Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - "This trip has helped in many ways. I gained self-confidence from all the traveling and being away from home for three straight months. I will definitely include this trip on future resumes, and I can some day share my experiences abroad in the classroom when I become a teacher," said John Leuck, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville who studied in London, England, during the fall 2005 semester.

Leuck decided to study abroad in London as a middle level education major with an English education minor. "My main objective was to see and experience some of the world outside of the United States. I grew up on a dairy farm and have been accustomed to small-town life, so I figured living in the London area would be a big change. For the first month, I never left the city limits," explained Leuck.

He added, "The idea of attending classes in a foreign country was also appealing to me. I thought it would be an interesting experience to be a college student in another country. I kept my workload light, not choosing the most difficult classes because I knew I would be doing a lot of traveling. I was happy for the most part with my choice of classes. If I could do it again, I might take a History of the English Language course, an upper level class. I am pursuing an English minor, and to take that course in England would have been very appropriate."

For much of Leuck's trip, he lived with Geri and Doreen Kingston, a host family. He described them: "They were an older couple and they had twin daughters who had already moved out and graduated from law school. Doreen worked from home in an office in the garden behind the house doing secretarial work, so I saw her quite a lot. Geri had an office in the city where he did survey work, and I rarely saw him. Doreen always made sure I had enough food for breakfast and she even did my laundry, which was more than expected. She was easy to talk to and we had some nice conversations. I shared the third floor of their house with another exchange student from Italy, Laura. She was fun to talk to, and it was nice having someone of my age living in the house. She spoke English well but was also fluent in Spanish, German and Italian."

Leuck was amazed at how cheaply and easily travel could be arranged to other European countries while in London. He said, "I became much more comfortable planning trips and traveling to foreign places in general. On Thanksgiving, I went to The Netherlands with a good friend who I went to high school with. He and I took a train from London to Maastricht and met up with another friend who went to high school with us our senior year. He was a foreign exchange student from Germany at our high school and became a good friend of ours. We spent the weekend with him and some of his friends and family. He took us to Cologne and showed us some of the sites, including an 800-year-old cathedral, a couple of very old breweries and a chocolate factory on the Rhine River."

During another weekend, Leuck and a couple of his American friends decided to visit Spain. "We found a really good all-inclusive deal to a four-star hotel located close to the beach of the Mediterranean Sea. Tourist season was almost over because it was the end of October and the weather wasn't quite as warm. Nevertheless, we were able to lie on the beach, eat and drink whatever we wanted and take a day trip to Barcelona. In Barcelona, we walked around some of the city and got to see inside the 1992 Olympic stadium," Leuck described.

About his trip to Rome, Italy, he said, "I thought Rome was a beautiful city with so much history and art. I wish I had reviewed some Roman history before going because I didn't know what I was looking at half the time. I was able to go inside St. Peter's Basilica and climbed the steps to the top of the dome for an amazing view of the city. As a Catholic, this was extremely meaningful to me."

Leuck concluded, "After I came back from my study abroad experience, I feel more connected with a larger part of the world. I feel like I have a better understanding of England and Europe in general, but I keep in mind that there is still a lot of the world I have not experienced. I still keep in contact on almost a weekly basis with people that I have met from England, Germany and Italy, and they don't seem so foreign. Nothing seems quite so foreign now that I've traveled outside the U.S.

"Before I went to England, I had a very limited vision of what it might be like. I was actually surprised how much American influence I saw with fast food restaurants, Hollywood actors on TV and American singers on the radio. Don't get me wrong; every day I was reminded I was not at home like every time I used some form of public transportation (trains, planes, taxis, buses, subways, etc.) rather than my own car or every time I heard someone talk. I could go on and on about the similarities and differences, but in general things weren't as different as I imagined. They may speak different languages, have older buildings and eat different food, but they are just regular people trying to make a living and be successful like we are in the U.S."

Anyone interested in the Fiji trip or in any other study abroad opportunities may contact Donna Anderson, director of the UWP Institute for Study Abroad, at (608) 342-1727 or anderdon@uwplatt.edu

Contact: Donna Anderson, director, UWP Institute for Study Abroad, (608) 342-1727,anderdon@uwplatt.edu Prepared by: April Schmidt, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, schmidap@uwplatt.edu