People-to-People MD06

Delegate news for July 25

Jul 26, 2006

Here are a couple of notes re communication:

One delegate sent an email home earlier by finding email access at a hotel; this may be hard to find, but if you have your delegate look for it, at least we know it's possible. The one phone card we know works came from Sam's club, and had orange/blue colors -- don't know the company name, but it works to call either way.

And more trip news from the delegates:

Another parent who has been receiving regular communication reports she hears "nothing but wonderful things." Her son loves the food everywhere. They did some cliff-like diving yesterday; only a handful were brave enough, but one of the leaders jumped as well -- no word on which one! He enjoyed his homestay very much, but is glad to be back with the group, which is bonding very nicely and developing GREAT friendships. She also hears that many of the delegates are REALLY looking forward to going to Italy.

Another parent received a brief phone message sent while the kids were in the middle of what was probably the "running of the bulls" or the festival we heard about yesterday. She was happy the delegates weren't too close to the action.

One lucky parent was home to catch a call today, and had a great conversation with her son, who she says is "very excited and having a great time." He said the group was very tired after the trip over, so the first day at the bull farm was hard. His contingent had a great home stay -- they did a number of things (no details), and the host father took pix of it all, and at the end gave them a CD with all the pix on it; they ate "a ton" of food, including an "8-course dinner", and he felt the home stay was the best part of the trip so far -- not clear if that was influenced by the host family's offer to wash all his clothes! On the bowling excursion, he said the alleys were so narrow that most of his shots were gutter balls! On the perfume factory tour, he got soap molded to look like a duck!?! He has eaten a lot of fish, including squid (not by any means his usual diet). He said Monaco was very beautiful, but expensive; somewhere he picked up the cost of land at 500 Euros per square foot -- by my calculations, that's about $28 Million per acre! For other global comparisons, he commented that the host family's shower was tiny (not like the good old US-of-A), and the bus seats were too small to sleep comfortably. But just like home, the sun was strong enough to give him a good sunburn at the beach....

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