People to People

Traveling to France, Monaco, Italy, and Malta with 40+ high school students is not something I ever thought I would be doing...but in 27 days, that's exactly where I'll be.

We're traveling with an organization called People to People which is a student ambassador program. President Eisenhowser started this back in 1956 during the Cold War and directly after WWII. He felt that the people of our world could solve their differences and live in peace if we could communicate, learn about each other's cultures, and talk face to face about the issues. So that's what we're going to do. We'll be staying with families while we're in Malta and we'll be in hotels everywhere else. First stop....Paris, France.

Our 'delegation' started in January with the prospective delegates attending an information meeting. From that point, those interested in pursuing this, went through an application and interview process. Lindsey and I were impressed ... and excited...from the beginning.

Our first "orientation" meeting was February 25th. That was exciting for us as the delegates met each other and we started learning about the countries we would visit, etiquette for traveling, and the history of People to People. Unfortunately, for various reasons, we had a few of our delegates drop out of the program. I understood their reasons but was saddened at the same time.

Each of the delegates receives high school credit for this trip. Since it is educational, there are assignments to go along with it. One of these assignments is to give a cultural presentation related to our travel. Chad started us off with a remarkable power-point presentation set to music of many of the places we will see. I watched it three times, giving me chills each time. It was wonderful and a perfect overview for all the other presentations.

Kasey came next with a lot of great information about the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel is located in Vatican City. One of our Andys followed with a presentation on foreign sports. That topic fit Andy just perfect. Actually when they were initially signing up for their presentations, Andy hadn't put his name on his topic (they were on post-it notes). Lindsey and I both looked at the topic and knew instantly that it had to be Andy's!

My hope is to be able to post to this as we travel, sharing stories and photographs as we go. I don't know how often we'll be in places where we have internet access...or the time! Keep checking back...and we'd love to hear your comments!
Ciao!