Adiah Hicks
Adiah Hicks went to Tokyo, Japan for four weeks through the CIEE Summer Japanese Studies Program at Sophia University. While in Japan, she studied Japanese politics and pop culture. Adiah went out of her way to talk to some of the local people and explore as much of Tokyo as possible by purposely getting herself lost and using every opportunity to strike up a conversation. She also participated in several cultural activities such as a tea ceremony, ikebana (flower arrangement), and the Tanabata festival; Adiah also attended a kabuki performance and visited Shinto and Buddhist shrines. In her politics class, Adiah studied the current political system of Japan and was even able to visit and take a tour of the National Diet Building, the home of the Japanese Legislature. Along with having made numerous connections with people from Japan, the U.S, and other countries, this trip has renewed her passion for Japanese language and culture; it has been an experience that she will use as a building block for her future endeavor to work for the United States government in Japan.
Our CEE was called Women Obtaining Wellness (WOW). It was a three hour program that was split into three parts. Each part was representative of an aspect of women's health that the members of the Arcadia University branch of the 2013 Cohort deemed necessary for discussion. Our aim was to teach the women in our community, mostly college students, about different ways to take care of themselves. We wanted to make our program very interactive in order to make sure that everyone was involved n the learning process. The first hour was dedicated to physical health. For this, we played a jeopardy game with questions based off of information we obtained from the campus wellness services and some of our own research into health issues related to the countries we visited. Next we had a short workout session where everyone learned some simple exercises that can be done anywhere. The second hour was dedicated to mental health, particularly self-esteem. We had a counselor come in and talk about what good self-esteem looks like and we discussed the challenges to our self-esteem that are posed by the media. In the final hour we learned a few self-defense moves that can be used when you are under attack. We made sure to provide information packets and references to supplement the discussion topics and give a more in depth look into the issues we had touched upon.