Princeton, NJ 08544
Phone: 609.258.3657
Email: pia@princeton.edu
www.princeton.edu/~pia
PACIFIC BRIDGES
NEWSLETTER OF PRINCETON IN ASIA FALL 2018 ISSUE
MILESTONES:
120 years of Princeton in Asia
5 years in Sri Lanka 20 years in Laos 50 years in Indonesia
55 years in Hong Kong 60 years in Japan + more
50 years in Indonesia: a retrospective
a reflection on PiA’s 50 years in Indonesia p.
Josh
tales from a life in Thailand
Morris: PiA alumna Kerrie Mitchell (Malaysia ‘97) pens 6-9 PiA Fellow Liam Reilly (Korea ‘18) interviews Josh Morris (Thailand ‘99) about his 19 years in Thailand & his role in the Tham Luang Cave Rescue p. 10-11VOICES FROM THE FIELD
REFLECTIONS & PHOTOS FROM PiA FELLOWS IN THE FIELD
“I’ve never felt love like the kind I received from my students. You know how in the Dr. Seuss story, ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas,’ how the Grinch hears the people singing even after he took all of their toys and the food for the feast, and his heart grows several sizes in his chest? That’s how I feel right now. I’m not saying my heart was small when I came here, but after saying goodbye to my students for the last time, turning off the lights and walking out of our classroom for the last time, I just felt so overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of love I received from my students these past few weeks. There were so many heartfelt letters and so many tears, my heart had no choice but to grow in order to contain all of these emotions.”
“I am loving my time in Bangalore! The city is always bustling and there is so much to see and explore. Moving to India has not come without its challenges, but I’m learning so much and gaining more confidence in my ability to navigate life here each day. My work with Dream a Dream is exciting and challenging. I have my own project in which I am planning and creating a crowdfunding donation campaign for India’s Daan Utsav (Joy of Giving) week. I’m drafting emails, creating communications calendars, assisting with video editing, planning events, etc. My work requires me to collaborate with almost all the teams in our office, which means I get to learn about every aspect of our organization in the process. I cannot wait to experience and grow even more in the nine months to come.”
“Yamaguchi City is true to its name—it’s surrounded by mountains. They’re beautiful and imposing and they trap in the humidity in the summer and are changing colors now that it’s autumn and on foggy mornings they emerge from the mist like history. When I tell people I find them amazing (I’ve never lived near mountains before), people laugh, because for them, those peaks are an ordinary part of the landscape, persistent sentinels on a familiar horizon—the comfortable silhouette of home. I wonder all the time whether I’ll ever find the mountains normal, and whether I even want to.”
“I am half-Vietnamese, so I grew up speaking Vietnamese at home with my family. Being able to speak the language helps me connect with my local colleagues on a deeper level – whether it’s understanding their sense of humor or having the ability to understand things they want to say but can’t express in English. Everyone has a good grasp of English and is just as kind and welcoming to Fellows who don’t speak Vietnamese. All of our work is in English since we are constantly interacting with staff across all our country offices. ”
“The purpose of the field visit was to train private healthcare providers from pharmacies and clinics in Luang Prabang, Oudomxay, Luangnamtha, Phongsaly, and Xayabury on how to detect, test for, and treat malaria using rapid diagnostic tests and antimalarial drugs. I was no use in this regard because of my Lao ability, so for most of the training, I busied myself with any number of organizing tasks. I was useful, however, as a ‘patient’ for providers to practice blood testing on. At the end of each training I wrote trip reports. Outside of the trainings, I learned some useful Lao, got to know the members of my team better, and ate all sorts of foods, including but not limited to hornet larvae, goat liver, bamboo worms, & buffalo laab. We also took some time to explore the region and went hiking in this amazing forest reserve called Namkat Yorla Pa, which uses ecotourism as a model for preservation.”
