'Projects Abroad' Takes Ward Melville Grad to Mongolia and Back

At a time when many of his classmates were getting ready to head off to college or into careers or the military, Joseph Suk was in search of a different kind of opportunity.

Suk, 18, who graduated from Ward Melville High School in June, decided to take a year off in between high school and college to pursue volunteer and educational opportunities abroad – and landed in Mongolia through the program Projects Abroad, which has connected students and adults with volunteer opportunities all over the world for more than 20 years.

Suk recently returned from a monthlong stay in Mongolia, a country that sits between Russia and China, where he spent two weeks in a high school medicine program.

"We shadowed doctors and got to learn about the health care and medical system within the main capital," he said, adding that he got to experience close-up observations of a gall bladder removal surgery as well as surgeries on an eye, heart and prostate.

He noted that the country's health care system "is very understaffed."

"They have to meet the needs of many thousands within one district," he said. "They do depend on a lot of foreign aid to acquire technology, a larger staff. The city itself is still structurally very underdeveloped. It was interesting to see a culture developing like that."

After the medical component of his trip, Suk spent two weeks teaching beginner-level English for children and adults at a small school while staying with a host family.