Friday, July 8: Orientation Continues/Leadership Seminar
The first class started at 08.30 with Dr. Robin Saha, a professor in the Environmental Studies department at the UM. We bounced off Environmental Politics and Policies, which covered the features of US political system, personal property right, and governmental policy types. We then learned about the process of policy making, the instruments of public policy, and non-governmental policy actors. All those materials were wrapped up in an astonishing presentation so that we did not feel it too hard to learn politics. In the next session we had Mr. Dan Kemmis, former mayor of Missoula and also the author of one of our required reading, Community and the Politics of Place. Mr. Kemmis told us about his background and how he came to writing this book. He shared his political experience with us, about how he strived to brought out environmental issues into his field, what were his success stories and also his obstacles as well. At the end of the session, everyone got their book signed by Mr. Kemmis too!
At 13.30 Chase Maxwell took us to see an Omniglobe, the world's spherical display system that can project images of the Earth and other planets. There are only 20 omniglobes in the whole world, so we were so glad to be able to see and explore one, with which we can also see the history of the Earth, population distribution, carbon footprints, increasing sea levels around the planet, and many more. After trying out the omniglobe for about an hour, we head back to NAC to meet the former and current president of Associated Student of The University of Montana (ASUM). They explained about the role of ASUM in the university, how they build their network across the state and country, and also they share their success stories and failures. We also did a sort of simulation on how to create and manage an event, which was amazing to know about certain strategies that we have not known before. The session closed at 5 p.m. and we went back to Miller Hall right away because our host-families awaited there already. I and May from Laos got a host named Teresa Sobieszczyk, a professor in the University of Montana. She lives only with her 2 cats just 5 minutes drive from Miller Hall. The firs evening in her house we spent by having dinner with a couple of Teresa's friends, Mr. John Spores and his wive named Bi. The Spores live in the US and they travel frequently to Malaysia for Bi comes from Malaysia and they also have jobs over there.
Saturday, July 9: Host-family
Because every Saturday Missoula has 3 markets open for public, we decided to visit one of them which we call the 'Farmers Market', it is located downtown and it was really interesting to see many kinds of people mingling and having their time selling, buying, or just looking at goods. There were many Asian there, mostly are the Mong People from somewhere near Laos, so that is why Teresa was so eager to take us there because she loves to speak Thai to those people and May also speaks quite similarly. After looking around the market, we strolled along the downtown and stopped by some shops. The one shop I loved the most is The Butterfly Herbs, a small cafe selling like hundreds sorts of coffee and tea (herbs) from all around the world. We spent a good time having snack and I bought selections of coffee and tea there to take home. Then we headed to the house of Teresa's friend, Kathy, up near Lolo. Kathy has such a beautiful house just by the entrance of Rattlesnake Trail System. We have a short walk along the trail system, where we also met mountain-bikers, joggers, and ranchers. Later on that evening, we had sinner together with Kathy and another friend of Teresa.
Sunday, July 10: Host-family
That day Missoula was having a marathon competition, which instead of joining we just watched it while we had breakfast. We cooked Asian meal, because I and May come from Asia and Teresa also had been spending like 5 years in Thailand. After that we drove by the highways out to Flathead lake. On our course we stopped at a souvenir shop in Ronan and had our lunch in Polson. Just before we hit the lake in Teresa's favorite spot, we decided to visit West Shore State Park. State park is an area protected and managed by the state government, just like a small-scale national park. We enjoyed the lake from this side, while watching people enjoying their summertime with families, it was exciting because I can actually feel how they were so grateful to have the warm summer after they got a terrible, long, and heavy winter. We continued out trip to the lake for a while, and then we got back to Missoula. On our way, we stopped by an old museum which was actually attractive because of its weird appearance. We saw myriads of collections related to the history of the US all put in sequence, started from WW I up to Vietnam War; we also found many attractive displays like collections of old motorbikes, artworks, a real-size imitation of old-time American coffee-shop, and a small souvenir shop. The owner of that museum is an army veteran, he accompany us and told us interesting histories related to the stuff there until it was time to rush back to Missoula because we have to return to Miller Hall at 5.
Back in Miller Hall, everyone shared their host-fam experience. Sounds that everybody have had a great time!
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