To a lot of teens, a month in an exotic location without parental supervision sounds like a dream come true.
However, junior Winnie Yeung warned that her time in Beijing, where she was part of the Council of International Exchange’s (CIEE) Chinese language and culture summer abroad program, wasn’t just sightseeing and exploration.
“My teacher was a very harsh grader: we had a good amount of homework after school, and we had presentations every Friday,” Yeung said.
CIEE is a nonprofit program that offers study-abroad opportunities, including many summer programs, semesters abroad and gap years.
This year, CIEE has pledged to offer $50,000 in Global Navigator scholarships to Chapel Hill High School students. Most schools get $10,000 in allotted scholarship money.
“Because we’ve had a large number of applicants, and students go with CIEE, we have more scholarship money,” French teacher Christen Campbell said. Campbell began working with CIEE several years ago, and, since 2016, 60 Chapel Hill High students have taken advantage of CIEE’s summer-abroad program.
The Global Navigator scholarship money comes from Sheron Long, a travel author, foreign-language teacher and founder of Hampton-Brown Educational Publishing Company.
CIEE offers language and culture, service and leadership and global discovery programs.
Language and culture programs are four weeks long, and some of the programs require one or two years of prior study. Students can receive four college credits for their completed language courses.
Sophomore Nora Stokes spent a summer in Morocco as part of the Arabic Language and Culture program.
“I lived with a host family. I thought it was a little awkward, but there’s really no way around that when you’re living with strangers who don’t speak your language,” she said. “I felt very loved and accepted, and my host family tried their best to make me feel at home.”
CIEE emphasizes that its programs not only teach language skills but also help facilitate cultural understanding.
Yeung agreed that going abroad really taught her things she “would never read about online.”
“In China, you had to bring your own napkins everywhere because they didn’t provide that—little things that you would never think about—and I think those little things create the culture,” she said.
Language programs feature classes in the morning that are often followed by language exercises in the city. Students have some free time in the afternoon, and most students stay with host families.
CIEE’s service and leadership programs are three weeks long and allow students to gain service learning hours, while participants in the global discovery programs take classes ranging from entrepreneurship to marine biology and diplomacy.
Junior Connor Lopez participated in the Building a Sustainable Mega City program in Beijing.
“We would either walk or take the metro to Beijing University for Chinese class or cultural immersion class, where we would learn about how to act in China. These alternated from day to day. We would then go on to a specific part in the city and explore,” he said.
Tiffany Tan, a senior who attended the Creative Arts Studio in Prague, said that she felt that her classes made her more determined to become an artist and introduced her to many techniques. She also learned much about the culture and language of Prague but noted that communicating with her instructors—who sometimes did not speak fluent English—was a challenge.
“We took a Czech 101 survival class: we learned numbers; we learned foods; we had free time to go out and eat. They would give us money during our lunch breaks and dinner breaks, and we would order in Czech. It was fun, but it was hard,” she said.
Many participants say that they felt more independent after spending a month outside of their usual environment.
“I definitely think I grew a lot. The trip taught me independence and self-confidence. I learned that I could rely on myself for anything,” Stokes said about her time in Morocco.
Other students mentioned that they felt a new sense of independence because the trip had taken them outside of their comfort zone and taught them to manage in new surroundings.
“In China, without my parents, I found this new sense of independence, and I’m now more self reliant and it was just really fun meeting new people,” Yeung said. “Just going on this trip, it was very scary and I was actually afraid, but it actually boosted my self-confidence and my ability to learn things in a different country without my parents’ help.”
To get scholarship money, students must be at least 15 at the time of their planned trip and must apply before February 15, 2020.
The early application deadline, however, is December 6, 2019, and 80% of scholarship money is awarded at that time.
