July 21: Grace's farewell speech

Hi my name is Grace Anshutz, 16 years old and from the United States. Pretty standard introduction for the past 3 weeks in GYI.  Introductions, the first vital step in communicating with others. Usually formal and not very personal, Introductions are not always fun but very important because communication is how we solve problems.

Food Security, a problem all the GYI participants have come to know very well. Through field trips, research, and presentations we have become experts on the subject. And in one way or another we all learned, communication is vital to solving the problem. Whether is communicating between farmers and the governments or organizations and companies it has to happen. This is just one way GYI has enhanced my communication skills.

Another means of communicating in GYI is social networking. Social networking has become a main source of communication for teenagers around the world.  If you don’t have a facebook or twitter you feel almost like a minority in today’s world.  You might ask what does social networking have to do with GYI? Well I can tell you about the evolution of it. From first requesting other members of GYI to be your “friend” and not knowing if you have found the right person to sneaking onto each others accounts while the user is not looking to change their status to something completely crazy or funny. We all have bonded over the use of Facebook. Facebook has also allowed us to get in touch with the whole group quickly; you’d be amazed how many times we log on a day to check your wall, inbox, or status. I can’t count the times the GYI group has posted a question and it has been answered almost immediately. Problem solved! But most importantly Facebook will allow us to continue our communication and friendships. I cannot wait to see all the pictures everyone will upload and having to use an online translator to translate the statuses of all my new international friends.

And the last and most fun kind of communicating I have learned about in GYI is the nonverbal communication found on the dance floor. Tuesday night after a long weekend in Chicago a few of us girls decided to go out dancing. After putting on our evenings best and giggling the whole way there we piled out of the car and onto the dance floor. We danced for 2 hours and laughed the whole time. The music was so loud we couldn’t talk but you knew what everyone would say, this is the time of our lives. Another dancing GYI experience came last night when another group gathered to play just dance, a fun dancing game on the wii. We grabbed remotes and random partners and every other song switched user. Many pictures and videos were taken and hopefully never to be seen again but even they cannot capture the true fun of the night.  I will never again dance without thinking of all the fun I had with the GYI dancers.

So back to introductions. After the life changing experiences I have had the last 3 weeks with GYI I can now enter the 2011 school year with a much more fun introduction, Hi my name is Grace Anshutz, 16, international communicator, Facebook translator, and crazy dancer.

July 21: Svetlana's farewell speech

I would like to thank everybody in this hall: GYI participants, host families, coordinators of this program, GYI teachers and TA’s.

The main aim of our cooperation is to create a multicultural atmosphere for our children, to form  the principles of tolerance, equal rights and pluralism of concepts when they communicate with the representatives of different nationalities and religion. Surely this will help us to build the bridges between nations, make our contribution to the idea of  peace, harmony and good all over the world.

This program is focused on a child’s individually valuable and comprehensive development as an active and useful citizen of our countries and as a member of international community. It makes countries and nationalities closer.

Daily news about international conflicts based on policy and religion have become cruel reality of nowadays. And much worse they are turning in a routine of the world policy. So, children are the only chance for our peaceful future. They are to rule the destiny of countries and continents. 

Not to be late, it is possible and it is necessary to cultivate culture of peace and mutual understanding in their hearts and involve young generation in the process of solving global problems and issue. As children are the most sincere and warmhearted on our planet, we their teachers, we are trying to involve them into the process of solving the global problems and making the right solutions. We are proud of our students. Three weeks ago we planted perfect GYI  seeds and now are ready to have an excellent crop. Only by the method of the children’s diplomacy we can guarantee peaceful future free of conflicts and provide it to the world’s multinational variety.

I would like to express the word of gratitude to everybody for their efforts in maintaining the idea of friendship between students from different countries and realization of this program.

Dr Thomas Forsgren Director, Global Youth Institute

Jean Ellenhorff and Susan Stroope, teachers and coordinators of GYI program

Carol Brown and Adrienne Moen, Friendship Force of Greater Des Moines

Shao Ming, teacher from China

Nick Wu, teacher’s assistant from Taiwan

Alex Nassif, teacher’s assistant US

Eddi Ginsberg, teacher’s assistant US

Saturday, July 9: Fun Weekend

These weekends were great!

On Saturday morning we went to the farmer's market. There were a lot of people. We met Liz and Lena there. We also bought good cakes.

Then we went tubing, sailing, and going on jetski on the lake. It was so fun! I love tubing, although Emma and I once fell out. But it was so fast that I didn't have time to be scared. Even after falling out we continued tubing...

There were 6 GYI participants at Liz's lake. Emma, Joe and Liz (USA), Alan (Taiwan), Lena (Germany) and I (Russia). It was mix-up of countries. So it was fun! We played cards. Lena taught us German games, such swimming and ashlax. We had a really good time!

In the evening we were sitting around the fire and sharing out deepest secrets in native languages. Alan talked in Chinese, Lena in German and I in Russian.

