In my school I was doing something called European Youth Parliament and when I heard that I am one of the potential applicants for the Governor’s Institute of Vermont , I knew that this program would be an amazing chance for me to deepen my knowledge about the current issues of the world and be a much more effective debater.

Living in Vermont for 2 weeks was an amazing experience. Seeing that much green and meeting with the amazing, friendly New Englanders made me so happy and made these two weeks the best two weeks of my life. One day we went to a senior house in Brattleboro and we heard many stories about senior people’s lives. Watching them telling their stories with always a smiling face as they remembered those days like they happened yesterday and understanding how the world has changed since those days made me understand how important old people are. Also, when I wanted to capture a video of these stories conversations they made us sign some papers and I found that really interesting, because in Turkey, as you know, we usually don’t think about these little details. Unfortunately, after we signed the papers and captured the video, I lost my video camera while we were trying some African food in the Farmer’s Market 😀

I was one of the emcees of Open Mic Night and it was an amazing experience for me to experience the show world and I felt so happy and confident when I made people laugh with my jokes. I learned a long list of things in this camp. Team spirit, sharing, different cultures, supporting each other in any case, Native Americans, bad influences of the Olympic games, capitalism, climate change, critical situation in Zimbabwe, adaptive reuse, controlling your emotions, leadership and more. It was a great experience and I hope I will be able to see every single person in this camp again in my life.

Tamer Özgen

By U.S. Mission Turkey | 17 April, 2012 | Topics: Alumni