Lou Ann Wieand, Ph.D. spent her sabbatical leave as a Fulbright lecturer/scholar in Macao, China, a place that has been in the news lately because it is becoming a major gaming city in Asia. It is located in the South China Sea, just an hour’s ferry boat ride away from Hong Kong.

She taught in a small psychology department at the University of Macau. It admitted its first undergraduate majors four years ago. She taught a course in Western psychopathology in English to graduating seniors, who had field placements in the local community. Lou Ann traveled with another faculty member (who spoke the local Cantonese) to the psychiatric hospital, drug treatment centers and schools, getting to participate in grand rounds and in (translated) case conferences with other local mental health professionals.

Lou Ann participated in graduation ceremonies and attended the students’ end-of-the-year party for faculty. While at the university, she helped the faculty revise their undergraduate curriculum in psychology, and design an MA graduate-level course in Counseling Psychology.

During the semester, questions about the role of counseling in the Chinese family system, led to research about seekers of mental health counseling. This led to a comparative study of North American, Japanese and Chinese cultural differences in help-seeking behaviors, presented with several HSU graduate students at the WPA convention last spring in Vancouver. The most important part of her journeys was the chance to meet other psychologists and students half way around the world and to find that we spoke a “common” language and loved psychology. They will be her life-long friends.