NATCHEZ — De’Michael Queen made his first flight in an airplane count.

The Natchez native and Alcorn State University senior flew 18 hours halfway across the world to enroll in a study abroad program in Taiwan from February to June.

“That was the first time I had left the country, been on an airplane and everything,” Queen said. “It was so amazing, though.”

Queen’s desire to leave the Lorman campus for a semester came after hearing stories from a fellow Alcorn student who had traveled to Morocco.

A program at Yuan Ze University located in Taoyuan, which is near Taipei, fit best with Queen’s major of electro-mechanical engineering, so the 2011 Natchez High School graduate decided to enroll.

Convincing his mother of his upcoming international voyage was not as easy.

“When I first told my mom, she didn’t believe me,” Queen said, laughing. “She thought I was messing with her, but then two or three weeks before I left, she finally decided to believe me.

“She got all sad and didn’t want me to go.”

Queen left Mississippi in February and quickly began befriending students in his program.

“I was over there with two other students from Alcorn, but we weren’t going to have any classes together, so I knew I had to meet other people,” Queen said. “Most people had heard of Mississippi, but not of Natchez.”

When Queen wasn’t spending time in one of many four-hour classes throughout the week, he said locals showed him around the small island of Taiwan and introduced him to several local customs.

“The culture was just so much different than anything I had ever seen,” Queen said. “It also just took a while to get used to not being around other people I knew.”

The local religious practices and cuisine were what had the biggest impact on Queen.

“Going to their places of worship was really unique, because they just have so many different gods they pray to, and I thought that was interesting,” Queen said. “The food was the other thing, but I can’t really say it was bad food because it wasn’t.

“It just wasn’t my cup of tea.”

In the classroom, Queen said his experience gave him the opportunity to become a better engineer by being exposed to different teaching and learning methods.

“It required me to assimilate knowledge by using hands-on methods, providing me with experience that a classroom setting could not implement,” Queen said. “They allowed me to take advanced engineering courses that expanded my knowledge about my field of study.

“I had fun doing it all.”

Queen even learned how to recite a handful of Mandarin phrases and write a few Chinese characters.

“Probably the one I used most was just, ‘Hello my name is, De’Michael,’” Queen said. “You had to know a lot of those things just to get you by.”

Queen said the goal of his trip, apart from learning more about the profession he’s studying, was to encourage others in Natchez to take chances.

“I had so many friends before I left that didn’t know why I wanted to go and said they would never go somewhere like that,” Queen said. “I figured that if I did this it might give some else the encouragement to do something similar.”

Queen will graduate from Alcorn in May and says he is considering continuing his education in graduate school at the University of Mississippi or Mississippi State University.

Queen is the son of Shelia McKnight of Natchez.