The collaboration of this web site has provided me with valuable learning adventures that will benefit me throughout my life.

I was introduced to ThinkQuest just over a year ago, and discovered its wonderful possibilities, as well as its endless opportunities. It was an enticing challenge that I was eager to participate in, and I was thrilled to be able to contribute to a web site that was dedicated to offering knowledge of world occurrences. ThinkQuest was a way for me to combine many of my interests and direct them into a single stream of energy. I was very new to web design, but I loved its endless potentials.

Throughout the collaboration of our entry, I contributed to the site's content in several different ways. One was with graphic design. As the main graphic designer of the site, I wanted to portray the individuals, and the people themselves. By contacting professional photographers and gaining their permission, I was able to use photos that express the people and the diverse landscapes that they call their home.

I wanted to establish a style of writing that gave the readers a different perspective, and appeal to them at a personal level. It was a wonderful experience to collaborate with my co-writer. We wanted to present both the facts and incorporate a tone of human interest, attempting to write the articles to evoke reader's thoughts and reveal to them the people and issues.

Besides this, I also spent time organizing the content, contacting people around the world, and holding conversations via the Internet with people in other countries, gathering information and interviewing them, gaining a perspective that proved to be very unique. It was amazing to see things through their own eyes.

My overall benefit from this project will aid me throughout my life. I feel it has been a wonderful way to develop my graphic design skills and also find time to express myself through writing. And most of all, it has caused me to stop and sift through my mind the things that happen in this world, to become appreciative of what I have, and to look through different eyes at international issues. I hope that our combined efforts provide a site where people from all over the world can use the Internet to learn, in their unique style, more about the issues that affect people, and broaden their perspectives.

I find global relations to be an important aspect of study - not just to learn of the happenings between nations but to witness the people that encounter them. As the interviewer for our team, I was able to meet many inspiring individuals who had lived on a day to day basis amidst the issues. Through their eyes I saw the actuality, and the reality that these people are authentic witnesses to things unimagined by many students. It was an opportunity of a lifetime to converse with them every day, using technology as a key to reach out and experience situations right along with the people who were there. The Internet proved to be a priceless opportunity that can open eyes to see and behold the serious concerns that are affecting people around the world. As I talked with these enlightening individuals, I experienced the reality at hand. We were linking two far away countries through a friendship that dissolved the prejudice, the war, and the hatred that separates nations and people. If I had participated in ThinkQuest just to see through the eyes of these people around the world, that alone would have been enough to give me a lifetime gift. Because it was then that I saw the importance of our children, and the hope that can be found in providing them with the gift of learning. Learning, and not just the kind of education that gives facts, but understanding and perspective, is something that I believe can open doors that lead to new worlds. Giving our children this kind of teaching will not only determine their own futures, but the world's. I hope that this site can contribute to that gift.