Student interview

Hmm...an email interview by a student working for the school paper, about our annual study abroad trips. Her questions:

1) What is your roll or involvment with the ef trips?
2) how many have you gone on?
3) How do u think students benefit from these trips?
4) What kind of things or places will the students get to see or do during the guided tours?
5) Is there any kind of security policies the teachers inforce on the students and other travelers for safety?

Thanks for ur time

My response:

1. I guess I'm an unofficial co-leader. I work quite a bit on arguing through the trip itinerary, advertising (have you seen some of our weird fliers through the years?), and help during the trip--mostly keeping people from getting lost. Oh, I teach one or two courses each trip--usually Travel Writing, and some sort of literature.

A new thing I started last year is our trip blog. Find this at http://cctravelers.blogspot.com/ I encouraged all the teachers and some of the students doing course projects to contribute. We had a good beginning last year, and hope this year to have quite a bit more involvement.

Ideally, some year, we will also add more video feed during our trip for people to watch here. Working on that.

2. I've gone on all the trips, including the first semi-official trip to Costa Rica, which was organized by Graham Higgs.

3. Students benefit not only from the academic experience, but also from the personal exposure to new cultures. Many students have never been outside the U.S., some not out of Missouri, and this opens a fast, stunning window on the world. Seeing the world via TV and youTube is not the same. The experience of dealing with the airport, airplanes, passports, new food, a new language environment, customs that differ, and then the things we visit on the tour, the "big sights"--all these together have the impact of a dozen courses leaking out of dull textbooks here at home.

4. The things we see vary quite a bit with the country. On European trips, we see lots of the formal culture--palaces, cathedrals, museums. So in Italy, we saw the Coloseum, the Vatican, the Duomo on Florence, the statue of David, the Birth of Venus. walked across the Bridge of Sighs in the Dogo's Palace in Venice--and rode in a gondola. [get pictures of these things, if this is all done as a web-version...]

In Egypt, we had a 3-day luxury cruise on the Nile, stopping to see ancient temples, then got back to Cairo and rode camels around the Pyramids.

In Costa Rica, we toured the capital city, explored a cloud forest, stood on the Continental Divide where we could see both the Atlantic and the Pacific, took a zip-line through the rain forest canopy, and watched the surfers out past the black sand beaches.

In New Zealand, we visited the national aquarium, visited volcanic mud pits, watched a traditional native story-dance, and at an extreme sport center, Ann and I and 2 students tried bungee-jumping.

So, that kind of stuff...

5. Security is mostly provided by the tour company and the expert guide. We mostly try to keep people from wandering off during the visits here and there. There are quite a few distractions.

I think I provided pretty good material, but alas, there were no quotes in her short article. Distressing when all the flavor is squeezed out of experience.