Let’s do the time warp again.

No musical sing-a-longs, I promise, but I do want to talk about the three weeks we spent together as a class and the way it messed with my concept of time.

I think anyone who went to sleep-away camp as a kid would also be familiar with the way close living quarters and all day, every day “together time” can make three weeks seem like three months. And before you get the wrong idea -- I don’t mean in a bad way. The program was interesting and our group got along really well. Which is a little bit surprising considering that we were effectively nine strangers who found ourselves traveling in SE Asia together. That’s basically the premise for a reality TV show and we all know how those usually end…….

What messed with my concept of time was the amount of things we accomplished in such a short of amount of time. The class was only three weeks long, but since it was so jam-packed with classes and activities we covered much more ground than I expected. For example, our program started on a Tuesday and by that Thursday I could give you a concise history of Malaysian national politics since independence. By the next week, we were sitting in meetings with members of Parliament discussing Malaysia’s future. That is not the timeline of a normal class; which is one of the many reasons this program is so great. The sense of warp speed applied to my classmates as well. In the first two days of the program, the nine of us learned more about each other than I know about some of the people I went to all four years of undergrad with. And by the end of the first week I knew more about our group than I do about some former roommates!

I know everyone’s class schedule is different, but if you have the space, check this course out. If you’ve never been to SE Asia (like me) it is an excellent way to start learning about the region; if you are studying that part of the world already you will come away knowing more; and in either instance you’ll definitely make new friends.