<p>Thanks for the info on the chinatown bus. I’ll perhaps suggest next time DD goes to NYC she takes a more legal form of transportation, though I won’t hold my breath she takes that advice. </p>
<p>FWIW during HER spring break, she indulged in sleeping, snowboarding and simming (i.e. playing simms, the computer game.) No reading of books, that’s for sure. </p>
<p>I love to hear these stories of kids traveling – is this generation more worldly than we were?</p>
<p>Right now, mine is backpacking in a mountain state park near her U. She’s training to be a leader of the backpacking trips they do during orientation, so this is a trip for the trainees to practice.</p>
<p>ok, heres something for all the baseball fans
s will be taking a Maymester course (a 3 week session his college runs during May) on “Managing major and minor league stadiums”,a senior and grad level class in his major of Sports Management.He’s a freshman and was given permission to register by the dept chairman,who happens to be his advisor. They’ll be visiting and taking in games at major and minor league parks from Philly to Florida and spending 2 weeks on a bus.Hes besides himself with joy!
Most of the Dads we know are especially jealous of this…the running joke is…3 credits for watching baseball games…</p>
<p>I have one studying overseas who got certified at his school to scuba dive and just spent a few days scuba diving in the Red Sea during a cruise. Now he is off to Jordan for Spring Break. Other child is leaving for Peurta Vallarta for Spring Break and then this summer biking throughout the country with friends only in the mountains and hitting two 100 mile races along the way. Me, I’m about to pay the bills.</p>
<p>S went to the Florida Keys for Spring Break with 13 of his closest friends! From what I’ve heard they all had a “large time at the big water”. Note…this was completely funded by S (he has a part-time job at school). </p>
<p>His big summer adventure will be his NROTC deployment. He will spend about a month training on a vessel that is currently deployed. The possibilites are the Mediterranean, the Caribbean or the Middle East. It will be a big adventure and a big learning experience.</p>
<p>Coureur, I just met someone who just returned from El Salvador. He said that after seeing how the people live there, he would never complain about anything in the US again. </p>
<p>I wonder how many Salvadorians your cost of the trip would have employed building those houses and for how long. A friend who sent his son to Israel to do the same thing made that comment to me about the Palestinians.</p>
<p>“I love to hear these stories of kids traveling – is this generation more worldly than we were?”</p>
<p>No. Their parents just give them a lot more money than our parents gave us.</p>
<p>Juliet, you don’t think El Salvador benefits in other ways from having the kids come visit and see what it’s like there?</p>
<p>I can tell you from my experience in Katrina-country, that as difficult as it is to accept sight-seeing buses roaming through what’s left of your neighborhoods, it’s even more harmful in the long run to have people have no idea what’s going on.</p>
<p>Conyat, of course I agree with you. Everyone in my family has done humanitarian work in third world countries. As a medical professional, I volunteered in the Gulf. During the week it took the administration to get help to New Orleans, I sent multiple emails to the White House, while I watched the horror on TV. I am a global and active person.</p>
<p>weenie - maybe some. I traveled widely as a youth and my parents paid for it. Both of my children have traveled widely, also, but both have been working since around 5. I do help out some, but they pay the majority of their travels.</p>
<p>Junior D is absolutely giddy about her upcoming summer adventure. [Note: Any technical terms referenced here come from D. I’m still attempting to process.] I am so impressed that her relationship with her LAC chemistry professors led to such an opportunity, and that she’s extremely lucky to have been awarded the position (right time, right interests). She’ll spend a few weeks in Abisko, Sweden (200 km north of the arctic circle) where she will collect ambient aerosol particles (pollutants???). She then will do analysis for about 7 weeks in Zurich at the The Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology using an Aerosol Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer, a specialized one that is located there. She’ll work with an American researcher at the Institute (who was one of 58 winners of the 2004 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the nation’s highest honor for professionals at the outset of their independent research careers) as well as with a German PhD candidate. Travel, R/B, and stipend included! A study abroad experience that we don’t have to pay tuition for! I can only imagine what an impact this experience will have on her.</p>