VOICES FROM THE FIELD VOICES FROM THE FIELD
Nell Ovitt, Yamaguchi University Yamaguchi City, Japan
Christopher Wilks, Summer of Service Jishou, China
Trisha Chaudhary, Dream a Dream Bangalore, India
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“I just feel so overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of love I received from my students these past few weeks... my heart had no choice but to grow in order to contain all of these emotions...”Jimmy Tang, Asia Injury Prevention Foundation Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Samuel Haddad, Population Services International Vientiane, Laos
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photo 1: Tushita Foundation Fellows Victoria Lord and CJ Bellucci-DiLizia in Jaipur, India; photo 2: Program Director Audrey Jenkins and 2nd year Fellow Harris Risell at Soc Trang Community College in Soc Trang, Vietnam; photo 3: Viet Nam News Fellow Zander Guzy-Sprague at his desk in Hanoi, Vietnam
UPDATE FROM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MAGGIE DILLON
A WORD FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
In 2018, PiA celebrated several important milestones: from 120 years of PiA to 55 years in Hong Kong, and from 20 years in Laos to five years in Sri Lanka. This year of milestones provided us with an opportunity to recognize many special individuals and communities who have shaped PiA. We are excited to continue that celebration in Pacific Bridges with two features: a look back at the history of PiA’s Indonesia program, penned by alumna Kerrie Mitchell (Malaysia ’97) in celebration of PiA’s 50th anniversary in Indonesia, and a profile of PiA alumnus, partner, and safety advisor Josh Morris (Thailand ’99), penned by current Fellow Liam Reilly (Korea ’18).
INDIA
After a five-year hiatus, we have relaunched programming in India, with four Fellows serving three partner organizations in Jaipur, Mumbai, and Bangalore. This fall, I traveled to India with Natalia Rodrigues, Director of Alumni Relations and Program Director for India and Sri Lanka, who has built the program over the past 18 months. We spent two days at the Tushita Foundation in Jaipur, where we saw Victoria Lord’s students learn about macronutrients and CJ Bellucci-DiLizia’s students test their photography skills. We went to Mumbai to visit Reva Abrol at the IDFC Institute, an economic development-focused think/do tank and learned about her research on data governance and traffic patterns. Finally, we went to Bangalore and learned about Trisha Chaudhary’s development efforts at Dream a Dream, a nonprofit supporting youth development. In Bangalore, we also caught up with PiA Emeritus Trustee Ruth Stevens, who is a guest professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. The visit was inspiring, and we are excited about our future opportunities to grow and develop our program in India. If you’re interested in helping us, please be in touch!
ALUMNI NETWORK ACTIVITIES & RECRUITMENT
Our Alumni Network Chapters are thriving, with Alumni Leaders bringing the PiA community together across nine cities in the US and Asia for Fellow send-off and re-entry events, as well as social, cultural, and community engagement activities. And, on November 8th, 115+ PiAers gathered for a set of 15 simultaneous hosted dinners in eight cities across four countries –from Kazakhstan to the USA. This event, spearheaded by Trustee Austin Arensberg (Thailand ’06) and made possible by the generosity of the 21 individuals who welcomed the PiA family into their homes, is the broadestreaching alumni event in PiA’s history. And, it doesn’t stop there. Alumni volunteered their time this fall by hosting information sessions at 20 institutions in 18 locations around the country. Their efforts are the reason why PiA has once again broken the record for applications received. This year, nearly 700 new applicants have thrown their hats into the ring (representing a 6.5% increase over last year’s numbers) – a clear sign that our mission is resonating.
A FOND FAREWELL TO DIRECTOR OF ASIA OPERATIONS & DEPUTY DIRECTOR ALEX JONES
After eight years of service to PiA – first as a Fellow, then as a Program Director, and finally as Director of Asia Operations and Deputy Director – Alex Jones will be trading in his fox-fur adventure hat for a beret, as he pursues an MBA at INSEAD in Singapore. Alex’s journey with PiA began in 2010, when he was a PiA Fellow in Maolan village in Yunnan Province, China. Alex taught middle school English for two years through a partnership with Teach for China. When he wasn’t in the classroom, he was busy sharpening his Chinese language skills,
INTRODUCING NEW PROGRAM DIRECTOR: MEGHANA NERURKAR
playing basketball under the stars, and cultivating a sense of creative, calm wisdom that made him an outstanding team member at PiA. Over six and a half years as a team member, Alex did it all. He stewarded partnerships in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, Singapore, Mongolia, East Timor, Sri Lanka, and Laos. He launched innovative new posts with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (China), the Dunhuang Academy (China), the Milken Institute (Singapore), and Marie Stopes International (East Timor), among others. He relaunched partnerships with the University of Macau, after a nearly 20-year hiatus, as well as with Tunghai University, our oldest existing partner, after a nearly 30-year hiatus. He played lead roles in our Theory of Change and Strategic Planning processes, helped to launch the Program Committee of the Board of Trustees, and led the staff side of PiA’s efforts to build a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system. As Director of Asia Operations, he took the lead in managing health, safety, and security crises over a period of three and a half years.
