Hello everyone! This is an email that I was told to foward to my friends and family, so I thought I would post it here. Be forewarned, its VERY long!

Dear MSID students,

We would appreciate if you could forward this message to your parents
and to other friends and family members who might find it useful. I am
also attaching a Word version that will make for a more attractive
printout if you are able to retrieve it. Thanks very much.

Cordially,

The MSID staff
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Dear Friends or Family Members,

Your student is about to embark on an extraordinarily powerful
experience through Minnesota Studies in International Development
(MSID). It will be an exciting and challenging adventure.

We urge you to read carefully the Learning Abroad Center’s Friends and
Family Handbook,available on-line in easy-to-print PDF form at:

http://www.umabroad.umn.edu/academic/familyHandbook.pdf

Students have received lots of other information from MSID as well,
including two extensive MSID student handbooks: the MSID Program
Guideand the MSID Country Supplementfor Ecuador, Ghana, India, Kenya,
or Senegal. If you have not already seen them, you might wish to ask
your student to share them with you. They are also available online at
www.UMabroad.umn.edu. Find your student’s MSID program and then look
for the icon on the left sidebar.

We hope the Friends and Family Handbookanswers your most pressing
questions and provides useful advice. Because the Handbook is designed
for students participating in all study abroad programs offered through
our office, we wish here to add a few notes specific to MSID.

SUMMER READINGS

An extremely important part of MSID occurs before students leave US
shores. Assigned summer reading and writing projects are an integral
part of the fall semester courses.

TRAVELING TO AND FROM THE OVERSEAS SITE

Although students will be flying from different departure cities in the
United States, MSID has asked all of them to arrive together on the
same flight from a designated gathering point in the US or
Europe. Anyone unable to arrive on the plane with the others must meet
that plane when it arrives. MSID’s in-country staff will then be able
to meet all students at the airport and take them to their temporary
accommodations for the orientation period, after which students will
disperse to their homestays.

At the end of the program students need not return as a group. Many
will chose to travel first, and final destinations in the US will vary
from student to student. MSID has sent participants instructions
concerning their flight arrangements. Once students have purchased
their round-trip tickets, changes in return dates may involve a
surcharge. Changes in routes may either involve a surcharge or be
prohibited, depending on the particular fare. Most students have chosen
to book their flights through MSID’s travel agent, Village Travel.

VISITING OR TRAVELING WITH YOUR STUDENT

MSID requests your understanding and cooperation concerning the
following program regulations:

• Student Travel: Participating students must restrict recreational
travel to weekends, program breaks (see calendar above), or the period
following completion of the program.

• Visits from Friends and Family: If you plan to visit your student,
please limit your visit to program breaks. Any exceptions require
advance approval by the MSID office, the on-site internship supervisor,
and the in-country MSID administrative director. (Advance means before
the visitor has finalized travel plans.) If an exception is granted, it
must always be with the condition that the student will make up any
work time missed due to such a visit. In deference to cultural
attitudes in the host countries, unrelated visitors of the opposite sex
may not stay overnight in the student’s homestay, nor may students
receive them in their bedroom.

• Dates of program breaks: There is no break during fall semester, so
please delay any visit to your student should be delayed until December
18 or later. The following are the dates of breaks for students
enrolled in the academic year program:
- Ecuador: Dec 18-Jan 3, Feb 25-March 6, or after May 7
- Ghana: Dec 18-Jan 3, March 12-20, or after May 7
- India: Dec 18-Jan 2, March 26-April 3, or after May 7
- Kenya: Dec 18-Jan 2, March 12-20, or after May 7
- Senegal: Dec 18-Jan 2, April 2-10, or after May 7

COMMUNICATION

The Friends and Family Handbook contains considerable information about
communication. The following comments refer to MSID specifically:

• During the first phase of the in-country program in the fall,
students will be in the program headquarters city--Quito, Accra,
Jaipur, Nairobi, or Dakar--and will have access to telephones, fax, and
e-mail. Be aware, however, that communication systems are unreliable.
One letter may arrive in a week but the next may take a month. Your
phone call might reach your student immediately, or you might get a
week of busy signals. Computer breakdowns may suddenly cut off all
e-mail in a previously reliable system, and you are not likely to be
notified if your message did not get through. Postal, airline, or phone
strikes can grind all service to a halt. And despite all their
pre-departure promises, busy students in new and exciting surroundings
sometimes forget to write. Try to resist the impulse to think something
is wrong if you do not hear from your student.

• Communication is likely to be still more erratic after students go to
their field placements in November. Many students work in rural areas
where there is no e-mail, where phones are few and far between, and
where mail can move at a snail’s pace. You might find, therefore, that
you hear from your student mostly at the time of the midterm and final
seminars or during irregular errands in the city. Host families and
agencies will be looking out for their welfare on site, however, and
will immediately notify MSID staff at the headquarters city in case of
any problem. Similarly, the MSID staff can reach students in case of an
emergency back home.

EMERGENCIES

Our in-country staff will immediately contact MSID staff at the U of M
in an emergency. If you have reason to worry about your student’s
health or safety, please call or e-mail MSID rather than communicating
directly with in-country staff. We will in turn inquire for you.
Similarly, if you need to reach your student because of a family
emergency back home, please work through MSID. Call the Learning Abroad
Center at (612) 626-9000 and ask to speak with an MSID staff member. If
you call outside office hours you will hear instructions for reaching a
Learning Abroad Center staff member via a pager. Please use the pager
number only for genuine emergencies.

