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Follow the TourEurope
Brussels is more than a 1,000 years old. Today the name Brussels stands for an agglomeration of 19 communes forming one of the three regions of the federal Belgian state; the capital of the Kingdom of Belgium and the headquarters of the French and Flemish Communities. Brussels also has an important international vocation; as the European capital the city is home to the European Commission and to the Council of ministers of the European Union. One of The Netherlands oldest cities, Nijmegen dates back to A.D. 105. Its strategic position is clearly visible from the Valkhof, a park on the site of a fortress Charlemagne built here in the 9th century. The Valkhof is situated high on the south bank of the Waal river, and the views from this park of the surrounding region are magnificent. |
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 Naina Goulart, Brazil, and Crystal Sanderson, Canada, and host family from Belgium pose in front of the Eiffel Ttower
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Host Family LivingBienvenue a Paris!By Crystal Sanderson,
Canada Since Brussels is so close to Paris, my host family thought it was a shame that we would not be visiting it on our tour and decided to take us there themselves. So on Thursday, my roommate Naina Goulart from Brazil and I drove over three hours until we arrived in Paris. We visited many sites in the short time we had there. Our first stop, of course, was to the Tour d'Eiffel. It was amazing to be standing under it and to see its enormous size, in person. Paris is one of those places I have heard so much about but never imagined visiting. Other places we visited while downtown were Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, Arc De Triomphe, and we walked along the Champs D'Elysee. We took a subway to the other side of town where we saw Paris from a different perspective. We went to Sacre Coeur church, which is located high above town, where we got a bird's eye view of the city. Since France is so well known for its wine, we decided to find a nice restaurant to enjoy lunch. In addition to the wine, I decided to eat something very French, so I chose "cuisses de grenouilles" -- frog legs! They were surprisingly delicious and had a similar texture and taste to chicken. Never did I think when I signed up for this trip that I would visit Paris. Thanks to the generosity of my Belgian host family I can now add another country to my list. |
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 Lutgart de Backer, (center of photo) alumna from Belgium, hosts her new WorldSmart family, Rebecca Chen (left), China; and Hiroko Ochi, (right,) Japan |
Host Family LivingFrom Alumna to Host MomBy Lutgart de Backer,
Alumna We have beer, chocolate and Belgium food in the house. Now it is time to meet the students. They are coming from Japan. Good -- a new culture shock! Hope I can help them. The students are very polite and open minded. Good, nothing is changed in Up with People. They are grateful for what I am doing and want to learn about my country. What can I offer? Jet lag is not a big deal for them, or are they interesting to see the country? First thing on the agenda: finding Internet. Every one has to know they arrived well. We just used the phone if we found one. But things are changed just a bit. First working day for them. I hope they can find the facility by themselves. Just put them on the bus. Gave them an extra map, just in case? I was lucky I never had to do that during my year. Who knows what would have happened then. They made it, but a little later then planned. They missed the street. Good, the other days they can walk or have to go to the same place. Community involvement. Nice name for community service. I hope they will have some fun. It looks to me that the work schedule is more serious than ours. We had lots of fun on the stage and didn't see that as work. It looks like they have a job. So dancing and singing was not such a job, or at least not for me. Celebration. Surprise to me. They still sing and dance and have fun. It gave me a flashback when the new group sang and danced. I only missed the colours. It was not as joyful as I remember my show, but I must not forget it is not a show but a presentation. Lucky for those students they have a way to express a lot of their experience through this event. So good luck on the last part of your journey in this big world. Remember the world is only as big as you let it be. |
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WorldSmart CelebrationWe are Great!By Rebecca Chen,
