Helen Chen, pictured above, and Bradford Taylor, at right, of West Windsor recently returned from a two-week trip to Japan. They are both rising eighth grade students at Chapin School. As student ambassadors on the People to People’s JAJ: Discover the Land of the Rising Sun tour, they visited both large cities and small villages in Japan, and enjoyed a wide variety of cultural interactions.##M:[more]##
Helen, who has been to China almost every year since she was five, has traveled alone overseas and domestically a few times. “She flew to Beijing by herself for the first time when she was 10,” says her mother, Donghong Sun, a chemistry teacher at Montgomery High School. “But she has not been to other countries alone until this trip.” Her father, Wei Chen, works for Citigroup US Cards Decision Management.
“Helen has also been to sleep-away camps, including a three-week camp at Stanford University last summer,” says her mother. “We were sure that she could take care of herself. However, for this trip she needed to manage a substantial amount of spending money, needed to do laundry in the sink at the hotel, and was not able to talk to us over the phone everyday.”
“We had full confidence in the delegation leaders’ leadership, and hoped that the life skills that we have taught Helen would be sufficient for her,” she says. “I have to say that we were not worried before she left. We certainly missed her while she was away, but we also knew she was having the time of her life.”
“I thought it was a good experience to travel to a new country without my parents — it helped with my independence,” says Helen. “I really gained a great deal of understanding about Japanese culture. We visited not only the usual tourist sites but also the world heritage sites and villages. We even worked with villagers side by side in the fields of a farm called the smiley farm, dedicated to bring beauty back to the village.”
Her favorite part of the trip was climbing Mount Fuji. “I bounced up the rocks. The bus took us up to the fifth station, right above the cloud line. We then climbed to the seventh station, and then walked along a ridge to a crater on the side of the mountain. The mountain guide told us to stand in a single file line, hands on the shoulders of the person in front of us, and then close our eyes and walk. He wanted to surprise us with the view of the crater. It was perfect! We all whipped out our cameras to snap photos. It was so picturesque.”
Helen, who was nominated by a Chapin classmate, plans to recommend others as ambassadors. “It was really a changing experience,” she says. “I was surprised how much it affected me, especially the Peace Park at Hiroshima.”
“I was first introduced to People to People by a friend,” says Bradford’s mother, Paula. “Her kids always came back raving over the wonderful experience.”
“Our family travels extensively so I did not hesitate to send Bradford to Japan,” she says. “He really wanted to go, however this was his first trip ever without his parents.” Paula is a stay-at-home home involved with several fundraising organizations. His father, Errol B. Taylor, is an attorney at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy in New York.
The parents received E-mail updates from People to People almost every day. “I felt as if I was on the trip with the student delegation,” says Paula Taylor. “Bradford had a phone so he called everyday to give me an update on what he did that day or to tell me what he was going to do. He loved sharing his experience, such as climbing Mt. Fiji or taking the bullet train to Hiroshima, visiting the shrines or just shopping.”
