The Last Day

Sorry, I know its been a while, but I have been busy! All the orientation meetings are done, the pre-travel studying is completed, and the takeoff date is drawing near. It is now exactly one day before I leave, and I am excited! I found out that although only a small handful of students are going from NC, our group will be combined with groups from New York and California. Can you say culture shock? Even before we reach Europe! I got my activies list, and everyday is going to be an adventure. Not only do I get to see monuments and paintings from Europe's past, but I also get a little of the present when I visit the Italian city featured in Stephanie Meyer's book New Moon and stay with a family in Germany. I have a very big day tomorrow, and I still can't really believe that I am actually going. Anyway, look forward to a lot of stories. Got to go. Ciao!

The Interview

So if you read my last post you are probably wondering what I was talking about at the end there. Well, here it is. In order to be fully accepted into the P2P program you have to have an interview. Also for this interview you have to bring a recommendation from two teachers and a recommendation from someone in your community. Well, if you know me you know that I am home-schooled. So, how in the world am I supposed to get two teacher recommendations when they have a rule that no immediate family can write a recommendation? That would have been a problem except for the exception applied to home-schoolers. Go home-schoolers! So they tell me that I can get the recommendations from anyone in my community that knows me well. Now I have to decide who to pick, and it is a lot harder than you would expect. At the time I was at Campbell University taking  a class for college credit (or at least I thought I was, but that story is for another time.) The teacher of that class was really nice and I thought that he would be a good choice for my letter. Little did I know, when you are at college in order to get a recommendation from a professor you are required to give the professor a resume. Trying to write a resume when you have never done one before and you haven't even graduated high school yet is interesting to say the least. But I got through it without much trouble and the professor read it and even gave me a few pointers for next time. My others recommendations were from my boss and a man in my church. Well, I take them to the interview all signed and sealed, and I'm already a little nervous. It is a big opportunity and, as you can imagine, I didn't want to mess it up. The delegation leader for the trip did my interview, and I was in the room with another girl and a guy. It goes ok I guess. The woman, Ms. Gail was her name, was very nice and she just asks us some questions. It's all pretty painless just like I read it was going to be (not that I believed it at the time) and I'm all ready to go. It doesn't take long before we get the call. I'm in the program! And that was all before I even received my package in the mail containing a travel journal, certificate for the program, information for a website that prepares me for the trip, or go to the very first information meeting.

The Letter

It all started with the letter. One day I saw it in the mail and I knew immediately what it was. I had gotten one before, the year before last, but I was too young, besides these things were expensive. Let me explain. Did you ever hear about a program where students can actually go to a country to learn about it? Well, in this envelope was an invitation to do just that. It was through a group called People to People Ambassador Programs which has been taking delegations from all over the U.S to different countries on all seven continents. Sounds amazing right? The catch? Alright, alright, I'm getting to that. The thing is you have to pay for the trip. A big let down? Not really. Considering the trip and all the things you would get to do it actually is cheaper to go through this program, and you can get college credits for a little extra money. But back to the trip itself, the trip is to Italy, Austria, France, and Switzerland. So the first step after you get the letter is to sign up for an information meeting which we did. When my mom, my sister, and I get to the information meeting I'm not really as excitied as I guess I should have been, but I knew that even though I was at the meeting I still might not get to go on the trip. It all depended on the price and a bunch of other things. So the meeting tells about the trip, you hear from the leader of this delegation, P2P (People to People) alumni talk about what a good time they had, and it all sounds great until you realize that the price is like $7,000. Really quickly you start wondering, "How am I going to pay for this?" They tell stories about people that funded their entire trip even though they could not have paid for it otherwise and that they have a website for funding ideas. And then it is over and you can sign up that night and start the admissions process. We leave and go and get something to eat and when we get home my mom tells me I have to ask my dad if I can go. I ask him and then I sign up! I was already thinking about funding projects I could do, ways that I could raise money, but there was something I had to do before I would really know if I was going on the trip...