I’m back at my desk and excited to be working again. Not that it wasn’t fun to catch a four-foot dorado with my grandson! But it’s time to get that website up.
The best news is that a reader from New Hampshire wrote that she was going to be in DC for a while and she asked if she could help. You bet. Jessie Shepard has been my brainstorming partner for two days now and I’ve accomplished ten times more than I would have if she weren’t sitting next to me. I am so much a team person! She’s a former Peace Corps volunteer (Tonga) and is as excited as I am about LGG . We are very much on the same wave length and she’s coming back tomorrow! Hooray!
Content for the website is our main focus at the moment. I’m determined to have it under control in the next two weeks. We’re still looking for pictures of teens interacting in other cultures. So please, if you have any, send them. As soon as the content is in order, it will all go to Dave Chase who is putting it together for us. Send them to: femalenomad@ritagoldengelman.com.
Have a look at my speaking engagements in February…one in Charlotte, NC , at the International Study Abroad Fair and another at Scripps College in CA. Details to come when I have them, just in case you happen to be in the area.
Yay. It’s great to be making visible progress.
I am still compiling a list of high schools who might want to be among our pilot group of twelve. We’re looking for schools that represent a broad spectrum of the public school population in the country, schools with counselors and principals who like the idea of kids doing a gap year. (We are suggesting that the students apply to colleges while still in their senior year, get accepted, and ask for a deferral so they can do their gap year.)
By the way, a gap year does not have to be a year. The students can work for, say, six months, so they can contribute to their international programs. I ran into an Australian program yesterday that trains kids to teach English and then places them in schools in China. In the end, the expense would be just getting to Australia, which is under $1,000.
There are a lot of creative ways to do a gap year that make it a possibility for everyone. Can you imagine a country where all the seniors are talking about their upcoming gap year?
See you later. Rita