2007.08.06: August 6, 2007: Headlines: COS - El Salvador: Texas A&M The Battalion: Lee Fitzgerald served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador
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2007.08.06: August 6, 2007: Headlines: COS - El Salvador: Texas A&M The Battalion: Lee Fitzgerald served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador
Lee Fitzgerald served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador
"There were a lot of surprises in El Salvador," he said. "I learned what is really important in life, living in an area that was extremely poor. I really realized what most of the world is living like but how strong their families are."
Lee Fitzgerald served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador
Peace Corps offers life-changing opportunities
By: Lauren Lucas
Issue date: 8/6/07 Section: News
[Excerpt]
"Training is also a time when you make really close friends with the host family you are living with," said Lee Fitzgerald, a professor of wildlife science at A&M. "These are really important relationships that usually last for a long time. A lot of people start calling them mother, father, brother, sister."
Fitzgerald said applicants give the Peace Corps a broad field of study they want to pursue. "You tell them which jobs you would like to have, but that's no guarantee," he said. "They say this is the job we have for you, you can take it or keep waiting."
"El Salvador wasn't my first choice," Fitzgerald said about the first country he served in as a Peace Corps volunteer. "I was mostly concerned that I wasn't going to like the country - the physical and cultural aspect of it."
Fitzgerald spent one year in El Salvador, from February 1979 to 1980. In 1980 he had to evacuate because of the Salvadorian Civil War.
"I was real sad about that, I didn't want to go, I had a lot of friends there," he said. "But it probably was a good decision to evacuate."
Fitzgerald said his job consisted of working with park rangers and studying iguanas.
"There were a lot of surprises in El Salvador," he said. "I learned what is really important in life, living in an area that was extremely poor. I really realized what most of the world is living like but how strong their families are."
Fitzgerald was transferred from El Salvador to Paraguay, where he finished his service in the Peace Corps. "I learned so much interacting with the scientists," he said. "It's really something that changed my life, I'm still working in Paraguay."
His work in the Peace Corps opens many doors, Fitzgerald said.
"I wouldn't be a professor doing what I'm doing at Texas A&M without the Peace Corps," he said.
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Headlines: August, 2007; Peace Corps El Salvador; Directory of El Salvador RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for El Salvador RPCVs
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Story Source: Texas A&M The Battalion
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