And, he selected and supported Fellows and Interns – lots of them: 264, or 8.5% of all Princeton in Asia Fellows ever, to be precise. But I imagine that what we’ll all remember most about Alex are the less glamorous things he did behind the scenes, and always with a smile: 7AM coffee runs at Wawa, meeting a team member traveling to Beijing for the first time at the airport at 2AM, schlepping bags of Panera bagels to interviews during
an ice storm, painting and gifting watercolor scenes to the team just because. It has been a privilege to work with Alex, and as we wish him the best on the next chapter of his journey, we thank him for the countless late nights, early mornings, and every day in between he dedicated to making PiA a better organization.
Alex will be passing the Director of Asia Operations torch to Ben Van Son (Cambodia ’14-’15), who for the past year has been serving as Program Director for Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Carriebright fellowship. We encourage all of you to stop by the PiA Singapore office at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where we’re celebrating 25 years of partnership, to visit with Ben, Natalia, and Audrey! And, we’re thrilled to introduce our newest team member, Meghana Nerurkar (Macau SAR ’17), who will be managing PiA’s program in Greater China.
There are a lot of great things happening at PiA – and you are the people who make it possible. We thank you for all you have done and continue to do to support our ever urgent mission, and as we wrap up our celebration of 120 years of PiA, we look forward to the next 120 with hope, confidence, and appreciation of the important role we have to play in making a more peaceful and harmonious world.
Yours sincerely,
Maggie Dillon (Laos ‘10-’13) Executive DirectorINTRODUCING PiA’S NEWEST TEAM MEMBER: MEGHANA NERURKAR
大家好! My name is Meghana Nerurkar, and I am thrilled to be a new Program Director for Princeton in Asia.
Where did my journey to PiA begin? Maybe with the bedtime classics of my childhood. Adventure stories are resonant, none more so than one in which a humble hobbit who loves food and cheer feels a sudden calling to see the wide world. That calling became mine. It led me to study Chinese politics and culture in university, to study abroad in Beijing, and to accept a PiA fellowship at University of Macau.
The fellowship immersed me in Macau’s vibrant blend of cultures and languages. The island is a global city that feels like a small town: the casinos may outdo Las Vegas, but you’ll always run into friends at the grocery store or the milk tea stand. Coming into a dense metropolis, I was constantly struck by how generous our Macau community was, wholeheartedly inviting my co-fellow and me into their busy lives. Their kindness and wisdom saw me through cultural misunderstandings, bouts of homesickness, and the occasional typhoon. With so many supporters, I simply had to learn more, share more, do more, and of course, eat more.
My journey is bringing me back to my Jersey roots, but all wanderers return home with new perspective. I cherish the bagels and fall colors here more deeply, but I also long for Portuguese cafes and giant spreads of mouthwatering dim sum. Most of all, I miss my friends, both those in Macau and the wonderful PiAers who I met across Asia. I’m so glad my path led me to you.
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FEATURE: 50 YEARS IN INDONESIA: A RETROSPECTIVE
FEATURE: 50 YEARS IN INDONESIA: A RETROSPECTIVE
50 YEARS IN INDONESIA:
A RETROSPECTIVE
by: Kerrie Mitchell (Malaysia ‘97)Princeton in Asia alum Jonathan Weiss (1998) still remembers his first moments in Indonesia in the fall of 1998. Another PiA Fellow picked him up from the airport in Yogyakarta on her motorbike. “I’d never ridden a motorcycle before, so I don’t even know how we got my luggage back to the house,” says Weiss, who’s now a health care consultant in Minneapolis. “I remember being on the back of that little moped, flying through the darkness in the tropical heat. It was all very exciting—to be cast into this foreign situation, not knowing much of the language, knowing I was going to be teaching people. I had no idea what I had just gotten myself into.”
It’s a striking memory that many Indonesia alumni will appreciate. PiA Fellows have been in the South East Asian country on and off for half a century now, through some of the more tumultuous years in its history. In all, 111 people have worked in Indonesia through PiA, serving universities, NGOs and businesses in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Banda Aceh, and Bandung, among other cities. As we celebrate the Indonesia program’s 50th anniversary, we wanted to go back to some of the alums who lived and worked in Indonesia through the decades, to see what brought them there and to reflect on the memories they took with them when they left. They offer a remarkable portrait of a turbulent, rapidly developing country, a Muslim-majority nation that constantly manages to attract visitors with its contradictions, beauty, and diversity. “One reason that a lot of foreigners keep getting drawn back into Indonesia once they’ve gone is because it’s a country that has so many different worlds in it,” says Sean Massa (2015), now a graduate student at Yale. Author and journalist Ted Fishman (1980) echoes the sentiment: “I still feel like I’ve not traveled enough in the country, even though I’ve been to places all over. It’s endless.”
