People to People and National State Leaders Programs

TerrytheTomato
Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:04:58 +0000

I did People to People in the summer between 8th and 9th grade and loved it. It’s really not a joke at all, it changed my life. In all honesty, before I went, I was really self conscious. I was the girl who no matter how hard she tried to look good, I never looked good enough for myself. I barely ate because I was afraid of getting fat and ended up getting overweight. Going on a P2P trip changed that. You’re surrounded by strangers, so you can be yourself. Also, I figured that there weren’t going to be many times I was in Italy eating authentic Italian pastas, so why not eat it? I came back a confident person and since I’m not afraid to be myself.
People to People isn’t a trip designed to educate book wise, it’s cultural education. The trip I went on didn’t involve a home stay, but in Greece, Italy, and France we did activities with kids our age to get to know them. In Greece we went to a sports camp and lost in a game of soccer. In Italy we had dinner with a group of Italian students. In France, we went to another sports camp, and actually won a soccer game!
In People to People, you also do charity work. Our group volunteered in Greece to help out at a sea turtle rescue center, and we learned about how important sea turtles are to our planet and how we can help protect them. As a group, we all donated some pocket money to get to about 30 euros to “adopt” a turtle under our P2P group name.
P2P really is life changing, there’s no lie about that. It’s a great cultural experience and it’s not a 3 week party for rich kids whose parents want them out of the house for a while. I came back not a different person, but I came back as me.