba is still present in my daily life at Kenyon College and will continue to be throughout the rest of my life. SIT also gave me the opportunity to explore my passion for documentaries. I was able to live in a indigenous community for ten days while filming their lives. This program enabled me to find interests of mine that I will continue to pursue in my future.