PiA first sent a Fellow in 1968, only a few years after a violent transition in the country that had seen the overthrow of the first president, Sukarno, and subsequent mass killings that left at least half a million Indonesians dead. Paul Minault (1968) arrived in the fall of that year to teach English at the University of Jakarta as part of a one-year fellowship funded by the Ford Foundation. He had written his Princeton senior thesis on Indonesia, but his real reason for taking the job was a more practical one: Graduation meant facing the Vietnam War-era draft. “In those days, you could get a teaching deferment,” he says. “So when I heard about a teaching possibility in Indonesia, that was a double whammy, because I’d studied Indonesian politics, and it got me out of the draft.”
His first impressions were of a country still vibrating with political tensions.
“There were army and police walking around town with machine guns, and there were members of the military in the main square in the capital,” he says. “I never talked politics with anybody there—they wouldn’t have given you a straight answer anyway, and you would’ve put them in an uncomfortable position.”
He also remembers being struck by the poverty of Jakarta. “On the streets there’d be oxcarts and peddle driven pedicabs, buses, people driving vehicles of all sizes and shapes—it was chaos,” he says.
wrote Northrop, who now directs a sustainable development grantmaking program in New York. “It seems incredible looking back.”
Modern conveniences were limited. “There were so few TVs. If somebody had one, they would position it so you could see it from the front window, and then all the neighbors outside would look through the window,” said Minault, now a retired environmental attorney in the Bay Area.
For his first year, Minault lived in relative comfort in housing provided by the Ford Foundation. Other early Fellows also started off in university or western-style housing, before opting to move to Indonesian-centric kampungs. Josh Scodel (1979), for instance, moved into a boarding house for Indonesian students in Yogyakarta that was owned by an army officer, where he lived with an older Christian man and a younger devout Muslim who didn’t much like Americans.
“One of the striking things about Java [the most populous island in Indonesia and home to Jakarta and Yogyakarta] were the large variety of different perspectives people had,” says Scodel, who’s now a professor at the University of Chicago. “People weren’t necessarily open about their political or religious views. Nevertheless, you got that indirectly.”
Michael Northrop (1982) also lived in a kampung for awhile before losing the lease and moving back near the university in Yogyakarta. “We knew absolutely nothing about Indonesia when we arrived except what we’d read in a Frommer’s guide on the way there,”
Laura Cooley (1983) valued her living experience away from the expat enclaves in Yogyakarta. “It really made me understand more about the Javanese and how they live,” says Cooley, who now works in public health at the University of Washington. “There’s this Javanese approach called gotong royong — loosely translated it means mutual cooperation. I remember using a well for the first time, and I was very clumsy at getting water out and my neighbor, the wife of a rice farmer, taught me how to do that. Or if I left laundry out on the line and took a nap during the typical afternoon of rain during the rainy season, I might come out afterwards to find my laundry neatly put into a basket and protected.”
Fishman also moved to a nearby farming village in Yogyakarta, into a house with kerosene lamps, bamboo walls, and no electricity. “My Indonesian and my local knowledge got much better,” he says.
“Eventually I did get one electric socket put in my house because all my neighbors insisted a foreigner needed electricity. The day it was installed, I came back and there were four electric lines leading to neighbors’ houses from my socket — a small service I could provide.”
In those early years, the teaching materials at the universities could be as rudimentary as the living conditions. “I was provided with no instruction materials,” says Minault. “No. 1, I knew nothing about teaching, no. 2, what I knew about grammar and diction was basically what I learned in junior high school.” He ended up buying an English-Indonesian dictionary and a tourist phrase book and cobbling together lessons for his post-doctoral students. “It was a bit of a trial by fire,” says Cooley, who was there 15 years later. “I definitely got the better deal in terms of experiences. I taught advanced English
“One reason that a lot of foreigners keep getting drawn back into Indonesia once they’ve gone is because it’s a country that has so many different worlds in it.”
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FEATURE: 50 YEARS IN INDONESIA: A RETROSPECTIVE
FEATURE: 50 YEARS IN INDONESIA: A RETROSPECTIVE
classes and my ‘students’ were all university faculty members who were studying to go abroad .”
