Harriet Hits the Road: Messages from Abroad

While on sabbatical this semester, Harriet Bloom-Wilson, Assistant Professor of French and International Student Academic Advisor, continued her international recruiting travels for Northwest. Here are a few email excerpts from her travels abroad.


Wed 3/2/2005 -- California dreamin'

Hello at last from sunny California! Now we're in Modesto, visiting with some old Northwest College friends, Julie and Geoff Mulder. It's wonderful seeing them again and taking a day off between drives. The community college international recruiting workshop in San Diego was excellent and allowed us to meet some of the people with whom we'll be traveling to Asia. It was also nice to be interacting with only community college people for a change, very supportive and generous and interested in the special challenges and advantages we face in Wyoming (where's that??!!) And San Diego is such a beautiful city!

From LA, we went to Santa Barbara, another very beautiful city where we gave a presentation to yet another ESL school. At the very least, we know we're helping tourism in Wyoming because none of these international students has ever heard of the place and by the time we're finished they all want to go for a visit. No one can believe there really is such a place with so few people.

Mon 3/7/2005 -- Sleepless in . . .

Hello one and all. . . . So, while it's not exactly "The Motorcycle Diaries," we have covered a significant distance in our aptly named "Odyssey," from Wyoming to San Diego to Seattle.And the weather has cooperated enough to give us glorious views of Mount Shasta in CA and Mount Rainier in WA; unfortunately, Mount Hood remained hidden. Did I mention the Wyoming connections thus far? The three young guys on the LA freeway at 70 miles an hour pulling up next to us to yell "We're from Cody" or the older man and wife at a gas station wanting to know if we knew their friends in Lusk, or the guy who lives downstairs from Joanna and Peter who graduated from Northwest College (I'll get his name later, but he's from Newcastle) and now goes to medical school at UW (in this case, the Univ. of Washington) along with many other Wyomingites in this complex, apparently. . . . Tomorrow Jo and Peter will take us to the airport for a 7 PM flight to San Francisco. At midnight we'll fly to Seoul. . . . Will keep you posted from Asia where we hope to recruit some new students and reveal the secret of a place called "Wyoming."


Fri 3/11/2005 -- A little bit of Seoul. . .

Hello out there! Writing from an internet cafe in the largest underground mall in Korea, maybe even Asia. Surrounded by adolescents playing video games and listening to music. Got here yesterday after 36+ hours of traveling. Left Seattle on March 8 and arrived here on March 10, What happened to the 9th????? The hotel is really nice but the weather is freezing! . . . I went with the group to a meeting at the Fulbright Commission, very useful. Tomorrow afternoon is the five hour fair. The group we're traveling with is wonderful and we're already enjoying each other's company. It will be interesting to see how many students show up tomorrow. The fair is in this mall, under two hotels. Should be interesting. Tonight we all went out together, underground again because it's so cold, for Korean barbecue. Delicious!


Mon 3/21/2005 -- Rendezvous in Bangkok

Greetings from the Bangkok airport! . . . Been a while since we wrote so I'll try to sum up. Main thing is that it's been wonderful having Richard here to recruit with me in Seoul, Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Singapore. He's a natural. We'll see what the results are but the fairs in the first three cities were well attended and we're hoping to bring some students to Northwest. The fair in Singapore was pretty skimpy which was disappointing. Nice that in several of the cities students commented on seeing me before and a man in Seoul remembered meeting me several years ago. I knew he wasn't mistaken because he said I had a daughter who went to school in Washington, DC and a husband who was also a teacher. So connections are made; it's just still a tough sell to persuade people that a place they've never heard of, like Wyoming, might be worth the risk.

Great visit and dinner in Singapore with Iris Lim and her husband, YS Teh, parents of our student, Yunnie, and a wonderful overnight excursion to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where we stayed with Grace Peterson, mother of former student, Jennifer Peterson. Took the overnight train to Malaysia from Singapore, quite the adventure, but not too rough since we had a "deluxe" sleeping car. Also, on the fun side, have been speaking a lot of French, including with some terrific African musicians who were performing in Singapore and staying at our hotel. . . . Weather is very hot but we're prepared, I think.


Sun 3/27/2005 -- Easter in Bangkok. . .

. . . is probably like any other Sunday, but it still crossed our minds and made us think of many Easters past with children and friends, decorating eggs, hiding baskets, and eating good food. . . . Hard to imagine the snow everyone is describing in WY and the east coast. Here it is so hot and humid but less so than when I was here in the past. Makes it easier to explore. Tomorrow we leave for Taipei already where I'll meet with a couple of agents about Northwest College. Hope this will help us break into that market. Then it's home, at least to Seattle, on March 30.


Fri 4/1/2005 -- Sabai Sabai

"Sabai sabai" means "happy, happy" in Thai and that's what our taxi driver in Bangkok, Mr. Ali, kept saying to us, "Madame happy? Papa (meaning Richard!) happy? Then Mr. Ali happy; sabai sabai." And we are happily back in the U.S. after a wonderful 3-weeks in Asia. Amazingly, with all the traveling, 7 countries in all, never a delayed flight, always our bags were there, free luggage trolleys whenever we needed them, hot meals on flights of even one hour (unlike United from San Francisco to Seattle, over two hours and not even trail mix!) and no significant illnesses. Sabai, sabai.

We spent the last two nights (1 1/2 days) in Taipei where we met with two agents who, hopefully, will promote Northwest College to prospective students. They were very nice, one even took us to the night market and a beautiful temple in the rain where we ate a variety of fishy things in a paper cup and chased it down with the fish broth it was cooked in. It was delicious!

Some memories: elephant riding in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with Joanna and me holding on for dear life as our senior pachyderm went her own way in search of bamboo to nibble on well off the side of the approved "path," Joanna's fresh legal training calling into question the safety standards in place in the hills of Thailand. Hordes of well-dressed and appointed teenagers in malls in all the major cities we visited with what appeared to be no lack of money to spend and an abundance of stores catering specifically to their interests. Maybe it's selective attention, but in the U.S. malls seem to have more of an age spread when it comes to consumers. Actually, the young and the old came together in Buddhist temples praying for everything from good health to good grades. And the night train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. We got into our sleeping compartment at 10:10 PM; I immediately took my sleeping pill, changed into a night shirt and climbed into the lower bunk. 20 minutes later, at the border to Malaysia, the announcement came on to get off the train, leave our luggage, and proceed through immigration. With Richard's help, I was able to get my clothes back on, rally from my stupor, and make it off the train before the drug sniffing dogs entered the compartments. And Richard's adventure through the back alleys and waterways of Jakarta, Indonesia make for an interesting story, both in photos and words.

Finally, like you, we heard the sad news of the latest earthquake on TV when we were in Taipei the night after it struck. We consider ourselves so fortunate that we were never in harm's way.