SAFETY

The Learning Abroad Center has taken several precautions to protect
students' safety. It subscribes to a service, which automatically sends
all updates of State Department travel advisories; any such advisory
affecting an MSID country is immediately e-mailed to the administrative
director for distribution to students. MSID has the home telephone
numbers of all overseas administrative and academic directors. Students
receive a safety orientation upon arrival in country, along with
instructions for what to do in an emergency, and are registered with
the US Embassy or Consulate. In case of political unrest or natural
disaster, MSID will be in close contact with the on-site staff, who
will also seek advice from US officials.

HEALTH

Every MSID participant is required to see a travel doctor or nurse
prior to departure to discuss and complete recommended immunizations.
Although the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
publish guidelines for immunizations and other health precautions for
travelers, only an individualized assessment can help the student
decide what to do to prepare. Usually a family physician lacks the
specialized knowledge to provide full travel information and advice.

The International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM) provides a listing
of its member clinics by state. For more information about ISTM or a
listing of clinics and doctors in your area, contact:

International Society of Travel Medicine
P.O. Box 871089
Stone Mountain, GA 30087-0028
Tel: (770) 736-7060; Fax: (770) 736-6732
E-mail: bcbistm@aol.com
World Wide Web: http://www.istm.org/disclinics.html

More information is available from CDC by calling (404) 332-4565. The
CDC Travel Health WWW Page is located at: http://www.cdc.gov/
travel/travel.html. Some immunizations need to be started months before
departure.

In order to minimize the need for on-site medical and dental expenses,
we suggest students see a doctor and a dentist to get any needed
treatment or preventive measures prior to their departure.

The MSID program fee includes health insurance for the period of
enrollment. Fall semester students are covered through December 31, and
academic year students are covered through May 31. MSID has sent
information on coverage to all participants. Students planning to
travel after the program concludes may extend coverage at their own
expense for up to one month; forms for this purpose are available form
the Learning Abroad Center. MSID recommends that students also assure
they can be covered upon return to the US. Be sure the home policy will
cover post-return treatment for accidents or illnesses contracted
overseas. (Some policies might deny coverage for these as “pre-existing
conditions.”) Insurance information was included in an earlier mailing
to students.

Health information is included in the various handbooks students have
received from our office. Students will receive additional health
information and advice upon arrival in country. If students need
medical attention while in country, an MSID staff member will assist
them.

University of Minnesota students should note that they are not
automatically covered by the Boynton Health plan while on a study
abroad program.

CULTURE SHOCK AND RE-ENTRY SHOCK

Because MSID students are so fully immersed in settings so different
from their own, the processes described in the Friends and Family
Handbooktend to be even more intense than for students studying in
Western Europe. The following are among the biggest issues:

• Poverty: Students live and work in the midst of poverty, and often
under Spartan conditions themselves. They may or may not have running
water or electricity, and even if they do, it might work only
sporadically. Diets may be weak in protein or vitamins because it is
less expensive to consume carbohydrates. Everything is used until it is
worn out, then re-used by someone else who is still poorer. A host
family may discourage a student from showering more than a minute or
two per day in order to conserve water, or from reading late at night
because of the energy that a light bulb consumes. Things that students
have always taken for granted suddenly become nearly unimaginable
luxuries.

• Affluence: If all the deprivation can be a source of frustration
during the adjustment process, its memory can also provoke a profound
sense of resentment at over-consumption and waste in American society
when students return. People here may seem to have far too much, and
their dissatisfaction about still not having enough may seem
incomprehensible.

• US influence: Students will have many opportunities to observe the
economic, political, and cultural roles the US and its corporations
play on the global stage. When viewed from the perspective of the poor
in their host countries, those roles often seem less than
constructive. Upon return to the US, many students feel resentful that
such issues trouble friends and family members less than they think
they should.

• Ignorance and distortion: The US media are another common target of
student resentment. Coverage of the rest of the world, when it exists
at all, may seem shallow and ethnocentric, and the depths of American
ignorance often seems appalling even to students who themselves were
equally ignorant of their future host country a scant year earlier.

• Social justice: The inequalities of the host societies are
impossible to hide from. They hit students in the face daily. Upon
return, students tend to be more attuned to see the inequalities in our
own society. They ask why so rich a country should have the most
inequitable distribution of income and wealth anywhere in the
industrialized world, and they may find it strange that others here can
be so oblivious to injustice. Many become more active in seeking social
change.

• Values and pace: The MSID experience leads many students to
re-examine their own values and lifestyle. Although the slow pace of
life in their host societies is initially frustrating, after they
finally do learn how just to be,rather than always needing to do,the
hectic pace of US life can be disconcerting. US society may seem
obsessed with productivity, leaving little time for cultivating the
human relationships that students have found so central to their host
cultures.

Although the intensity of such feelings can be disconcerting to those
who have stayed behind, you likely will also be delighted to see the
sorts of questions your returned MSID student, armed with new
perspectives, is now asking about him/herself and American society.

Eventually most returned students learn to make peace with their
surroundings, to retain some of the best of what they have learned
overseas while functioning effectively here and appreciating some of
the best in American society, but it can take time. Be patient, and
understand that what may seem to be angst is part of an important
growing process.

Your student will never be the same after MSID. We trust you will
celebratethe changes.

Sincerely,

The MSID staff