"When you travel, all your emotions become intensified."
Hibben learned about the trip through Forlivio, and decided to go right away. “Last summer, I was supposed to go with Mr. DiPasquale on a trip to China, but that didn’t work out, so when I found out about this trip, I jumped at the opportunity,” Hibben said.
All students, including Hibben, had to go through a rigorous application process. They had to submit two teacher recommendations, as well as one non-teacher recommendation and their transcripts are reviewed. After submitting the application, each student had to conduct an interview with a group leader. Hibben, along with the other students going this year, was selected, but they had to pay a price for this event-filled trip.
“I'll be working double shifts the rest of the summer to pay it off,” Hibben said. The total cost of the trip is around $6,000-$7,000, and every student is hoping it will be worth the cost.
“I'll be working double shifts the rest of the summer to pay it off,” Hibben said.
Although the students are expecting a fun and exhilarating summer sojourn, there are also many new experiences they will face that will give them the opportunity to grow and enrich their perspective through exposure to a world outside their culture zone.
There is already some nervousness building: Hibben has some concerns she may get sick from dirty water. Mr. Otterspoor says he thinks the greater challenge will not be the water, but rather the students’ unfamiliarity with Mandarin, a tonal dialect that bears no resemblance to the English language as well as accommodation for others needs that comes with group travel.
“The hardest part of the trip is managing the feelings of the group,” Mr Otterspoor said. As a leader, Mr. Otterspoor will have to make sure that all the students’ emotions do not get too far out of hand, because, “when you travel, all your emotions become intensified,” he said.
Mr. Sean Otterspoor has been a leader of this trip for eight years, and first heard about it when his sister went to Scandinavia in high school. When he was in college at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Mr. Otterspoor planned his own trips for students to go to countries around the world through the program Habitat for Humanity. His love of traveling is what ultimately caused him to apply to be a leader of the People to People trip eight years ago.
“I enjoy traveling in large groups and meeting and seeing new places with people. The aspect of traveling with students brings a lot of different perspectives to the trip. Also, all the things we do is what I like to do, and that is what I would be doing anyway if I went to the country on my own,” Mr. Otterspoor said.
The People to People Student Ambassador programs take young students from all across America to different countries around the world, and the location for each designated county rotates each year. There are close to 40 separate programs in the United States, and although some programs from different schools are very similar, most go to different countries and participate in a variety of activities. Next year, Mr. Otterspoor predicts that the Fairfield County group will be traveling to Europe, since in the past few years it has been mainly in southern Asia.
DHS Students Become Student Ambassadors
People to People Prepares for China
By Britt Gordon - 06/09
NEIRAD enilno edition | printer friendly
Juniors Francesca Forlivio, Jenny Hibben and sophomores Perrin Brown and Evan Rogers probably never ate pickled pig’s feet or other Chinese delicacies. Those foods are just a sample of the new experiences that await these DHS students in China this summer.
Forlivio, Hibben, Brown, and Rogers were selected for the People to People Student Ambassador Program this summer, which is an organization that takes students to different countries to bring them together to intersect cultures and promote peace for future generations. These four DHS students are part of a larger group of 38 students who come from all over Fairfield County. Biology teacher Sean Otterspoor is the faculty leader for the DHS contingent.
Eight DHS students attended the trip to Australia and New Zealand last summer. Senior Marcus D’Iorio, juniors Laura Durham and Francesca Forlivio, and sophomores Julia Maloof and Olivia Taylor were a few of the students who had the privilege of visiting the land down under last summer. Forlivio had so much fun she decided to join him again for the China trip.
“I really like to travel and I found a program in the high school that allowed me to continue with my experiences that I had on Mr. Keen’s trip in middle school,” Forlivio said. Mr. Keen, a social studies teacher at Middlesex Middle School, has taken his students on trips in the summer to places around the world, fueling many students’ interest in traveling abroad.
The group will leave for China on July 15th, where they will stay for two weeks, and return on July 29th. For the first few days of the trip, the students will tour Beijing, the nation’s capital. There, they will visit the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, and take a break from all the tourist attractions to take a rickshaw ride around the streets of the city. Then the group will fly to Xian, a city in western China, where they will visit the terracotta soldiers and stay with a host family for a night. The students will also visit a school in Xian and experience Chinese culture first-hand.
“I am excited to play charades with the local people, since I don’t know how to speak their language,” Forlivio said.
They will then have to say goodbye to their new friends and fly to Shanghai, where they will visit a silk factory and other attractions, and then the group will be off to Hong Kong, where they will ride in a traditional fishing boat and experience the importance of the seafood industry there.
Forlivio believes her dislike of fish will pose many problems, but Marcus D'Iorio reassures new members, "there are choices and options at most of the meals." Jenny Hibben, however, has a different attitude toward the new type of food she will be having in China.
“I am really psyched to try out the food and I have taken two years of Chinese, so I am really excited to put what I have learned to the test,” Hibben said.
Last summer's trip:
Francesca and Laura ready to snorkel in Australia
Sydney Opera House
Francesca and Laura with some kangaroos
