Audra Hamlin is a filmmaker. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, Audra is spending the current Spring semester 2023 at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where she studies cinematography and film. Audra fell in love with making videos as a child. She now continues to fulfill her childhood dreams as a student at the legendary FAMU [Film and TV School] - "one of the top film schools in Europe known as the Hollywood of Europe for its innovative film making past..." In Audra's opinion, "Czech films are full of black humor which is reflective of the humor here, and it makes me more aware of how we use where we are from and how we go about saying something." The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program is one of the U.S. State Department scholarship programs; it enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad in order to provide them with skills critical to U.S. national security and economic prosperity. Thi
Spending ten months in a foreign country is always a transformative experience. Spending ten months in a small Czech town, far away from the capital, Prague, in a place where you may be the only American (or even the only foreigner or English-speaking person) is a unique cultural experience that one never forgets. Every year, Fulbright Czech Republic welcomes 30 English Teaching Assistants and places them at regional high schools of various types all over the country. Most of the Assistants are recent graduates of different U.S. universities. They want to teach English in the Czech Republic to gain international work experience, to get to know the Czech culture, and to have a year that will be unlike anything that they have ever experienced before. Seven of this year’s ETAs have decided to chronicle their Fulbright adventure by getting a tattoo with a special significance to their host town, region, or their stay in the Czech Republic. Below, you can read stories of seven of our assis