Chelsey Goetz | Staff Writer
Spring break is a week that may be filled with white sandy beaches, Easter with the family, or an Alternative Week of Off-Site Learning (AWOL) trip with Buena Vista University (BVU). But for 12 BVU students and two professors, spring break will be spent in a country known as one of the most secretive civilizations in the world: North Korea.
On March 23, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Business Timothy McDaniel and Associate Professor of Psychology Wind Goodfriend will be traveling with BVU students to the Asian country. It has been a trip the two of them have been planning for over a year now. It’s been a careful process of planning the itinerary with the North Korean government, keeping up to date with recent news, and even traveling to North Korea to scout the area.
“Our point in going to North Korea beforehand was to confirm that one, it would be safe to travel there, and two, North Korea is such an interesting and unique place that we thought it would be very beneficial for our students to experience it,” McDaniel said.
After their trip, the two professors immediately went to work. During the process, one of the major problems they faced was the number of students they could take on the trip. Since they could only take so many, the professors asked students to apply and interview for the opportunity to travel to North Korea. McDaniel and Goodfriend chose 12 students.
“We interviewed well over 20 students, and it was one of the toughest decisions of our academic lives on who take because they were all excellent students,” McDaniel said.
This past semester, these 12 students have been attending weekly class sessions to learn about the history and culture of North Korea. They have also learned about what to expect and prepare for in this very mysterious country. Students read a book, worked on focused group projects, and even interviewed a prisoner of war veteran from the USS Pueblo of 1968 via Skype according to senior physics major Karl Ahrendsen.
With the trip being only a few days away, plans have fallen nicely into place. The trip will start out in China for two days where they have the opportunity to spend the night on the Great Wall and go tobogganing down it the next day. After China, they will travel to North Korea where they are tentatively planned to see student-interested fields like hospitals, museums, and historical sites.
Ahrendsen described what he hopes to gain from this experience.
“The biggest thing I hope to gain is a greater appreciation that we live in the United States of America with all of these freedoms that we just take for granted. Also, I want to gain a perceptive on the different lifestyle they have there. North Korea is going to be a completely different personality than what we are used to when traveling to different countries so it is going to very interesting to experience those things firsthand,” Ahrendsen said.
Goodfriend, McDaniel, and the 12 students will leave for China and North Korea on Saturday, March 23 and come back on Wednesday, April 3.
Graphic by Keyla Sosa
