Hannah Diehl

Temple University, Japan Campus – Full Summer Program  – Tokyo, Japan (summer 2012)

Hi my name is Hannah Diehl and I studied abroad at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. For four months I furthered my major as well as my East Asian studies concentration in Tokyo, Japan. This was not my first time in the Land of the Rising Sun, so returning was pretty exhilarating. When I first got there, I expected to spend most of my time in school: sitting in the library or chatting with my friends in the cafeteria. Little did I know my classmates and I would be visiting the exact place where the first atomic bomb erupted in Hiroshima or climbing our way up to the crater of Mt. Fuji, the infamous mountain depicted in the painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This is a country I’ve wanted to visit since I was a child and now as a soon-to-be graduating senior, it was like a dream come true. International business is my major, so to others it may be obvious as to why I was so excited to study abroad. But not only was it a fantastic experience getting to meet new people and learn new ideas, it also really allowed me to see things in a different light. We often just hear global news on the television or radio; not many of us get to experience the culture in person. And of course it is fun. But it is also important to for us, as students, to broaden our own horizons. This helps us tune the information we learn in college into something that we can actually use in a whole new world. But most importantly, these are memories we will never forget.