As Americans we tend to take a lot of things for granted. Most of us wake up every day to having all of our basic needs met. We have clean water to drink, nutritious food at our disposal and most importantly, a successful education system.

Matt Kiedrowski social studies teacher, has had an opportunity that many people can only dream of; to teach and travel all over many different countries including New Zealand, Singapore, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and Thailand.
“We spent three years overseas,” said Kiedrowski. “Our first child was born in Taiwan.”

Kiedrowski and his wife’s opportunity came from a cousin who was teaching over seas.

“She explained the process [to us] and since my wife and I were both in the educational field, we jumped on it,” said Kiedrowski. “It was basically a three day intensive interview process that humbles anything that we might have experienced here for a teaching job.”
As one could imagine, the culture in Asia and other places around the world is very different. Kiedrowski and his wife experienced this on a daily basis. One of the biggest differences that he noticed right away was accessibility.

“Here in the United States you can get anything at any time anywhere,” said Kiedrowski. “There it is very limited as to what you can get; they literally just run out of certain things. Food is obviously the simplest example. Most of us would say big deal, but if you like one particular kind of food, say beef, and they just don’t have any meat for the next month, then you’re out of luck. Or you have to pay an exorbitant amount of money just to get it.”

An experience like this can be life changing in many ways; a lot of people come back from similar trips with their eyes opened to the real world.

“My sisters Katie and Sara both traveled abroad on different occasions,” said Megan de St. Aubin (’16).”One lived in Spain for a while for schooling and the other one went to Mexico to build homes for the homeless. They both came back with an appreciation of other cultures and an understanding that other countries are much different and sometimes not as fortunate as us. They both became more grateful for what we have in our culture.”

When someone comes back from having a big experience like this, you expect them to be flabbergasted by what they have seen and what they have learned. Kiedrowski is very even keel when he tells people about his experience. He is a wise person and has a lot of advice to offer and knowledge to share from what he has been through.

“It kind of flipped my perspective of the world upside down,” said Kiedrowski. “It gave me a look at what the rest of the world thinks of the United States both positively and negatively.”

The best part of the experience for Kiedrowski and his wife was the travel.

He shared, “It was amazing to be able to see places that you usually only read about in books. And then to meet the people and to understand their culture, it changes and broadens your perspective.”

When the Kiedrowski kids are at an age to appreciate and understand other cultures, their parents plan to take them back to the places they visited and use that as a teaching moment to show their kids the world and what it has to offer.

One of Kiedrowski’s favorite spots was New Zealand because everything they saw looked like a post card and you could actually ski and surf in the same day. Surfing is a favorite pastime for Kiedrowski. One of his favorite memories is a surf trip in Taiwan with a group Canadian-American friends and a few Taiwanese guys.

“Only one of the Taiwanese guys spoke a bit of English and we didn’t speak any Chinese,” recalls Kiedrowski,”but because of our mutual love of surfing we crossed the language barrier. We spent a week together going around Taiwan having a great time because our love for surfing brought us all together. That one experience sums up understanding another persons culture. You really have to live in it to fully appreciate and understand it.”