February, 4th 2011
As the count down gets closer, excitement fills my body. One month from today, and I will be arriving to Barcelona, Spain, A world of unknowns. I know that I am going to be staying with a 15-year-old girl and at first I was scared, because she is so young. Then, I reminded myself that I live in the freshman dorm at school, where the girls are younger than that and I love them. I think that I will be able to make the best out of it. She has already found me on Facebook and we have started sending emails to each other.
I  plan to work at the preschool of the school that we are doing the exchange with, yet I don’t know any of the logistics of this plan. This uncertainty is something unusual in my life and therefore a bit exhilarating. I also don’t know much of what we are doing as a group yet. I believe that we are going to go to some art museums and also tour around Madrid for a few days. I also heard that Profe Jorge is trying to plan a trip to a soccer game, which would be incredible.
I am determined to not speak English while I am there, but I am hoping that my attitude doesn’t change. Last year when I went to Nicaragua with my best friend and her mother, I told myself the same thing. Yet when I heard how fast they spoke, I ended up not talking English or Spanish and I came across as very shy. I strongly hope this will not be the case for Spain. I am worried that I will not be able to understand them.
So right now my attitude is filled with wonder and uncertainty. I can’t wait to get there and actually have stories to share with you all.

Hey! I’m Catriona, better known as Catie.  Unlike some of my peers, I’m not going to a warm, foreign country for my Senior Project; I’m staying local and bundling up for the cold.  I’ll be commuting daily to Philadelphia to intern at a radio station, WXPN.

XPN is a non-commercial station that plays music that commercially funded stations can’t afford to.  Instead of playing stuff that’s been focus-grouped to death and deemed “sellable,” WXPN plays music composed with talent and passion by intelligent and groundbreaking artists.  Because it is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, many Penn students get the chance to volunteer and intern at the station.  I will be working with those college students as a Programming Assistant to the World Café show.

My interest in the program is what made me want to pursue an internship at XPN. World Café is a nationally syndicated show (you can listen on NPR or XPN!).  The show has two components: an interview and a live set.  Many independent and alternative artists are featured on the show, and a lot of these artists are relatively unknown. What drew me to the program initially was the quality of the music, but after listening I realized the real heart of the show is actually its brain.  The conversations between the host, David Dye, and the artists make listening to their music very special and personal.  He has featured such bands and artists as Coldplay, Joni Mitchell, or Yo-Yo Ma and still manages to help the listener understand the vision and soul of the music.  Regardless of how famous or mainstream the guest is (or not at all), Dye frames their work in a way that is compelling and interesting.

As an intern, I will be working directly with the artists and their managers, helping to coordinate their stays in Philadelphia.  I will be responsible for maintaining the calendar of events and gathering information on the artists.  But I want to do something that goes beyond the job description I was given. I hope to gain insight into the life of a musician and the lives of the people who maintain this musician’s image and career.  I am, by nature, an observer, and more than anything I want to have a story to tell at the end of my project.

I hope that with this blog, I can share some of my observations – and maybe a story or two – with a wider audience.  Enjoy!

P.S. check out http://xpn.org/xpn-programs/world-cafe

Hi!

I’m Jack, a senior from West Chester, PA.  For my senior project, I will be interning with an engineer at Stuttgart SSB in Stuttgart, Germany.  The SSB is the company that runs the subways, trams, and buses around Stuttgart.  I have no idea what I’ll be doing exactly, but that’s part of the fun.  I will be living with a German family, whose son I met through the German exchange program at Westtown.

I initially applied for an internship at Mercedes and Porsche, though unfortunately both had all of their available spots filled.  Both companies would have given me a chance to see what working as an engineer would actually be like.  Although working with car designers would have been really interesting, working in the subway is a great way to see the way a city works.  I’ll be able to tell you more about it when I actually get there!

Can’t wait

Jack

Hi, I’m Daniel, a Westtown senior from Media, PA. This is my fourteenth and final year at Westtown, so I am hoping to make it my best. I will be traveling to Ghana to teach at Heritage Academy, the school that T. Kwesi  and T. Melissa helped to start.

I have heard a lot about Heritage Academy over the years. When I was in sixth grade, we exchanged pen-pal letters with some of the students in Ghana. Also, my brother Francis went on this trip for his senior project, and he brought back lots of pictures and stories about his experience. I will be bringing a camera, so I might be able to send back pictures, but that depends on the internet in one of the towns near the school, and I have heard it is a little finicky.

This will not be my first time out of the country. I’ve been to Europe several times in the past (England, Italy, Norway, Greece) but never to Africa. I have a lot of preconceptions about where we will be going, so I look forward to being surprised and having those expectations shattered.

During the week, our group (we have 10 students, I believe) will teach at Heritage. I plan to teach Math. So far, the math I will be teaching involves fractions, decimals, and percentages. I will be sharing this responsibility with another student, so hopefully this brief stint as a teacher will involve more fun and less panic about standing in front of an expecting crowd of Ghanaian students. We will be teaching two or three sections a day, so I suppose that by the end of our stay, I will at least have figured out what does and does not work when teaching several sections of a class. The classes are fairly large, but I haven’t heard an exact number yet. As far as I know, it will be around 30 students in a class.

We will be staying in a guest house some distance away from the school, which sounds like it could be interesting. It will be odd going from a North American winter with 30-degree weather an snow to Ghana where it will probably be around 90 degrees every day. I anticipate a very difficult transition in the first few days of our stay in Ghana.

Now, I have to focus on packing all of my gear and deciding exactly what I will be teaching. That, and counting down the days before we leave. Good luck, Ghana 2011!

Daniel

2/2/11

It is strange for me to realize that in only 19 days I will be sitting on a plane, flying to Tel Aviv. This is something that I have wanted to do for over a year. I gained interest in politics and international issues during a class I took last year called “From Hiroshima to 9/11”. As a whole, the class opened my eyes to how much is going on in the world and how those things effect me and everyone around me. The whole winter term was devoted to the history and current conflict in the region of Israel/Palestine. Going into the class, I knew that I would be most interest in that topic, but once we started to learn about it, I began to grasp how important this conflict is to the rest of the world, and in particular, the United States of America.

Of course, there is only so much one can learn from a textbook. With topics as complex as the one in Palestine/Israel, there is so much more to learn than names and dates. My goal while I am there is to learn more about the people. I want to know who is actually part of this conflict, and how they feel about what is happening. I want to walk down the streets of Jerusalem, Ramallah, Givat Havina, Bethlehem, and feel the passion and pain that live there. I want to understand how such a holy land can be encompassed by such a painful conflict.

I know a few people who have visited various places throughout the region, and one of the things that I keep being told is that it will change my life. Every time someone says this to me I reply by simply saying, “I know”. But, truthfully, I don’t think I do. I am unsure what my reaction will be to my journey. I am worried that I have sensationalized this trip, and will find myself disappointed by what I find.

Over the course of my two-week trip, I will be traveling all over Palestine and Israel with a small group of Westtown students. Throughout the trip I will be updating this blog with my thoughts, feelings, and my pictures. My hope is that everyone reading will be able to follow me through my journey in Israel and Palestine.