China The celebration was held in the Hotel Marriott on Saturday evening. The first part of the celebration is music. It was started with our WorldSmart song, "Rhythm of the World," and is followed with dancing and sign language, "Non-spoken Language." I like the song since it tells everyone communication is not only language, but also gesture and other ways. Both girls who were doing the sign language didn't know any sign language before this program. They learned through the program and are now they are very professional. The next part of the celebration was more educational, which was a form of statistic and street interview. "Sometimes the world is not such a great place." Students from different countries used their own language to present the negative statistic in their countries. "640% of high school students in Romania smoke." "In China, more than 3,000 people were killed in coal mining accident in 2003." People in Brussels were also interviewed to talk about the problems in their communities. "However, there are lots of things to be proud of your community." "In the United States, teenagers volunteer 6.2 billion hours a year." "In China, the General Domestic Product grew by 9.5% in 2004." We learned that people in Brussels are proud of their international environment, their great beer, and the world's best chocolate. Since there are two official languages in Brussels -- French and Dutch -- it makes the street interview more difficult. Manu and Luka, the two interns in the technical area did a wonderful job. They used three different languages to do the street interviews -- English, French, and Dutch. The third part of the celebration was new, which is called a cultural mosaic. The idea of the culture mosaic started in Omura, Japan. At that time, our crew was divided into five groups, and each group was given two pieces of the cultural music. It was really cool that after one and half hours brainstorming, each group presented its idea. After that, Nina and Rob, the celebration staff were working on it. They not only edited the music and improved the performance, but also added a background slide show. That night, our first cultural mosaic was extremely success, though everyone was nervous about it before since we only had less than two hours to get ready for it. Japanese break dancing was the beginning of the cultural mosaic. This was followed by greeting, which showed the cultural difference of greeting; for example, in some Asian countries, people bow when they meet each other; in other countries, people shake hands, give hugs, or even kiss. African dancing is the third piece. The European street scene was a typical raining day with different people passing in the street, which included street artists, beggars, tourists and office workers. Industrial music was used to present South America's piece. The final piece is Latin music, with which everyone was dancing and cheering. JC's (Juan Carlos, staff member from Mexico) dancing was so impressed. He was dancing behind the screen. His professional dancing looked like an iPod commercial model. Finally we gave our warm thanks to the local community and host families. And the celebration was ended with 40 years of history -- the Up with People song. Everyone enjoyed the celebration. I was so proud of us. Though we are not professional performers, we are great and did a really good job. |
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 A sign tells the story of a special coffee shop employing people with special needs
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Community ImpactThe Photo Quest in NijmegenBy Ana Barba,
Romania We split in six groups of two or three people. The first four groups did this on Thursday and the last two groups Friday. My partner was Anthony Sheehan from Canada. Friday morning we decided that the best places to find the photographs we needed were at the train station and the centre. At some point Anthony mentioned that in the centre is a cafeteria where disabled people -- mentally challenged -- serve you. The subject was interesting, and we decided to visit this cafeteria. When we entered, I discovered a small and warm place. We sat at the table, observed what is happening and after 10 minutes, because of our curiosity, we started to talk with one of the hosts. We found out that they started this program four years ago because they wanted to make a difference -- to offer jobs for the disabled people. The place was for "special people with special needs," but with big hearts and great smiles. Also, he explained that the cafeteria has two rooms; one room is for people who want to drink a good coffee and the second room is for the work shops. This work shop is to train the workers in how to prepare coffee, serve it and put it in a special packages. Training was done every Saturday. We asked if it was possible to take pictures because is a good story to share with our WorldSmart group. We called our project, "Photographs of Community Impact." |
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 No words to describe visit to SS Cconcentration Camp Vught
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Community ImpactVisit to an SS Concentration Camp IndescribableBy Mehmet Baha,
