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People to People Ambassadors are ... TEEN TRAVELERS
By JoAnn Jones
Seventeen-year-old Austin Butler of Sebring couldn’t stop talking … and talking … and talking.
After all, he had just returned from Europe, where he’d seen things most adults may never see in a lifetime — the Vatican and the Colosseum in Rome, the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles in Paris, and the Alps in Switzerland.
To top it off, he spent three days and four nights with an Austrian host family as part of the People to People Ambassador Program, in which 19 Ohio and 27 Texas teens traveled to Europe from June 10 to July 3.
“We flew from Cleveland to Atlanta to Rome,” said Butler, who is a senior at Sebring McKinley High School.
“As soon as we got there, we went right into the Colosseum. We didn’t even go to our hotel. Then we saw the Roman Forum and where Julius Caesar was cremated.”
“On our second day, we went to the Vatican,” he added. “It had paintings on almost every wall. The Sistine Chapel was amazing. It was so detailed.”
Butler, along with Ross Blevins of Austintown Fitch High School, Bailey Sandin of Canfield High School, Taylor Flanigan of Grand Valley High School and Dakota Hannah of Hickory High School (in Hermitage, Pa.), recently had a reunion in Austintown with People to People Ambassador delegation leaders Gary and Sandie Reel to share photos and memories of their travels.
“It does give kids the chance to explore the world,” Gary Reel said. “It gives them awareness.”
Butler, who helped finance his trip with donations from local organizations, loved all the big cities the group visited — Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris — but his favorite part of the trip was his home stay in Austria.
“Everybody was so nervous to leave the group, our only family at the time,” he said, “but I had a new mom, brother and grandparents as well as a dad and second brother later in the week.”
“On the second day there, I had to go to school with Michi, my ‘brother,’” Butler said. “I went to science class, and they encouraged me to get up in front of the class. I had to touch a silver electric ball. All the students cheered because the ball was going crazy with electricity, but I wouldn’t have known what was going on if it weren’t for my ‘brother’ and his friends.”
Butler had one year of German as a freshman, so he understood his host family a little.
“I understood some things they said, but the speed with which they talked made things difficult,” he added, saying the language barrier didn’t keep them from getting attached. “The mom and grandma both cried when I had to leave. They didn’t want me to go.”
Sandin enjoyed her home stay, too, saying she couldn’t believe how safe everything was.
“Just the teens took a train to Vienna and spent the whole day there,” she said. “It was really nice to learn and experience something you see in textbooks, things you really need to know.”
Sandin wanted to go on this trip because her mother had been to Italy and she has always wanted to travel outside the country. She especially enjoyed the pasta there.
“I was amazed at how perfectly cooked the pasta was — every time — no matter where you went,” she said.
Flanigan, whose family helped her raise money for the trip, said she liked Paris the best, even though the “people weren’t as friendly as in Austria.”
“I was dying to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre,” she said. “It was an hour before we got to it. It was pretty sweet.”
She was also thrilled with the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
“In art, we learned all about this, and I was anxious to see it,” Flanigan said. “I’m taking my pictures to my classes.”
Blevins said he had learned about the wonderful experiences with the People to People Program because his 21-year-old sister Rachel had gone to England with a local delegation and to China with a national delegation. He said he was impressed with the ancient structures he saw in Rome.
“The Colosseum is just huge,” said Blevins, who is a junior at Fitch. “I can’t believe how big all these structures are and how long it took to build them.”
In Florence, the group visited a leather factory and a glass factory, both of which Blevins called “cool.”
“At the leather factory, the instructor showed us how to make a jewelry box out of leather, with not even any hinges,” he said. “Then we got to see a glass blower make a tiny horse out of glass in like five minutes.”
Blevins, like the others, enjoyed the gondola ride in Venice even though it was raining while they visited.
“The whole city was kind of flooded,” he said. “There was water everywhere.”
When the teens visited the Eiffel Tower in Paris, they met with more rain.
“We got to the very top, 889 feet, and it started to rain,” Butler said. “Not a little rain; it felt like hail.”
“We were at the top and the wind was crazy,” Blevins added.
Hannah, considered an Ohio teen delegate because he lives just over the Ohio border, said he liked the culinary school the teens visited in Switzerland.
“The first class we went to was fun,” he said. “They taught us how to make apple strudel.” The teens got to eat the strudel later in their visit.
Hannah also thought the best part of the trip was the stay with a host family in Austria.
“I had three sisters — Anna, Nuria and Sophia,” he said. “They spoke English very well and helped me with my German.”
“The family made me a huge dinner with nockerl potato noodles,” Hannah added. “It was the best meal I ever had.”
He said his “sisters” took him to an “absolutely huge” mall that they entered underground, and he also went to school with them.
“Homeroom was crazy with food, drink, laptops, cell phones and music,” he said. “But in first period, they settled down and it wasn’t so crazy.”
Next year the People to People delegation will go to Japan, Gary Reel said.
“These kids make lifelong friends on these trips with their host families, the guides and the other teens from their area,” he said. “To me, the greatest benefit is the home stay. The kids are without mom and dad, doing their own wake-ups and budgeting money. Those are the values of the trips and why you want to do it.”