Bring a small photo album of your family, friends, school, and places in your town where you like to visit (even a picture of your house and your bedroom). Not only is it great to show your homestay family or anyone else you meet along the way, but its also good to have incase you feel a bit homesick.

Try to exchange e-mail addresses or screennames with delegates you become friendly with at your meetings. Talking outside of the formal meetings will help you get to know each other better. Maybe you can even try to hang-out with one another before your journey!

Pre-Travel

After our delegation was picked there was still loads of things to get done before we would be ready to leave. We had meetings once a month so we could get to know one another better. It also enabled us be able to learn more about the places we would be traveling. We were all assigned projects and homework to help us learn about our own government as well as where we will be traveling.

January 21, 2005

-We all recieved nametags and met our delegation leaders.
-In order to 'break the ice' we were each assigned a partner and had to fill out a questionare about that person's high school, favorite sport, favorite subject, etc. We had to present what we had learned about our person to everyone.
-We watched 2 different videos. The first one was about the rules of being an ambassador were, as well as what their expectations of you are while on the trip. The other video was all about President Dwight D. Eisenhower and all of the major occurances during his presidency, as well as how and why he founded the organization, People To People.
-Before we left we were assigned homework, we had 3 different things to complete. We were assigned small groups to meet with in order to prepare a 10 minute skit about a certain topic. We also had to complete the first part of our journal as well as another sheet about the government of the United States.

February 18, 2005

-In order to get to know each other better we each had to tell a story to the entire group, as well as our parents, about something embarrassing that has happened to us. It was a lot of fun to hear everyone's embarrassing stories and we got to know each other much better.
-We discussed when would be the best times to use the telephone to call overseas as well as what calling cards we would need. (We found the the MCI cards worked well for where we were going to travel. Also, its better to use a pay phone then a hotel room in case there are charges to unlock the phone or a charge per minute the phone is in use.)
-We discussed more tips for traveling, such as labeling and checking over our packed items. We also watched another video full of tips for traveling and some of the situations we might face while are going to be away.
-We were told to read up in our Protocol Books and we were also given a journal assignment involving writing a very detailed description of a place we knew well.

March 18, 2005

-An official from our town government came to our group to discuss the history of the gorvernment of the United Sates as well as getting more into the history of governments in our own neighborhoods.
-We learned that we would be participating in a service project that involved donating various items to an animal shelter.
-We learned and discussed when we would need to wear our P2P polo shirts and where we could buy additional shirts if we felt that we needed them.
-We talked about the flights and how to acquire frequent flyer miles and what to do about mailing items.
-Once again, we watched a detailed video and this time as a group activity, we were divided into two teams and had to complete a challenge involving everything from playing ring-around-the-rosie to getting signatures from our parents. It was a lot of fun to have to act goofy and get a break from trying to obtain so much information.
-We were told for our next meeting to bring our animal donations, practice taking photos, and to complete the questions given to us about our homestay in our journals.

April 16, 2005

-We sorted out all of our animal donations and brought them into the car for them to be delivered.
-Our leaders reminded us to review what we would need to do in order to recieve high school or college credits.
-We were told that our next meeting would involve food sampling from the countries we would be visiting and we each had to prepare a seperate dish for everyone to sample, as well as copying the recipe for everyone.
-We discussed where our Bon Voyage party would be and we decided on a place called Dave & Busters where, along with being served dinner, we would be able to challenge each other in arcade games.
-We were given our journal assignments and reminded to check our e-mail and the onboard internet site frequently!

May 20, 2005

-We set-up all of the food we had brought in to have everyone sample and handed out our recipies.
-We were given time to go around and sample the food that we had each brought and explained the contents of the food and what it had to do with the history of the country where it was from.
-We got to know each other a lot better because of the free time that we had from asking each other questions and discovering new foods.

Having the meetings was a great chance to get to meet and know the other kids I would be traveling with and it was also good for my parents to get to know the leaders and other moms and dads. Being able to ask any questions we had and learning more about the trip (as well as learning many tips and question & answer sessions pertaining to our journey!)