<p>Maize&Blue - That does sound like a truely unique and amazing experience. What a wonderful opportunity for her!</p>
<p>Second that, M&B…it sounds like a terrific trip! Congratulations!</p>
<p>S is still in high school, but he’s spent the past few days doing something I find interesting…he and his partner (I call them the “uncivil engineers”) won their school’s bridge-building contest in physics class. Their bridge held the most weight before breaking. Now he is building another one (new and improved) to compete at the next level, whatever that is…citywide maybe? (He’s shaky on the details and was even more so before I made him open a window to let all the Krazy Glue fumes out.) He’s enjoying the project for its own sake, which is a nice change from Senor Senioritis, who used to live in his room. <em>Grin</em></p>
<p>What greater gift to a child and their education to fund travel if you can. This generation hopefully will be more worldly. They need to be in this increasingly global world and economy. Americans are not known the world over for producing worldly kids and I hope that’s changing.</p>
<p>Maize
Your D wins,hands down!!</p>
<p>I don’t know about <em>winning</em>, but she’ll clearly have an experience that I have no basis of comparison for in my little world. Last year, she had been disappointed to cancel a study abroad program because of conflict with the timing of certain science course offerings at her LAC, never dreaming that this would come out of the woodwork. Best of all, I’ll be making plans to get to Zurich. I’ve travelled the US and Canada, but have never been to Europe. No excuse now!</p>
<p>My daughter just got back from Peru last night. We had dinner on the way back from the airport and half of her stories were about her travel misadventures: flight from Philadelphia cancelled last friday night - spent the night with friend at Temple. Next day gets off to Miami in the early evening and instead of going on to Peru, passengers are informed that they don’t have a crew for the next leg. Sleeps in Miami airport (met up with her Peru traveling partner there) and finally gets out 1:30 am Monday morning. Has a wonderful time in Peru. Friday she and friend arrive uneventfully in Miami but decide to take a city bus to the beach during long layover. Bus breaks down on the way to the airport. She flags down and shares a cab with three English girls (left friend on beach, she has a later flight home) and finds that plane is delayed an hour. Came home, slept in until 10:00. At 4:00 her friend picked her up and they are enroute to Illinois and back to college. I just called her up (they are in Columbus, Ohio) and was quite excited when I told her it’s supposed to be 81 degrees at her college town tomorrow.</p>
<p>Sometimes the journey IS the adventure! PS - this trip wiped out her savings.</p>
<p>Katiep - Did your daughter walk the inca trail and see Macchu Pichu while she was in Peru? My daughter was lucky enough to do that a few months ago, at the end of a 5month study-abroad in Chile. She came back with pictures that looked like National Geographic (and she’s not a photographer; it was the beautiful scenery!)</p>
<p>anxiousmom, She did that when she went to Peru for her study abroad last Spring. I remember you and I talked about it a little bit before your daughter went and I even got my daughter to post a little. My daughter went in May of last year.</p>
<p>This trip was an unexpected one. She was invited to go by her friend because her friends father was going to be in Peru at a conference. She had to pay for her flight but the dad paid for the hotel rooms. In Lima they mostly visited historical areas and cathedrals, and shopped a little.</p>
<p>DS has used the Chinatown buses between Boston and NYC a number of times…at $30 round trip they are half of what the “other” buses cost. Google Boston Deluxe. It is another one of them. I don’t know whether it’s better than Fungwah…for all I know they are owned by the same people. Originally these buses were set up to transport folks from Chinatown to Chinatown to see family…but the “college” age group picked up on the costs. My kids says that the buses are filled with 20’somethings, mostly college students, taking the trips. His experience…clean buses, and as on time as the others. The only thing that annoyed him on one trip was the “tink a tink a tink” oriental music that they played the whole way there. The next time, he took his IPod.</p>