The Peace Corps is a government organization that focuses on volunteer work. Salida High School’s very own history teacher, Amy Moore, had the wonderful opportunity to travel the world with the Peace Corps.
Moore was in the Peace Corps from 2006-2008. Before this, she decided that she wanted to seek out some national service opportunities. Originally, she tried out the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), but she ultimately decided that ROTC was not the right fit for her, which led her to join the Peace Corps.
“I was a freshman in 2001, so it was immediately post 9/11, and obviously in any branch of military service there’s an idea that war is a possibility, but the excitement and enthusiasm for combat and war wasn’t what I was looking for,” Moore said.
During this time, she was volunteering in Mongolia. Her favorite place that she saw in Mongolia was the mountains outside of the town she was staying in, Zuunmod. Zuunmod was about an hour south of the capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, which came with certain benefits, such as a paved road.
With the Peace Corps, Moore was teaching conversational English. She focused on conversational vocabulary and accent development. In Mongolia, students choose an area of focus, and then they take classes specializing in that focus. She also said Mongolian culture was focused a lot on self-reliance, something that Americans have lost in recent years.
During this time, she also got to travel around a lot of Southeast Asia, and she said that in the future, she would love to explore that area of the world more. She traveled around Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. While there, she took a few day boat trip on the Mekong river through Laos and got to experience the lunar new year in Cambodia. However, the place that stood out most to her was Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
“I think the place that stands out the most is Angkor Wat, with the beauty and awe of all of the temples with the trees growing out of it. You see the pictures and go ‘this doesn’t exist,’ but then you go there and realize just how real it is,” Moore said.
Her time in the Peace Corps also taught her a lot of lessons that she continues to carry with her. In the United States, people are able to live their lives with a certain amount of ease that people in other countries are not necessarily afforded.
Joining the Peace Corps was a fantastic opportunity for Moore to travel around Asia for two years and learn about other cultures. Moore took a lot away from this opportunity, and she recommends it to anyone who is interested in traveling the world and giving back to communities.
