A few days ago I went to the first of several meetings designed to prepare 40+ highschool aged kids for their upcoming trip. It was pretty fun, and went surprisingly smoothly (alright, I'll admit it, I was expecting total chaos). However, I think I've gotten myself into something slightly larger than I had expected. These assignments are to be completed in the following month:

• Read the 'Background of People to People' handout
• Complete chapters 1-5 of the online Student Ambassador Certification course
• Complete the Geography chapter and the History/Government chapters of the online Explore Before You Go, country-specific lessons
• Fill out the Civics Assignment sheet
• Answer three questions about the Official Visit
• Give an idea for a service project
• Consider what you will present at the Project Fair

Some explanation; the Civics Assignment sheet is a worksheet designed to test your knowledge of American government (i.e. "who is the current Secretary of State?"), and the Official Visit is a meeting with a British public official. Before the trip, all student ambassadors are expected to do some service project, such as volunteer at a food bank, preferably with several other ambassadors. The Project Fair is an event held at the end of the last preparatory meeting, where each kid does a display about some aspect of the country they will be visiting (for example Food, or History).

All of these tasks are pretty easy, but still... they're going to try to squeeze every drop of educational potential out of this that they can. Oh well, wish me luck!