When you hear about students traveling during the summer, you think they go somewhere in the U.S. like Florida or Washington. However, Loy Norrix high school students, specifically seniors, have had the opportunity to travel out of the country.
“We went to Greece first, and spent two days there. And then from there we went to Rome and from Rome we went to Paris, and then we climbed the Eiffel Tower,” said senior Maddie Olech. “Greece was probably my favorite because it was prettier than all the other countries and it was cheaper so we could do all the other things and what not.”
While Maddie was in Europe, she visited the Colosseum and Trevi Fountain in Italy, when it was under construction at the time.
“I went to Blue Lake and they have the international program which is separate from the camp and basically I got into the jazz band,” continued senior Tajanae Lewis, “and we went to Europe for maybe three weeks. I spent most of my time in Germany but we also went to France for a couple days. We basically toured every three days, we’d go to a new city and have new host parents.”
There’s plenty of tourist spots throughout Europe to explore. Tourist locations include the Eiffel Tower and the Palace of Versaille in France, and the Colosseum in Italy or the Berlin Wall in Germany.
“I went to Guatemala and I went there with my class in eighth-grade Spanish class, so we went to a bunch of different places like Tequila, [Guatemala] which is the Mayan ruins, the pyramids, so we went there. We went to this little peninsula called Manabique, and it’s super remote like there’s a one room school there and kids ride their horses on the beach in school and stuff so it’s really cool, [and] we got to interact with a lot of native people there so it was cool. It was really fun,” said senior Kaila Starks.
Loy Norrix Peacejam and Travel Club are school run programs, both of which have summer trips planned for 2016.
“Traveling, of course, will help everybody grow, to being able to see other cultures, to not pass judgement on another culture,” said Sveri May.
Peacejam has a trip planned to South Africa this summer and plan to go to Cape Town and do community projects there.
Travel Club plans to go to England, France, and Spain this summer, while they are currently planning their trip to Italy and France in the summer of 2017 to see the famous landmarks.
You can earn scholarships to go through the school in order to help pay for the trip, as well as fundraisers that you can do with the school or on your own to raise the money.
“Each trip always features great art and art museums, cathedrals, castles, famous landmarks (Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum), cooking schools, markets and water (rivers, beaches, oceans),” said Cindy Vanlieu of the Travel Club.
There are many different ways to travel around the world, whether it is with your school, a professional organization, or even just with your church or family.  When you take advantage of the opportunities that you have been offered to travel, you won’t regret it.