But when Chatti spent about five weeks on a study abroad trip this past summer in Mali, which is located in west Africa, she had a completely different experience.

“I’ve always been interested in other people since I was very young and knew I wanted to travel,” Chatti said. “I love meeting new people and seeing how other people think.”

Chatti recently won a $1,000 first-place prize for her essay about the trip in the 2010 Tales from Abroad Essay Contest, which was sponsored by the MSU Office of Study Abroad.

“I like to write and I thought I had an interesting story to tell,” she said.

For the first week of the trip, Chatti said she and the group of 13 students went on a short tour of the country and camped in Mali’s wilderness.

“It was very cool,” she said. “We got an immersion experience into the whole culture and landscape.”

The trip was focused on civil engagement, so Chatti and the others taught English classes to kindergartners through high schoolers every day for the remaining time at a village school.

Chatti said the weather typically is hot and arid, but they arrived during the humid rainy season, which meant seeing green everywhere.

“It’s a pretty poor country,” she said. “There wasn’t very much extravagant living at all. People lived in homes made out of mud and people wear clothes they had tailored or (had) been donated.”

Chatti’s desire to teach was the primary reason Stephen L. Esquith, dean of the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, said he suggested she look into the experience.

“The focus of this program is on teaching and that’s the career she wants to pursue, especially in an international setting,” Esquith said. “This was exactly that.”

Esquith said the smaller-scale program gave students an opportunity to work with community leaders and open their eyes to vast differences in education systems.

“They worked hand-in-hand with college Mali students who are choosing education as their career,” he said. “That was exciting for them to meet their counterparts … and see a serious need for improved educational practices and resources in Mali.”

Chatti’s father, Karim Chatti, an MSU civil and environmental engineering professor, said his daughter has traveled overseas frequently, which means he wasn’t anxious about her trip in the summer.

“She is probably aware of what’s out there in the world and wants to help out,” he said. “She knows it’s not as easy as it is in the U.S.”

Leila Chatti said her father, who initially came to MSU from Tunisia as an international student, speaks the Tunisian dialect of Arabic with her and always has encouraged her interest in traveling.

“I like the strange and quirky (cultural differences) that I didn’t realize were different until I started going to school,” she said. “He made me appreciate the other worlds that are out there.”

Being at school in the U.S. is difficult for Chatti, who said she plans to move back to Tunisia after she graduates and eventually teach school somewhere internationally, whether it be in Africa or her dream location in the Middle East.

“I’m homesick when I’m here and homesick when I go there,” she said. “I’m torn between both. I do miss it and it is strange being here when I’d rather be there, but definitely this time of year, I get ready to go again.”