On Friday, Jan 14, a group of 16 students led by professor Andrew Suderman and his wife prepared to leave campus. This group of people gathered outside of Eastern Mennonite University’s University Commons along with friends, family, and professors for their send-off before departing on EMU’s traditional Intercultural trip. They are going to South Africa, and they will be there for most of the semester. President Susan Huxman gave a blessing for their safe travels and a basket of cookies for the road. Intercultural Program Director Linda Burkholder said that this send-off happens for all intercultural trips at Eastern Mennonite University that occur during spring or fall semesters. Burkholder said that in the summertime, it can be tricky to hold the send-off, but they still send a prayer and cookies with them no matter what. 

The group then headed off to Washington, DC, where they stayed for about a week. Burkholder said, “They had to spend a week in the beginning and at the end in Washington DC because their travel Visa only lasts 90 days.” Burkholder said that, while in DC, they would be looking at race relations and the history of the civil rights movements in the United States. This is so they can then easier understand a system in another country and compare the racist apartheid system and current race relations in South Africa to what happened in the United States. Emma Nord, a sophomore on this trip, said, “we have gone to the national museum of American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, and had guided walking tours of monuments on the National Mall and of Georgetown.” Nord also mentioned that they did some things with the Washington Scholars house that EMU has in Washington. After they spent about a week in Washington, DC, they flew out of Dulles on Monday, the 23rd, and headed to Johannesburg, South Africa. According to the Intercultural website, they will be going all over the country but mainly to Johannesburg and Pietermaritzburg. They will be learning about what apartheid did to that country and how they tried to rebuild from that. In the words of Burkholder, “how do you rebuild a country after a tragedy like apartheid?” When Burkholder was asked about what some of the students said they were most looking forward to, she responded with, “Strangely enough, some of the students are really excited to meet penguins for the first time.”