It's a Small World

…and getting smaller.

I signed on to the high school website today to check out the daily announcements. I read this:

• ATHENS TRIP: Spaces are still available for the Rome to Athens trip in May 2008. HS credit can be earned with this activity. Interested students can contact the Guidance Office for more information.

Athens?

From Rome?

For high school kids?

I don’t know why I’m surprised. The French club goes to France every year. The Spanish Club takes a trip to Mexico or Spain.

The Eighth graders are preparing for the annual trip to Washington DC.

The choir is going on a cruise this year. Yes, you read right. A CRUISE!

Of course these little jaunts are chaperoned and school approved. They are not, however, school funded.

Herein lies the rub.

Some parents have the means to send their children on all these trips. Some do not.

When I was in school and living in the Ozarks, traveling was reserved for the wealthy and retired. The local banker’s kids went skiing every year on Christmas break. But they were rich! It never occurred to me I could go overseas. It didn’t occur to anybody. If you wanted to go, you joined the military. In fact, that was a great recruiting tool. Join the Army! See the world!

Big is saving money for a trip to Ireland and England when he graduates. Another young friend of mine just got back from the same trip. He stayed in youth hostels and saw everything on the cheap.

I guess there isn’t really a point to this post. On one hand, I love the fact that our young people get to see the world before they get caught up in college and making a living and raising families.
On the other, it puts a financial burden on families who can’t afford it, and brings about feelings of guilt and inadequecy when they can’t provide for their children what they see other parents providing for theirs.

My Senior year the Drama club went to New York. I didn’t tell Prissy about the trip for weeks because it never occurred to me I could go. When I did tell her, she started to cry and then proceeded to cash in a CD and sent me on my way.

I never loved her more.

In Europe, I suppose crossing over into another country is like me crossing over into Oklahoma or Kansas or Arkansas.

Now that I think about it, crossing into Arkansas is like crossing into another country