Hey! My name is Angela Baumgartner, and I am beginning my senior year at Augustana. I am majoring in biology with an emphasis on molecular biology, with hopes to pursue biomedical research in graduate school. I just spent my summer in Houston, Texas participating in a wonderful internship with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center researching breast cancer. During my study abroad term I will be traveling to Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico, and I will be tackling the challenge of learning Spanish for the first time! I am very excited for this once in a lifetime experience and to tell you all about it!
Ch-ch-changes.
Change is unavoidable. It can be good, it can be bad, it can be both. The key to change is whether you resist it or welcome it. I know I have welcomed changed on this trip, but how? I can do my best to answer now, but at this moment I don’t feel I can [...]
Posted on November 2nd, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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¡Bienvenido a México!
We finally made it to Mexico, marking the last few weeks of our trip here in Latin America. I am already really excited to get home because I miss it and the people so much, but at the same time I am enjoying my time here, so I think I’m in a good situation. Another [...]
Posted on November 2nd, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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Toto…I have a feeling we’re back in Kansas?
By the beginning of October we’d been traveling around South America for over a month and so far everything had been vastly different from the United States. None of the major stores, products, restaurants, or fast food places have been spotted, except for the occasional McDonalds, Coca-cola, Doritos, and Oreos. Whenever we would see something [...]
Posted on November 2nd, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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The top of the world has butterflies.
Wow. I was just on top of the world. Literally. It was so amazing that I am still a little awestruck. It’s so hard to describe something that you have to feel and experience for yourself to understand the magnitude of it, but I am going to try. One of the things I was looking [...]
Posted on November 2nd, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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The Rain Forest.
Although I have been traveling around South America for about 7 weeks now, I still feel like this isn’t my life. It seems so surreal to be telling people back home about all my experiences. This is the kind of thing you only hear about…one of my recent captivating mind-blowing experiences was the time I [...]
Posted on October 18th, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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Getting Sick in a Foreign Country.
Last spring Dr. Bertsche said that ALL of us were going to get sick at some point in time while on this trip—foreign travel has not only risks, but some inevitability. I didn’t believe him because I rarely get sick and was convinced that I have a super-human immune system. Whelp, with my foot in [...]
Posted on October 9th, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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The Family Concept.
My Ecuadorian host family taught me a great deal about the meaning of family from the perspective of another culture. My experience not only altered my view of Ecuadorian culture, but it also gave me a new perspective on what family is to people of the United States.
Posted on October 9th, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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I’m still here!!
Holy cow, it’s been too long since my last post! I’ve been so caught up in the stress of finals and papers, and in the excitement of our travels in Perú, that I haven’t had much time for posting. Let me get you caught up to date with a few posts to make up for [...]
Posted on October 9th, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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Top 10.
Top 10 Things I Miss About Living in the United States 10. American football: Some of my friends went to a sports bar to try and watch the Bears play the Packers, but the game wasn’t on any of the channels. I’m sort of glad I didn’t see it, though, because it sounded painful for [...]
Posted on September 16th, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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A Shower for the Soul.
I have recently discovered that there are some types of body cleansing that may require one to take a shower afterward. Sound like a confusing form of logic? Keep reading and you’ll understand. Last weekend half of the Augie students here in Ecuador went on a weekend trip to Saraguro, a smaller town that has [...]
Posted on September 11th, 2009 by angela-baumgartner
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