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| By CASEY CAMPBELL Staff Writer Cooperstown Crier Three Milford teenagers will get first-hand lessons in geography and social studies next summer when they spend 17 days in China as student ambassadors. Arika Morin, Santana Juhl and Mariah Courter were recently accepted to the People to People Student Ambassador Program and will travel halfway across the globe with approximately 40 other area teens. "It’s going to be a life-changing experience," Juhl said. "I can’t wait to come back here and know so much about them and not take everything for granted anymore." Morin and Courter were equally enthusiastic about the July 2007 trip. "I just hope to get a better perspective on how other people live in the world," Morin said. "I’m really looking forward to it and I’m really happy they accepted us," Courter said. The three friends, or as Courter described them, "The Three Musketeers," will take part in a variety of activities with their delegation while in China and will travel all around the country. They’ll be visiting the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, Shanghai and the Forbidden City in Beijing. The teens will also pair up and spend one night with a Chinese family in a rural village. Along the way, they’ll get a chance to learn more about the Chinese culture, people and history of the world’s most populous nation. "These are young, fine teenagers who are delivering American goodwill," said delegation leader Regina Feltham. The experience is "definitely life-changing" and broadens their cultural, humanitarian and educational experience in a trip that simply cannot be recreated by individuals traveling to China, Feltham said. Students are invited to participate in the program and must submit three letters of recommendation and successfully complete an interview process before they are accepted. Feltham said the students who are accepted are ready for personal growth and ready to see things they’ve just thought about or read about. "They’re ready to be part of something bigger, ready to go from 'me’ to 'we,’" she said. The three Milford Central School 10th-graders certainly seem to fit the bill. All three are honor roll students, members of S.A.D.D. (Students Against Destructive Decisions), C.I.A. (Community In Action) and participants on assorted athletic teams. They’re also planning ahead for the future and all three have ideas of what they want to do for careers. Morin said she’d like to be a physical therapist, Juhl said she wants to help babies born prematurely as a neo-natal nurse, and Courter said she’s hoping to become a foreign language teacher. The three are working now on several fundraising ideas, as the trip costs more than $6,000 per student. They held a pie sale earlier this month and are planning to hold raffles for a Tickle-Me-Elmo doll and a handmade quilt in December, Morin said. They’re also hoping to hold a benefit dance sometime, and all three sent letters to local businesses asking for assistance. People to People was founded by President Eisenhower during his presidency in 1956. Eisenhower believed that ordinary citizens of different nations could make a difference where governments could not. Feltham said that while 20,000 students travel through People to People, only a few delegations get the opportunity to go to China. |