Weiss and his co-Fellows were actually among the last PiA Fellows in Indonesia before the program took an eight-year hiatus because of political instability. The 1997 Asian economic crisis caused widespread unrest, and 1998 saw
universities, so there was a very active political base of students out in the streets.” While Weiss remembers that these were mostly nonviolent, he and some of the other PiA Fellows got into trouble during the late December holiday break when they traveled to the Maluku Islands just as violent sectarian conflict was breaking out in the provincial capital of Ambon. They ended up stranded on a
accompany the PiA group back to the airport, a journey that involved a pre-dawn boat trip and pit stop at a ransacked hotel in riot-torn Ambon. After they returned to Yogyakarta, “Carrie immediately told us, ‘We can’t have you there any longer,’” says Weiss. “That was disappointing because we went back to Yogyakarta, and it was just business as usual. It felt like being woken abruptly
who’s now a radio and podcast producer in Chicago. “This isn’t an exciting thing to say, but daily life was characterized by going to cafés, drinking coffee, and being on a laptop with friends. There’s a growing hipster culture in Yogyakarta where people are into really fancy coffees and cool streetwear and fixing up motorbikes.”The teaching has also gotten more sophisticated and if anything, more recent alumni admit to having to find the balance between preparation and spontaneity. “I would try to have a bit of control by having PowerPoints and having a planned lesson plan to the T,” says Massa. “But what I learned was it’s good to be flexible, to find out what the students are interested in learning and then go from there.”
and a bus comes by. And my friend says, ‘OK, c’mon let’s go!’ And I’m like ‘What?!’ And we get on the bus, and he’s like, ‘We’re going to do songs.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know any songs!’ And he’s like, ‘Just clap, just clap.’ At the end, he’s like, ‘Collect the money.’ He introduced me as his ‘foreign friend.’”
the ousting of President Suharto, the authoritarian who’d ruled the country since 1968. Weiss remembers that it was unclear until the last minute that Fellows would even be allowed to travel to Indonesia that year, though they eventually were. “There were all these political demonstrations and that was interesting to observe,” he says.
“Yogyakarta was the seat of several
nearby island with a group of other tourists for about a week after the airport was closed. They were in a peaceful area (“We were stuck on a white sandy beach p laying soccer,” Weiss says), and while phone and internet service was spotty, they were able to keep in touch with thenPiA Executive Director Carrie Gordon. Eventually, Gordon arranged for an escort of Indonesian soldiers to
from REM sleep. I think of my students— the development of our friendship was just really starting to blossom, you know? And it ended too quickly.”
PiA started sending Fellows to Indonesia again in 2005. More recent alumni recall a country that is vastly changed since the 1970s. “All the comforts I have here, I had there,” says Isabel Vázquez (2014),
During her PiA year in Indonesia, Sanhita Sen (2007) helped coach the university debate team, traveling with them to a regional competition. She also taught an English lesson at a local orphanage through an Indonesian friend, which led to her brief appearance in the students’ traveling roadshow. “The teaching lesson was pretty limited, but the way they made money was busking, basically,” says Sen, who’s now a lawyer in New York City. “They had musical instruments, and they’d get on buses and collect money. This was a surprise to me, but we were standing by the road talking
While Sen’s brief busking career might be a first among PiA Fellows, she’s not alone in having a serendipitous experience that defined her year. Indeed, what unites many of the tales alumni tell is how Indonesians were to help visitors experience their country and culture. The examples are many: Weiss remembers that shortly after he arrived, his Indonesian neighbor offered to take him to the Prambanan temple on his motorbike. Northrop fondly recalls every homecooked meal he ate there: “We quickly came to love the hottest chilis and found ourselves unsatisfied with a meal unless our eyelids started sweating.” Sen spoke about getting stranded in a remote town over a national holiday and being invited to spend the night with a boisterous Indonesian family. Says Fishman: “You have this sense that all of these lucky things are happening to you, that you’re running into these occasions by chance, without realizing the hand of your friends pushing you to them.”
If PiA’s Indonesia alumni have that sense of discovery in common, they also have something else: the experience of being young and free, with a beautiful and complex country to explore. “I feel like I spent my 20s doing what I wanted to do, which was running amok in Southeast Asia for awhile, living a different lifestyle,” says Sen. “I always joke that no one can push me around because worst case, I’ll just go retire in Bali. I think you always have that in the back of your mind—that there is a different way to live.” Among Vázquez’s more vivid memories is just getting on her motorbike and “hitting the road with a change of clothes, knowing you’re going to find a place to stay and not worrying too much about it,” she says. “The drive is stunningly beautiful, and the destination is also usually stunning beautiful. My camera couldn’t capture it, my words don’t capture it. Indonesia is so many variations. I really miss that.”
