Two special members of the Shansi family have passed away. Arthur Harris, first Shansi Visiting Scholar from American College, and Harold Howes, Shansi Rep to Chengdu, China, will be fondly remembered.

As Winter Term rolls around, another group of Oberlin College students gears up to jet set off to Asia.. to study the intersections of health and gender in Bangladesh.. or to research rock climbing as a sustainable development initiative in China.. or to study Indian street theater as a means of enacting social change... just the usual way to spend an academic break.

As it has done for more than 100 years, Oberlin Shansi recently appointed 8 to its core program that sends Oberlin graduates to partner institutions in Asia on two-year fellowships. Selected for China were Ricardo Barrios, Veronica Colegrave and Amelea Kim. Naila Paul and Christina James will be heading to India. Cory Rogers and Santino Merino will spend two years in Indonesia while Lissette Lorenz will be in Japan.

The two-year fellowship program, open only to Oberlin graduates, is just one of the programs that Shansi sponsors. Oberlin Shansi also provides for five in-Asia Oberlin undergraduate grants a year, funding for Oberlin campus programs, as well as, a faculty exchange program that sends OC faculty to Asia and brings Asian scholars to Oberlin.

Shansi fellows both new and old have eased into their respective fellowships and resumed--or found new--rhythms. At this point, it would seem that we could say the dust has settled.. but does it ever really? Here's a brief anecdote about settling into life in Indonesia from Sara Kadi. For more stories on daily hilarities, check out the fellow blogs--both old and new!

Interested in studying muay thai kickboxing in Thailand? Or volunteering with an environmental nonprofit trying to mitigate climate change in Tajikistan? Or maybe you're graduating from Oberlin College and want to immerse yourself in another culture by learning and living in Asia.

Come to one of Oberlin Shansi's Fellowship and In-Asia Study Grant Information Sessions! All three dates are listed below:

Tuesday, September 13 at 4:30pm in Wilder 112
with snacks!

Wednesday, September 21 at 2:30pm in Wilder 115
with snacks!

Saturday, October 1 at noon in Wilder 115
with bagels!

The start of summer not only tolls for beach-side drinks with tiny umbrellas, travel in foreign lands, and freedom, it also marks the completion of another round of Shansi Fellows and the start of a new group’s new journeys. One of Shansi’s requirements for Fellows is the submission of an Annual Narrative.

Second Year Narrative
By James Barnard (Taigu, China 2009-11)

If you had asked me a year ago to imagine what I would be doing at the end of my fellowship, I would have guessed that I would be teaching English, studying Chinese, spending time with my friends and looking for a job. I would not have guessed that I would be honored at a fancy dress ball, awake from a gunshot wound in a strange place, be committed to a hospital for a tropical disease, be abandoned in the mountains in the middle of an epidemic, involved in a gunfight, captured by Communist agents, find myself fighting off murderous assailants, or forced onto a raft at gunpoint in the middle of the night! But its all in a days work for an Oberlin-Shansi fellow, because in my last semester at Taigu I found myself working as a Chinese-speaking actor!