It’s true: Logan is in a foreign country
Written By: Steve Eaton
It turns out Logan, Utah, is smack dab in the middle of a foreign country.
I didn’t know this before I left with a group of 42 students from the Utah State University Jon M. Huntsman School of Business on a trip to Chile, Brazil and Peru.
All I was sure of was that South America is home to several foreign countries. As I write this I’m in a little store that charges by the minute for internet access. Outside on the street people are still arguing about last night’s soccer match. While the world around me seems quite foreign to me, my concept of a foreign country has changed.
It was recently at a dinner as I spoke with a student from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, that I noticed he was calling the good old USA a "foreign country." I began to understand that just what makes a culture strange, different or foreign is all a matter of perspective. The startling fact that the United States is not at the center of the universe seems to be a repeating theme in these first few days of this trip which have been filled with lectures about the Chilean and Brazilian economy, history and culture. We have visited an embassy, a consulate, a bank, a steel company and heard a lecture from an executive in an oil company. Nearly every lecture has come with a heavy foreign accent and a heavy dose of reality that the students could not have gained in the classroom.
My invitation to travel as part of my job came at the last minute and actually frightened me more than excited me. I was aware that one of the three major things we talk about, teach and emphasize for our students at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business is the importance of gaining a "global vision." I’d written about how important it was in a global economy for students to have an international perspective. I’d tried to spread the word about this program within the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business that is so new and innovative that we aren’t quite sure what to call it. And yet my own global vision rarely extended beyond Brigham City.
We left on May 26 and after an airplane trip that seemed to take a week, we ended up northwest of Santiago, Chile, in a town called Valparaiso. We travel in busses at incredible speeds on narrow streets that were not designed by Brigham Young as if we are in Star Wars pod races. And, suddenly we are in a world where little children can communicate far better than most of us. No matter how you look at it, we are not in Kansas anymore.
And yet the thing that has amazed me most is to see the fearless way our students have been throwing themselves into this experience. Long after I’ve had enough global vision for one day, they are off playing soccer, dancing and even going to the beach to swim in the darkness. We had only been in town for about 10 minutes on Sunday before a group of students launched off on their own to find a church to attend.
What makes this 24-hour-a-day, enthusiastic cultural immersion even more impressive is that it follows three weeks of studies at USU where each day started for the students at 8 a.m. and finished at 9:30 p.m.
Even though they are wringing all the fun and exploring they can get out of their evening hours, no one has overslept and missed the bus when it is time to go to the university for their classroom lectures. They come to class and challenge the professors with thought-provoking questions. It is clear that they intend to make the most of their investment in this South American experience. And that experience has included visits to a port, a water-treatment plant, an embassy, a consulate, a steel company and two universities.
Right now we are located just a few blocks away from the Coco cabaña Beach in Rio de Janeiro. Even though we arrived several days ago today is the first time the students have had a chance to spend any daytime hours on the beach.
Our world will have changed again by the time you read this. We’ll be in Peru where the aim of the day will eventually be service. The students will be running an eye-glasses clinic and looking for the most effective way to launch a microloan program with the more than $30,000 USU students recently raised.
It didn’t take us long to realize that we are the foreigners. Even I’m starting to adjust to this new world. In fact, when I finish this, I may just go to a foreign restaurant across the street. They call it McDonalds.
Steve Eaton, a former reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune and the Ogden Standard-Examiner, is now on a five-week trip through South America with a group of students from the Utah State University Jon M. Huntsman School of Business . As director of communications for the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business , he was drafted to go on the trip even though he admits that this type of world travel puts him way out of his comfort zone.