By Alex Moore

Fall 2008 will arguably be the most exciting semester in the University’s history. But my thoughts will be far from Hofstra’s campus. For a full semester I will be backpacking through South-East Asia with a small group of students led by an organization called Youth International. And-fully contingent on Internet access-I will be reporting back to you through The Chronicle!

We will spend three months traveling through Thailand, India and Vietnam, seeing everything from the biggest, most global cities to the tiniest, most isolated villages.

Is this a study abroad? –Not in the typical sense.

Is this just a vacation? –Certainly not.

What is it, then?

It is an adventure.

The group will travel mostly by train, by bus and-lest we forget-by foot. We will explore on bicycle, touring the remains of Thailand’s ancient capital city of Ayuthaya. There will be three four-day treks: through the northern hills outside of Chiang Rai, Thailand, in the Himalayan foothills in Dharamsala, India, and between tribal villages in the mountains surrounding SaPa, Vietnam.

It is a hands-on learning experience.

The group will visit historical sites from the Grand Palace in Bangkok to the Ghandi Museum in Dehli and the Taj Mahal in Agra. In India’s Golden Temple, we will live with other “pilgrims” while learning about the Sikh faith. Next, in Daramsala, India, Tibetan families in exile will open their homes to us to enhance our understanding of Tibetan culture, history, and contemporary culture. From there we will attend a four-day meditation retreat practiced in Tibetan tradition. Later we will take part in workshops on sustainable living techniques including organic food production and natural building, and at a local NGO (non-governmental organization) we will be introduced to development issues faced in local “Adivasi,” or India’s indigenous, communities. As if all of those are not emersion enough, in Jaipur we will wake up to yoga classes, Hindi language lessons, and workshops in India’s traditional Batik art.

So-though I will not receive enough credits to even qualify myself as a part-time student-it will be a full-time learning experience.

It is a volunteer experience.

While living with local families over the course of the three months, we will teach English in local schools to young children. We will work together to construct a local community theater in India, and we will also work to reconstruct a home on Thailand’s island of Ko Lao, an island entirely wiped out by December 2004’s Tsunami.

All of this while you are back studying out of textbooks at Hofstra? You bet’cha. (Don’t worry: I’ll get mine, too, when I have to stay in college for an extra semester.)

My focuses at Hofstra as an undergraduate are global studies and photography. How will these be utilized, you ask? For global studies, see every above description to cover every definition of “global.” For photography, I will hopefully be sending a picture or two with my articles (again, dependent on internet access.) With that said, anticipate to be hearing from me again soon after my departure!

For more information on this program, Youth International, go to www.youthinternational.org or for the Asia program’s specific itinerary go to www.youthinternational.org/itineraryasia.aspx .