#PeopleFirst Friday: Alexa Mooney

If you were to describe Events Coordinator Alexa Mooney in one word, the best word might be “Wanderlust,” but she was bitten by the travel bug in a unique way: YouTube.

“I would just search for exchange programs and watch people’s videos – they weren’t called vlogs at the time – but vlogs of kids my age having these crazy cool adventures abroad. I just wanted to do it,” Mooney said.

One of Mooney’s first trips abroad was a summer abroad spent in Germany while she was in high school, through an opportunity with the 268,000-member International Police Association. Mooney’s grandfather, a former police officer on Long Island, was able to connect her with a law enforcement family just outside Frankfurt, Germany.

“I went to work some days with the father who was a police officer. I sat in on an interrogation. I had no idea what they were saying because it was in German!” Mooney recalled. “I went to a refugee camp with him and that was very eye-opening to see that aspect of culture – people are in a foreign land escaping something and coming for refuge, and not everyone in that country is accepting or willing of that.

 “Yes, our cultures are different, but I think in each culture we can learn something that we can take back to our own way of life.”

In addition to the summer abroad in Germany, Mooney has returned to Germany twice, and has also visited Switzerland, France, Spain, Amsterdam, Hungary, and studied abroad for a semester in Italy during her time at Appalachian State. But she has one place at the top of her bucket list: Thailand.  

“I think the energy in Thailand, the lifestyle, is a way of life that I’ve never experienced,” she said. “Every culture can teach us something. I value what a lot of Asian countries practice – their ways of living, how simple life can be. I feel like in America we make things ‘not simple.’ I want to experience their world.”