A special thanks to PiA alumna Kerrie Mitchell (Malaysia ‘97) for generously donating her time and talents to PiA for the creation of this retrospective on our Indonesia program. If you are interested in skills-based volunteering opportunities or if you simply have a story to share with us, please do be in touch with our Director of Alumni Relations Natalia Rodrigues, at piaalum@princeton.edu.
“You have this sense that all of these lucky things are happening to you, that you’re running into these occasions by chance, without realizing the hand of your friends pushing you to them.”
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JOSHUA MORRIS: TALES FROM A LIFE IN THAILAND
by: Liam Reilly (Korea ‘18)When Joshua Morris graduated from Princeton University in 1999 with a B.A. in Art History, he embarked on a Princeton in Asia fellowship to teach English at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But for Josh, as for all outstanding PiAers over the years, the PiA experience was never just about working his 9-5 teaching job and heading home to watch Netflix (perhaps it helps that the temptation to recluse onself with Netflix was greatly reduced in 1999, as it did not yet exist), or merely taking a ‘year off’ to galavant around Southeast Asia. Rather, Josh opted for an immersive and educational experience, throwing himself into every new opportunity with enthusiasm and humility. What was originally intended to be a one to two year PiA fellowship has become 19 years (going on 20!) in Chiang Mai, a successful outdoor education and distribution business, and, recently, an opportunity to give back to the country in a big way by playing a crucial role in the Tham Luang Cave Rescue. Like all good PiA stories, this story begins with relationships formed
over sticky rice: “Every evening, I’d hang out with the security guard and his wife. They’d be making grilled sticky rice. Their daughter was six: I’d help her with her English homework and she’d help me with my Thai homework. So I had this immersive Thai lesson from 15h30 to 19h00. I’d get six hours of ‘no English’ every day. Then I’d go to bed, get up the next day and do it again,” says Morris. From the moment Josh arrived in Chiang Mai in 1999, he shaped his life around immersion. He quickly developed his schedule, teaching English in the morning, going to his Thai course and working at a boxing camp in the afternoon, and hanging with his Thai neighbors in the evening.
Khaetthaleeya ‘Kat’ Morris. “We wanted to give kids an alternative to breaking their whiskey bottles against the rocks while drinking - climbing the rocks instead of trashing them” says Josh about CMRCA, “we wanted to help build the culture of climbing for Thai people and establish a local community of climbers.” CMRCA’s early years were tough on Josh and Kat. The nascent climbing culture in Thailand was not developed enough to support them full-time. It was then that, with help from PiA, he was put in touch with Where There Be Dragons, a cross-cultural experiential education organization. Inspired by Dragons, Josh developed CMRCA to include more diverse offerings, integrating
sustainability, act like a family, commit to community, and strive for quality in guiding, climbing, caving, and rescue. We want to inspire people to live their passion through adventure, leadership, and culture.” Josh explains that climbing itself has taught him some of his greatest lessons for sustaining CMRCA: “Climbing taught me about being aware of opportunities and trying things, taking risks. It’s okay if you fall, you’ll find a way to get up.”
A few months into his fellowship, Josh stumbled across an advertisement announcing the development of the Peak Rock Climbing Plaza, a rock climbing wall. Josh was hired as the manager and thus added the rock wall to his daily routine — after teaching and attending Thai classes, Josh would work at the rock wall until the wee hours of the morning. When his PiA fellowship concluded, Josh decided to continue in his managerial position.
