The Wake

The school year is coming to a close, and as many Superblock residents reflect on their “first-year experience” they will find that it may or may not have included those four activities. Lindsey Rae Palmer, who opted to spend her first year out of high school volunteering in Peru, found that her unconventional first-year experience did in fact include those jaunts.

After graduating from Washburn High School in Minneapolis in 2005, Palmer ditched promises of freshmen dorm life to jet off to an old Incan city in the Andes. Admitted to the University, Palmer decided instead to volunteer to teach English in Ayacucho, Peru with Cross Cultural Solutions (CCS), a volunteer abroad program.

“I knew I wanted to do volunteer work somewhere and experience life on my own for a bit [before going to college],” Palmer says. Hoping to travel to New Orleans to help in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, Palmer stumbled onto CCS’s Web page and “just felt drawn to Peru,” she says. “Three days later I hopped onto a plane.”

She spent three months in Peru teaching English, working at a home for the elderly, playing with children at an orphanage, helping children at a special needs school and visiting women and their children at a prison before returning to Minneapolis last November. Smitten, Palmer couldn’t stay home long. “I fell in love with the country, the culture and the language, so I decided to return two months later [in January],” she explains. This time she traveled, unconnected to any organization, with her roommate from the CCS house to Lima, Peru—with plans to stay through August.

Working with CCS was an “amazing and eye-opening experience,” Palmer says, but she wanted to try being “independent of the program.” During this trip, she is volunteering as an English tutor and working with a program she began while traveling with CCS—an export embroidery business for women in a Peruvian prison.

Though volunteering keeps her busy, Palmer says her days are less structured now that she is traveling independently. “The idea of an ‘average day,’ by definition, does not exist in my life over here,” she says. “I get up some days and go to the beach, take a walk in the city, go for a jog or sometimes have teaching appointments.”

Like some go-getting university students who make time for intramurals, Palmer too dabbles in alternative sports. When traveling through a desert south of Lima, Palmer and some friends from California decided to try “sand boarding.” Palmer cites the experience as one of her fondest memories. “We rented a sand buggy, which looks like a tricked out golf cart,” she explains, “and drove through the huge sand mounds until we found a steep hill. We would then take our, also rented, snowboards and … you get the idea.”

A less affectionate recollection of her travels, Palmer says, was becoming sick after eating a local dish with an unacquainted stomach. (Some dorm residents—unprepared for the all-you-can-eat vibe of the cafeterias—may have similar memories.) Palmer’s culprit was cebiche, which is a traditional Peruvian dish composed of raw fish, marinated in lime, salt and onion. “Absolutely delicious,” she says, “but deadly to an unaccustomed stomach. For your sake, I won’t include the details.”

Palmer’s experience can be likened to typical college students on the home front in other ways as well. She spends many of her nights clubbing, she says. “I love to salsa, although I’m horrible at it!” she says. Also, like many freshman, Palmer is experiencing her first year away from home. “That, in and of itself, is its own life adjustment,” she says. She is also meeting people from all over the world, who come and go through the youth hostel she is staying in.

Though Palmer isn’t actually studying abroad nor earning college credit, “by default I am learning tons of Spanish!” she says. “I am learning here from life experience much more than I could ever get out of a text book,” she explains.

Though Palmer says she is not homesick or ready to come back to the States, she is anxious to begin her college career this fall. “I am excited in a sense, but I am also afraid of getting back into the routine of typical American culture,” she explains.

“As cliché as this sounds, I hope to come back with a better understanding of myself and the world,” Palmer says. She does plan to volunteer abroad again sometime as well. “It is an aspect of ignorance that can’t be broken without stepping outside of your immediate reality … a highly underrated life experience that everyone should have,” she explains.

While some students are hunting for internships or jobs, registering for more courses or banking on relaxing at home, those panicking because they haven’t decided what to do with their summer yet should remember Palmer registered to go abroad three days before hightailing a jet to Peru.