Diverse...for the most part

We are now down to the short jumps! Tomorrow is the official start to this Fulbright adventure as 15 other instructors and I will descend upon Washington D.C. from around the country for our pre-departure orientation. The orientation will kick off with an opening reception at the Embassy of Argentina residence tomorrow night.

I anticipate that I'll primarily be discussing on here the places we visit over the next 5 weeks, and relating the anecdotes from experiences we have along the way. So I thought that I'd dedicate this entry to the group of educators I'll be traveling with, though admittedly I can only pass on a little bit as I have not met the rest of our group yet in person. But thanks to the Fulbright Commission, we received short bios on everyone traveling in our group, so I'll share a little of what I know.

It truly looks like a diverse group overall. The 16 of us come from 9 different states (Hawaii, California, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia). We come from a range of disciplines. I am the lone geographer in the bunch, but we have a couple of historians, a number of Spanish and English instructors, and a music teacher too. We represent a diversity of ages - from 26 to 65 years old - at thirtysomething, I'm kind of at the younger-middle half of that spectrum. I also anticipate that we will be an ethnically diverse group.

However, there is one area in which we possess very little diversity - and that is in terms of gender. I don't think this is necessarily the typical gender distribution for a Fulbright-Hays seminar, but for our journey, there will be 15 women and me! Now, with all due respect to any men who might be reading this, I think women have historically proven themselves to be the superior gender, so I am not the least bit unhappy with this distribution. Still, I couldn't help but notice the vast difference in the number of women and men traveling in our particular group!

With all of these variables in mind, I think it will be interesting to see how our group dynamic unfolds. By the way, thank you to everyone who has posted comments or passed along well-wishes and support. I will try to post on here once or twice a week from now to the end of our journey, and look forward to taking this ride with you.