But where Peak Rock Climbing was interested in building and maintaining the rock wall, Josh was interested in building a community of rock climbers, and so in 2001 Josh left to work odd jobs, earning enough money to open Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures the following year with his then girlfriend, and now wife,
educational programming to make climbing a tool to teach children about stepping outside of their comfort zones. They also established a gear distribution company, and developed guiding courses. As CMRCA began to grow, so did their need for staff. Josh reached out to Carrie Gordon, the Executive Director of PiA, to enquire whether PiA would be interested in establishing a partnership with CMRCA. Carrie was interested, and PiA’s partnership with CMRCA was born. Josh and Kat have worked tirelessly to ground CMRCA in their community. “We have lots of partners and work with the community, for food, lodging, and guides.” Since 2002, CMRCA has developed to become a thriving business with over 30 employees. Their mission has remained the same since CMRCA’s inception: “practice
With CMRCA established domestically and internationally, it came as no surprise that they played a major role in the rescue of twelve members of a Thai football team and their coach who were stuck in Tham Luang Cave in Chiang Rai province for 18 days in the summer of 2018. Josh began by sending a team of rope rescuers to Chiang Rai while coordinating from Chiang Mai. This proved complicated to do from a distance, so Josh went to Chiang Rai province. There, Josh ran into a Thai General he had met 18 years prior. After a discussion, Josh was asked to serve as a coordinator, translating caving jargon and liaising between the Thai military and the Anglophone divers. Josh’s team supported the U.S. Air Force and the Thai Navy Seals in building a system - drilling bolts and hanging ropes - to belay the children across the caves. “Nobody sets out to rescue boys in a cave,” says Josh, “but years of expeditions and climbing, and suddenly, it all comes into play. It was an affirmation of years of work: of preparing for a moment that I never expected would come.”
Looking forward, Josh hopes to continue to play a role in the preservation and development of Thailand’s natural resources - to undertake a cartographic survey of the caves, and to promote the outdoors and education. Reflecting on his time in Thailand thus far, Josh recommends being open to adventure: to not be so fixated on getting somewhere that you lose track of the present. “Be open to the experience. All the incredible things that happened to me along the way happened when I least expected it.” Most importantly, Josh recommends that all PiA Fellows “do more than one year.”
JOSHUA MORRIS: TALES FROM A LIFE IN THAILAND JOSHUA MORRIS: TALES FROM A LIFE IN THAILAND photo: Erika Peterman10 11
Climbing taught me a lot about being aware of opportunities and trying things, taking risks. It’s okay if you fall, you’ll find a way to get up.
(STILL) LIVING THE DREAM IN ASIA
J.R. deLara (Thailand, Summer ‘06) biked across Turkmenistan, where he had been serving as a member of the U.S. Department of State. On his ride, he learned about the country and promoted American exchange programs. He covered almost 800 miles in 12 days.
[1] Megan Brandeland (Thailand ’09) frequently spends time in Southeast Asia as part of her career in medicine. She spent eight months in Chiang Mai during medical school and did a clinical rotation in Laos earlier in 2018. She is currently back in Chiang Mai for another six months as one of the global health chief residents for the University of Minnesota, working on projects related to palliative care and medical ethics. She makes time to meet up with the current PiA Fellows in the area, and recently met up with Alisa Braun (Thailand ’18) in Chiang Rai!
[2] Tim Calder (Singapore ‘10) has been working in education in Beijing since his PiA fellowship. In 2017, he founded Yue Club, a non-profit program that combines squash, academics, and mentoring for underprivileged youth, with the goal to start the first urban squash program in China.
[3] Jess DiCarlo (China ‘09) is spending the year in Vientiane for her dissertation research. She remains a China person at heart (thanks PiA!), and is researching Chinese development and investment abroad via the railroad in northern Laos. After a few months in Vientiane, she will head to northern Laos, where she will be for the next year. She has a writing fellowship at BU for Fall 2019... but may come back in 2020... because, you know, Asia feels homey.
[4] PiA Trustee Blair Blackwell (Kazakhstan ’96) has returned to her old
ON THE JOB IN THE U.S. OF A.
PiA stomping grounds in Almaty, Kazkhstan to serve as the Senior Advisor of Public, Government and Public Affairs for Chevron.
Sean Callahan (Thailand ’91) moved to Manila to serve as the coordinator for the Pacific Islands and Mongolia for USAID.
[5] PiA Emeritus Trustee Ruth Stevens spent the fall semester as a visiting professor of marketing at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.
After completing a Master’s degree in Religion and Ethics, Sean Massa
(Indonesia ’15) spent the summer in Hong Kong on a Yale-China exchange program, and is now an U.S. Education Consultant with ARCH Education in Hong Kong.
[6] Esmeralda Herrera (China ’16) recently completed a Clinton Fellowship with the American India Foundation. During her fellowship in Kishanganj (Bihar State), she served as the Human Resource Manager for Project Potential, an organization that supports local female entrepreneurs. Esmeralda’s writing about her time in Bihar can be found at aif.org/ author/esmeraldaherrera/.
