Following the Equator | EF's Educational Travel Blog

Group Leader Spotlight: Chris Seymore

After practicing law in Philadelphia for three years, Chris Seymore decided to change careers and become a teacher. Eight years later he says, “Without question I made the right decision. I look forward to coming to work every day.  I’m a million times happier as a teacher than I ever was as a lawyer.” Today, Seymore teaches World Cultures/Global Studies and Constitutional Law at Ridley High School, outside of Philadelphia. Since 2006, he has traveled on eight EF tours, and in 2009, he visited 14 countries. Here he tells us about his travel experiences.

What inspired you to begin traveling abroad with students?
My only international travel prior to 2006 was when I visited Toronto during my sophomore year in high school. As a world cultures teacher, I decided it was time to experience other cultures with my students  and do some teaching and learning outside the traditional classroom environment. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine what the next three years would bring! In the last three years, I have been to Europe 11 times (eight tours, one Paris Orientation, one Rome Orientation and one personal visit to Italy on my own). I also visited Jordan and Egypt in 2009 as part of an EF Teacher Convention Tour. In 2010, I will travel on three EF tours: Discover Costa Rica, European Horizons and a customized tour of Paris, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and the Greek Islands. The impact on me has been tremendous, and the experiences we have had through EF have been life-changing for so many of my students.

Happy New Year

The ancient Babylonians were the first to celebrate the new year about 4,000 years ago. Today, the date that the new year is celebrated, as well as the way people ring in the new year, varies from country to country.

• In Scotland, neighbors partake in “first footing.” After the clock strikes midnight, people visit the homes of their friends to wish them good luck for the upcoming year. It is considered especially lucky if the “first foot” into your house belongs to a tall, dark and handsome man.
• Spaniards eat 12 grapes at midnight to ensure they will have 12 happy months in the upcoming year.
• In the Netherlands, people make bonfires out of their Christmas trees to get rid of old spirits and welcome the new.
• New Years Day and the Greek Festival of St. Basil fall on the same day. It is tradition for Greek people to eat a St. Basil cake into which a silver or gold coin is baked. The person who finds the coin is said to have good luck for the new year.

So that's what Clint Eastwood sounds like

The first movie my wife ever saw in the original English version was The Bridges of Madison County. She was quite taken with the experience of hearing Clint Eastwood's real voice for the first time; until that point, she'd only heard Clint dubbed into Spanish, by a Spanish actor who probably also dubbed Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks.  

More movies would bring her more revelations: Jack Nicholson's real voice, Robert De Niro's real voice, and the real voices of a host of other Americans, right on down to Steve Urkel (American TV shows were dubbed into Spanish, too). For her, there was no comparing the English voice to the Spanish dubbing: The real English was far superior and far more satisfying. 

Group Leader Spotlight: Carolyn Sanders

With 15 EF tours and nine convention tours under her belt, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Carolyn Sanders, a physical education teacher at Bill Reed Middle School in Loveland, Colorado, has visited 40 countries with EF.

Besides traveling to every continent (yes, she used her EF Global Points to take a trip to Antarctica!), she’s also met some of her closest friends through EF.

In the Group Leader Spotlight, Carolyn recaps some of her favorite travel adventures and talks about how she and some other EF Group Leaders once created their own EF convention to Thunder Bay, Canada.

Photo of the Week: Greek mountain

When you think of Greece, you often think of pristine blue waters and picturesque coastlines. But Greece has some pretty impressive mountainscapes in between its seascapes, as well.

This photo—submitted by clarkematt75 to the EF Tours group on Flickr—of a lone church sitting on a snow-capped, tree-lined mountain is so captivating that it reminds me of an image in a jigsaw puzzle—1,000 pieces, no less.

If you have a puzzle-worth picture, or any other imaginative images, from your travels, please submit them to the EF Tours pool on Flickr. We choose a new Photo of the Week every Thursday.

Photo: clarkematt75 via Flickr (EF Tours pool)

Group Leader Spotlight: Ian Lowe

Ian Lowe, a teacher and former football coach at Lethbridge Collegiate Institute in Alberta, Canada, first began traveling with students on the football team and in the high school band. After seeing the value these experiences provided to the program and his students, he promoted trips to Europe, and his travel program took off from there.

Now, Ian travels with a large group of students every year. He even has parents calling him, trying to get a head start on enrolling their children.

Ian (above right) shares his thoughts with us on the importance of student travel, advice for new group leaders and how traveling with students is like coaching a team.

Group Leader Spotlight: Susan Pennington

"The joy I have found in watching students learn and grow has made traveling with students one of the best decisions I’ve made in my teaching career," says EF Group Leader Susan Pennington, an English and public speaking teacher at Nerinx Hall High School in St. Louis, Missouri.

Read on to learn why Susan keeps traveling abroad and for some tips on planning an EF tour of your own.

What inspired you to begin traveling abroad with students?
When I teach poetry, fiction and creative writing, I use the images and experiences that permeate my brain to help me to understand literature and life. For me, many of these powerful images and experiences are from trips I have taken to Europe. About six years ago, I realized that if my students had similar experiences, they might make better connections between the things they study and the ways of the world, past and present.  When all this collided in my head, I decided I needed to take students to Europe to give them their own special images and experiences.

Group Leader Spotlight: Joyce Schaller

EF Group Leader Joyce Schaller, a high school English teacher from Nokesville, Virginia, knows there is nothing quite as exciting as learning about literature by experiencing it firsthand. That's why she takes her students on educational tours with EF.

Joyce—pictured above with her students at Hadrian's Wall in Scotland—took the time to tell us more about why travel is so important for her students, connecting her curriculum to her tours and where she wants to go next:

Maple Leaf Monopoly

Montreal is the new Boardwalk.

Monopoly finally revealed the winning cities in its new World Edition this week, and the Canadian city earned the global game's most prestigious position, as we predicted in February.

In fact, Canada monopolizes the new Monopoly board. In addition to Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto also earned spots. The other dominant country is China, which placed Beijing and Shanghai, plus Hong Kong, on the board. Only one U.S. city (New York) made the game.

More than 5.6 million votes were cast to select the 22 cities in the new edition, which goes on sale next week in 50 countries.

Friday Fun Fact: Olympic torch

The Olympic torch was lit in ancient Olympia this week amid protests, beginning an around-the-world relay that will culminate at the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics on August 8. The torch route covers more than 85,000 miles across 20 countries.

Keeping the torch lit at all times can be a challenge, especially in bad weather and on airplanes. Backup flames and cans of pressurized liquid fuel are always carried alongside the official torch, in case it goes out. And on airline flights, where open flames obviously are forbidden, the flame is usually stored inside an enclosed lamp.