Cyprus Being in a concentration camp was a first time experience in my life. This camp, SS Concentration Camp Vught, is located in The Netherlands. There, we had the chance to have a guided tour, and listen to the story of a WW II survivor. The whole experience was so "strange" for me. Walking in the camp, touching the beds of prisoners, going inside cells, and trying to visualize what the guide told us...It was very difficult, almost like impossible. It cannot be true, I really felt like I was in a horror movie stage. The crematorium, where prisoners are burnt inside; totally wooden shoes, especially designed to give pain to prisoners; little clothing given to prisoners in that freezing weather; the intensity and the level of discrimination done, was way beyond my imagination. But this was true, and done under the leadership of Hitler; even now I cannot easily believe that extent of brutality. We were shown a small room 9 square meters, that is a cell. Can you imagine how many people were forced to stay there? Seventy-six women. It is also a psychological way of punishment in that they had to stay in that room for certain hours without going out. Several of the women tragically died there, some had traumas. The room was so packed that German soldiers had a hard time closing the door. Actually, Camp Vught is not an extermination camp where people are exterminated by the use of gas and other cruel methods. This is just a concentration camp where people are gathered and sent to extermination camps in Germany by trains. So, around 31,000 prisoners -- Jewish people, political prisoners and homosexuals -- were held there for 1.5 years from 1942 to 1943. Out of that number, around 750 people lost their lives mainly due to starvation and punishment. I cannot find right words to describe the dehumanization in the camp. There was a room full of bunk beds for prisoners, and the beds virtually had no mattresses. What is more, the lower part of each bunk bed was not fully covered by the wood so that when a person on the top bed had diarrhea, the feces dropped down to the one sleeping under. Even the guide felt uncomfortable telling this detail. What kind of degrading!!!! Full of strange and indescribable feelings, I found myself in front of a WW II survivor. She heartfully related to us the scary times she had. In one of her stories, she said that she had pretended like she could not speak German when German soldiers were trying to give her commands. With all this barbarianism done at that time, I had a huge question mark in my mind that I asked this surviving woman, "How do you feel about Germans and Germany now?" She responded, "At that time I very much hated them, but I have no hatred now. Germany is 150 kilometers from the Netherlands. If I happened to be born in Germany and brainwashed there, I would be in their positions." My biggest wish is human beings is not repeat the same tragedy again! |
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 Recruitment Admissions Team Hugo Ariza, Mexico; Jens Ilshner, Germany; and Gizen Gurson, Turkey, make their way to the bus stop
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Personal DevelopmentRecruitment Trip to Bremen, GermanyBy Tomi Otudeko,
Nigeria/United Kingdom After a long travel day we arrived in Bremen, Germany, and our base at 5:30 p.m. We were based at the International University (IUB), Bremen, which is where Gizem went to school. We were hosted in the university's dormitory by students, who were our host family for the next few days. IUB is a small university with 1,000 students representing more than 80 countries. Since we were based in a small school, everybody knew we were on campus and were friendly and helpful. We had to hit the ground running and went straight to the library to discuss our strategy for the trip, check our e-mails and print posters to announce our presentations. We also got in touch with prospective students from the campus who were very eager to meet us and talk to us about the program. It was great to meet people who might be joining the program after I finish, and to see their excited faces and answer their questions. The day did not end until late, but we went to bed excited about the prospect of two presentations and our first interview with a prospective student the next day. On Tuesday morning, along with Hugo, I interviewed my first prospective student. It was very exciting, and I enjoyed hearing about the prospective student's life and her reasons for applying for the program. Later that day we gave two presentations. The first was at the Hoschele Bremen and the second in the evening was at the International University Bremen. They were both very successful and generated lots of interest in the program. We were able to set many appointments to interview prospects the next day. Later that night we had a chance to go to a party thrown by Gizem's friends. It was great to see Gizem at "home" and we all enjoyed ourselves tremendously. On Wednesday, we had five interviews and gave one presentation at the University of Bremen. I was personally involved in three interviews, and loved getting to know the students. However, the interviews were both physically and mentally exhausting, with our last interview ending at midnight. We were all glad to get to bed as we prepared to leave Bremen and join the rest of the crew in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. After a short meeting with the international office at IUB, we were on our way to Nijmegen. The trip had been very successful and we had five other prospective students we were unable to interview due to a lack of time. Although it was my first time giving presentations about the program, I found it easy to share my experience with others. Telling people about something you love is never difficult. The trip also gave me a chance to get to know three of my crew mates better. We worked hard together, laughed a lot, had fun and shared a wonderful experience. |
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Follow the Tour Europe
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