Many people travel abroad with expectations of experiencing a way of life that is incredibly different from what they consider “normal”. While in Rwanda, every day presents a new reminder that I am not in America. And this is what I want, this is why I travel- to learn about and accept differences across the globe. However, I have also discovered when it comes down to the wire, people are people and we have much more in common than I’d realized.

Emotional maturity is listed as a pre-req for my Rwanda-based program and, considering I’ll be studying the aftermath of a genocide that took 800,000 victims in 100 days, it isn’t hard to see why.