Two Semesters = A New Life Plan
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lse Malagamba’s family likes to travel: Europe, South America, the U.S. Originally from Mexico, Malagamba’s parents settled in the United States so their daughters could attend school here. She’s been on family trips abroad. Her parents set aside some money to allow their children to travel. Her older sister has lived and studied abroad for years. But the travel bug hadn’t really bit Malagamba, a junior Civil Engineering major. Her older sister Regina, who has lived in seven different countries, and was studying in Science Po, Paris, encouraged her to consider taking time away from her civil engineering program at UTSA to study abroad. “My sister pushed me to do it,” Malagamba said with a laugh. “I wanted to travel somewhere different and I have always been interested in Australia.” Malagamba started doing her research. She first considered Sydney. After talking to another UTSA student who had studied abroad in Sydney, she learned Sydney was a lot like the U.S. Malagamba wanted something different. Her sister suggested Melbourne, where a friend of hers at the Paris university was from. After talking with the friend, and reading up on the University of Melbourne, Malagamba knew she had found her study abroad destination. The University of Melbourne is one of Australia’s top universities, and has international scholars and Nobel Prize winners on its faculty. She could take core classes that would transfer into her civil engineering degree. “I started telling myself, my family, my friends, ‘I am going to go,’” she said. “There was no if. I was so determined; I did everything by myself.” “I wanted it to not be like America, and it wasn’t,” she said. She visited Cairns in Queensland on her breaks, wanting to explore as much of her adopted country as she could. She snorkeled at the Great Barrier Reef a week before her program started. While at the University of Melbourne,
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she lived in student housing as a way to make more Australian friends and immerse herself in the Australian college experience. Malagamba found it hard to make Aussie friends at first. She ended up hanging out with the European and other American international students, but when the Australian first semester started, she made lots of new Australian friends. In many cases, international or Australian, she was the first Mexican many of them had ever met. She was quizzed about both Mexico and the U.S., and cooked enchiladas for them. “We became like one big family,” she said. She roomed with Jess Wallace, an Australian from a small town near Melbourne. She spent Christmas with Wallace’s family. They had beach time for Christmas, and did a Christmas barbeque rather than your U.S. turkey. She taught them how to make S’mores. They all visited St. Philip’s Island to see penguins in their natural habitat. One of the big surprises came during her course on American Politics, which was taught by a British national. Malagamba was surprised at how much more informed her Australian classmates were about U.S. politics than she was. They watched Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” and while she had to explain some of the jokes, her Australian friends seemed to “get” U.S. politics more so than her or her American friends. “It was shocking to me that someone on the other side of the world knew more about U.S. politics than I did,” she explained. It pushed her to know more, and learn more about her home countries. She loved her time in Melbourne, and she plans to try and move back after graduation on a work visa. She credits studying abroad to help clarify what to do with her life. “It helps so much,” she said. “It helped me focus. So many people ask you where you are from, and why you are there, and what you are studying, and you have to answer it so many times, it makes you think about what you want to do, and why.”