Christian Koguchi is an Engineering major studying at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. After graduation, he plans to work in the fields of signal processing and communications. Apart from his interest in engineering, Christian has a passion for travelling and learning about foreign cultures. He grew up in a family of Japanese-Peruvians, speaking fluent English and Spanish and has travelled to many countries such as Peru, Costa Rica, Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Austria. He has put his language skills to use in the international dorm at Tohoku. He writes of his interactions with the Japanese students, “I’ve learned this phrase called Inshin Denshin. Perhaps the exact spelling may be off, but I was told the meaning of it is like ‘understanding without words,’ and it literally means something like ‘transmitted from the mind to heart.’ It’s what my friends and I have been saying to describe our communication.”
Austin Pukasamsombut (Japan, 2014-15)
Varanon Austin Pukasamsombut, an Electrical Engineering major, is studying at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. He is passionate about robotics and electronics and chose Tohoku University in order to perform research under Professor Kazuya Yoshida. He believes that this experience will help him achieve his “dream of becoming an inventor; an engineer who designs and creates new devices to benefit society.” Austin has been involved in robotics since high school, when he led a team to the VEX world robotics championships. At UCSD he joined the IEEE Micromouse project team and was able to make a robot that navigated autonomously through a maze. He arrived in Japan this summer and spent two months in a language immersion program at Senshu University, and then another month traveling with friends and family. He stayed with a friend in Kobe for a month and wrote that the experience “gave me a chance to experience life in a Japanese household, where my friend’s parents would always cook homemade Japanese meals for dinner and I would be able to sleep in a tatami room on a futon bed.” He writes that Sendai, nicknamed the City of Trees, is truly a beautiful place filled with forests and mountains. Christian Koguchi (another Borton scholar – see below) lives next door to Austin in the international dorms and they “push each other to go out and explore our surroundings so that we can enjoy our time here in Japan to the fullest.”
Sunny Young (The Netherlands, 2014-15)
Sunny Young is pursuing a degree in Psychology and is studying this year at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. In San Diego, she has tutored students of all ages at a local math tutoring center and worked with preschoolers as a teacher’s aide at the UCSD Mesa Child Development Center. She intends to pursue a Masters degree in Social Psychology and continue working with students. Sunny believes that her year abroad will “teach her the values of diversity, acceptance, and understanding.” She wrote to us about a hitchhiking trip she took from Utrecht to Zaragoza. Her university has a student committee that hosts hitchhiking competitions twice a year. They form groups of two or three, pick a destination, and see which group arrives first. Sunny writes that “It was very safe and I met so many nice and interesting people along the way. It really restores faith in humanity.” She felt the experience taught her about patience, finding ways to keep her spirits up, how to make people feel relaxed and comfortable, and how to approach people so as not to scare them off.
Shelby Newallis (Italy, 2014-15)
Shelby Newallis, an Italian Studies major with a minor in Communications, is studying at the University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy. She believes in being well-rounded, which for her means “dabbling in several different fields to compile an array of skills that help make me as an individual perceptive, detail-oriented and more passionate overall.” She is most interested in writing, traveling and learning about other cultures and thinks that her year abroad in Italy will help with her future goal of working in the creative, culture and/or culinary industry. Since arriving in Italy, she has managed a busy schedule of classes and work, and traveled to Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia. In Bologna, she has an apartment in the Borgo La Croce area and passes the Uffizi and Ponte Vecchio on her way to class. Shelby has gotten involved in the community by volunteering for an organization that helps teach English to Italian children in interactive ways, and babysits for two little girls who she teaches English vocabulary by playing games and doing arts and crafts. She has also started an internship with Flash Giovani, a website that provides information about life and happenings in Bologna, helping with English translation and writing articles. She writes that, “I feel like a different person than who I was in June. I feel like I have a new sense of patience, understanding and empathy that comes with traveling and learning about a new place and culture.”