David Willard (China, Summer ’04) has recently launched 52 Capital Partners (52capitalpartners.com), an independent advisory firm that provides high-level strategic advisory services to the senior management teams, Founders and Boards of Directors of corporations, financial institutions, family-owned enterprises and entrepreneurial ventures faced with transformational, complex or high-stakes transactional matters in North America and China.
Will Danforth (Mongolia ’16), who moved to Austin, Texas, after PiA, has spent the past several months working on
the congressional campaign of Joseph Kopser (D) in the 21st district of Texas.
Ho-Ming So Denduangrudee (Vietnam ’07, Nepal ’08) has relocated to San Francisco to serve on Chevron’s social impact team, though her new role will send her on frequent trips to Asia.
After completing his MPP at Cambridge University, Chris Canary (China ’14), has moved to New York City to tackle infrastructure challenges with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. We’re excited to have you in our neck of the woods, Chris!
Juliana Gamble (Vietnam ’00) has recently moved with her husband and son to St. Louis, where she intends to start a residency for artists who are mothers.
[7] Dwight Crabtree (Thailand ‘02) was named “CFO of the Year” by the Pittsburgh Business Times for his work at Chevron Appalachia.
[8] From Oakley Strasser (China ’12, Carriebright ’13): “Here’s [Chris Colonna (Thailand ‘12)] and I at work! He’s a 3rd year anesthesia resident and I’m doing a month-rotation on anesthesia. PiA doctors!”
ALUMNI NOTES ALUMNI NOTES
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[1] Anastasia Vrachnos (Indonesia ’91) with Matt Blazejewski (China ’17) and Arianna Munguia (SOS ’12, China ’14) in Hangzhou!
[2] Matthew Silberman (S. Korea ’17), Hannah Bae (S. Korea ’07), and Gavin Huang (S. Korea ’15) in Seoul. Hannah recently visited her PiA host city and met with two of her successors at the JoongAng Daily. Gavin has since relocated to Hong Kong for an editorial position at Goldthread, the new culture offering of the South China Morning Post and Matthew has moved to Washington, D.C. to work as a researcher for the Korea Center of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
ALUMNI NETWORK EVENTS
Not only did numerous alumni volunteers join the PiA staff in orientating our new class of Fellows in May and recruiting new applicants at college campuses across the country this fall, but the alumni community welcomed the new and returning PiA Fellows to the PiA family in cities across the U.S.! Organized by our amazing Alumni Network Chapter Leaders, Send-Off and Welcome Back events took a variety of shapes: from [4] potluck picnics at Chicago’s Promontory Point and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, to [5] delicious dim sum in Los Angeles to [6] happy hours in Washington, DC and Boston.
[3] From left: Teresa Velez (Japan ’07, Indonesia ’09), Esteban Aguel (Cambodia ’13), Alex Abbott (Thailand ’12), Mariesa Lea (SOS ’08, East Timor ’09), Blair Blackwell (Kazakhstan ’96), and Ben Shell (Thailand ’05, Mongolia ’06) enjoying the local vintages in Sonoma.
Brenna Cameron (Thailand ’14), a current medical student at the University of Colorado Denver writes, “I recently went back to Nan, the town I was placed in for PiA. It’s amazing how much that place still feels like home! I know I will always have a sanctuary to come to in Southeast Asia.”
Jill Capotosto (Vietnam ’14) and Kate Logan (China ’14) are new grad students at the Yale School of Forestry. They recently held an information session for prospective PiA applications at Yale, along with Ellis Liang (Hong Kong ’15), who is midway through her JD/MBA dual degree program.
If you would like to stay up to date on PiA Alumni Network events in the future, please join the private online community for PiA Alumni & Friends, princetoninasia.360alumni.com. This will also help us update our records if your virtual or physical coordinates have changed.
We hope to see you soon at an alumni or volunteer event soon!
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FOR
Princeton in Asia
Louis A. Simpson International Building
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
PiA BOOKSHELF? WHAT’S NEW ON THE
PiA Emeritus Trustee Scott Seligman’s (China ’73) latest book, The Third Degree: The Triple Murder that Shook Washington and Changed American Criminal Justice tells the story of a man’s abuse by the police and his journey through the legal system that drew in Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John W. Davis and J. Edgar Hoover. The book is available for purchase on Amazon.
Hannah Bae (South Korea ’07) contributed to (Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation About Mental Health, a mental health anthology geared towards young adults. Hannah’s essay discusses how her Korean-American family struggled with mental health issues and how she learned to cope. The book is available for purchase on Amazon.
www.princeton.edu/~pia
