Hi everyone! My name is Juliet Kohli and I’m a rising senior at the University of Pennsylvania, from Montclair, New Jersey. My major at Penn is Health and Societies with a concentration in public health. I am pumped to be leaving tomorrow, after a very long journey to get my visa approved!

I am placed with the Public Health Foundation of India in Gurgaon, along with my co-intern Sylvia Kimwei. The projects I will be working on deal with diabetes prevention in schools. I am very excited to be a part of this project, because I have been wanting to get involved with education and youth health initiatives.

In addition to being excited about the work I’ll be doing in Gurgaon, I cannot wait to travel to different places, such as Mumbai and Jaipur. I went to India with my family when I was seven, so it will definitely be cool to go back and see everything through a different lens. My dad’s side of the family is from India and my dad spent the first ten years of his life there. I am excited to visit some places from his childhood and see where he grew up. There are a few nerve-racking aspects to the trip, such as the food and the heat. I’m not going to lie, though I am half Indian, I am a total wimp about spicy foods. I often get the comment when eating anything spicy, “Aren’t you Indian??” (Guess I was born without that gene.) I’m also a little nervous about the heat, because I run Cross Country for Penn and I will have to run throughout the summer. I’ll definitely be looking for a treadmill!

Overall, though, I am so excited and grateful for this experience! My main goal is to get fully immersed into the culture and my work with PHFI. I have never spent this much time outside of the United States and I am very happy that I am taking this leap in India. I can’t wait to get to Gurgaon and being this amazing journey, alongside my co-intern Sylvia!

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