{"id":5994,"date":"2019-05-18T09:51:37","date_gmt":"2019-05-18T13:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=5994"},"modified":"2025-08-23T16:30:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T20:30:26","slug":"from-maine-to-tanzania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2019\/05\/18\/from-maine-to-tanzania\/","title":{"rendered":"From Maine to Tanzania"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Michaela Therrien looks up at her final slide, clearly missing Tanzania.<\/p><\/div>\n

When students get the chance to study abroad, they may go to England, France or even Germany.\u00a0 For Michaela Therrien, she and her classmate Lauren went with their professor, Shirley Rush, to Tanzania. \u201cFor junior year, we have to do 200 volunteer hours and I decided to go to Tanzania because Shirley has been taking students since 2016,\u201d Michaela said.\u00a0 Tanzania is a country located in eastern Africa.\u00a0 \u201cI wanted to experience something interesting.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been out of the country and I wanted to because we volunteered in an orphanage for seven weeks.\u00a0 So, I wanted that experience,\u201d Michaela said. <\/p>\n

Michaela\u2019s presentation had a variety of pictures that she took while she was in Tanzania.\u00a0 She had photos of the family she stayed with and the children she volunteered with at the orphanage.\u00a0 \u201cI had to fundraise a lot of money to go.\u00a0 I saved a lot of money.\u00a0 I asked family and friends to help out and I did fast cash fundraisers here.\u00a0 We did a bunch of things to fundraise money for my trip,\u201d Michaela said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my goodness.\u00a0 When Michaela told me she wanted to go to Tanzania, you could have pushed me over with a feather, because I didn\u2019t think she would do it,\u201d Shirley Rush, Michaela\u2019s mentor, said.\u00a0 Shirley has been bringing students over to Tanzania for their volunteer hours.\u00a0 She believes that Michaela\u2019s presentation was very meaningful.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s speaking from her own experience and so she\u2019s going to draw those connections like how we are, what are the similarities here and there,\u201d Shirley said.<\/p>\n

Throughout her presentation, Michaela gave plenty of information on Tanzania and the culture over there.\u00a0 She described how something as small as a cell phone was huge over there.\u00a0 She celebrated her birthday there and learned the culture of celebrating a birthday.\u00a0 She also experienced Ramadan.\u00a0 When Michaela described the photos of her holding babies, she giggled because it brought her happiness.\u00a0 \u201cBefore I went over there, I had never cared for a baby.\u00a0 By the end of it, I was holding five babies at a time,\u201d Michaela told the crowd.\u00a0 The biggest achievement Michaela received from going over there was something she didn\u2019t expect.\u00a0 \u201cI found what I want to do with my life, so I found my life purpose when I went over there.\u00a0 I want to give back to the community and that was my favorite part about going there. \u00a0It was a very positive impact on my life.\u00a0 It changed my life.\u00a0 It brought me happiness.\u00a0 It gave me the title of my presentation: Finding My Voice in Tanzania. So I found my voice there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michaela graduates this year and she has already started to make plans.\u00a0 \u201cI want to move to Tanzania,\u201d Michaela said.\u00a0 Michaela was very emotional during her presentation because Tanzania has become her home away from home.\u00a0 \u201cYou can see why it\u2019s hard to come home,\u201d Shirley said.\u00a0 Shirley plans to take more students over to Tanzania this year so that they can complete their volunteer hours.\u00a0 As for Michaela, she is already starting her plans to go back to her home away from home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When students get the chance to study abroad, they may go to England, France or even Germany.\u00a0 For Michaela Therrien, she and her classmate Lauren went with their professor, Shirley Rush, to Tanzania. \u201cFor junior year, we have to do 200 volunteer hours and I decided to go to Tanzania because Shirley has been taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8438,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5994\/revisions\/8438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}