About food... Dinners were excellent! We had American snacks, hamburgers, pork, soda, cola and other tasty things. Liz's mom taught us how to cook, and we made the dinners together. When I'm back to Russia I'll cook American meals--The food was so good.

So it was the best weekends in my entire life. I'm grateful to my host family for spending this wonderful time.

On Sunday evening, I Skyped my parents. They were glad to see my happy and excited face. 

-Anna Kuvakina, Russia

Saturday, July 9: Nick's Diary

I am not really sure where I want to start first.

Was it the bicycle riding coming all the way down from the hilly 55th St. with Jamie? Or the visit to the Historical Building with Alex and Joan? Probably not, but the caucus exhibition was pretty cool. Or when we shopped in Raygun, a local t-shirt place, and I bought an "Actually, we are just outside the middle of nowhere" t-shirt. Or the Wii sport competition with Jamie?

However, the coolest activity of the day was definitely the home party. We actually had two parties for the night. Jamie's friends and some GYI students (Alex F, Sarah, Ilya, and Sandy) came over to our house while Alex and I went to Addi's house for another party. It was a time that you wanted to have another "you" so that you could show up in two places at the same time.

Playing Spoons by the fire

For the first time, I tried some s'mores (a combination of graham cracker, chocolate and toasted marshmallow) and it was really tasty. Everyone sat by the fire in the backyard chatting, singing, or playing cards. Life here is cozy and I can temporarily get away from the hustle and bustle of Taipei. Alex and I went home before 11 to say good-bye to people at the first party. We sat on the floor of the kitchen eating ice cream. Ilya and I had a nice talk, and we shared some non-native-speaker jokes.

Well, it is already midnight so I think I should call it a day.

-Nick Wu, TA, Taiwan

Friday, July 8: Day Four - Hoover Museum

The car trip took a long time—I just slept and slept.

And I thought today had nothing special, until we finished the visit to the Herbert Hoover Museum.

Hoover's birthplace

As you know I am a science student, and we seldom listen to the teachers carefully on the history, political and geography classes. So we just knew a little about Hoover before this trip. I just knew after Hoover came to power, he needed to catch up with the economic crisis in the world, and the U.S. economy in the abyss, and he had expected to rely on scientific potential to open up a "new era" of hope. Although he made many attempts, the crisis grew day by day; aggravated, he painstakingly countermeasured. The situation got out of hand, and finally, he failed to be reelected. In the 1932 election, he was beat by the Democratic Party's Roosevelt. He was not very successful to my knowledge, but this thought quite changed today.

He earned a lot of money in China and also made contributions to China. He also gave help to plenty of American families. Lots of famous books were written from his hands.

I think to be a successful man doesn’t mean you should be a perfect leader. The thing I am thinking is that all the successful men know what they should do in the situation. Sometimes they should stand out and save the country. Sometimes the thing they need to do may be just relax themselves and enjoy their life. Herbert Hoover did it; he also lived a happy life worthy of respect—that’s quite enough for a man. That’s also why we set up a museum to honor him.

To him salute.

-Tian Ge Yuan, China

Wednesday, July 6: Day Two - More Challenges

The rope jumping was the first activity to start off our day after we fed up our stomach. First of all, we went individually, then with a partner, four people afterwards, eight folks after that, and lastly, the most difficult as well, 16 peers facing the challenge. After that, we had a game that forced our partner to direct and give some orders to help us go through the "shoes sea." And after that, we had a game where we were asked to trade the two unmatched shoes in our hands to our own shoes in others’. We left the gym and headed to the field where we had some more team challenges.

After we finished our lunch and supplemented our energy, we took the vans leaving for Seed Savers. We came across tons of vegetation in the garden and lots of breeds of livestock. The most important of all is to learn about how Seed Savers contributes to biodiversity and what measures Seed Savers take to maintain the variety of seeds.

Soon after we got back to Luther College, the U.S. was the first to unveil their region report. We learned more about food, sports, festivals, etc. of the U.S.

Following the dinner, it was we Taiwanese that were going to give the presentation. Due to some soundtrack and video playing problems, we had discussions about them during the trivial time we could hardly squeeze out and we eventually finished it till the last minute. I need to apologize to all the GYI participants and staff for my ruining the presentation with my horrible Taroko Gorge introduction. I’m the type of person whose brain usually goes blank out when giving a speech to more than a dozen of people. I would like to clarify that Taroko Gorge is genuinely a must-visit tourist attraction when you pay a visit to Taiwan. You will surely be amazed by how magnificent it is and it will definitely take your breath away. We wanted to deliver the best part of Taiwan to you all and we hope whole-heartedly that you will pay us some visits in Taiwan.

Alex then gave us some thoughts on our topic—food security. We had lots of intense discussions and conversation over human rights, environmental justice and food security.

In my opinion, Terminator series gave me the same spark as the game we ran in the morning. The mentors were trying to give us some tasks that seemed to be too unrealistic to be accomplished.

Our ancestors went through a bunch of tasks in order to survive, and the tasks were unknown, mysterious, and continuously happened in their daily life. Still, they survived, and we can be here in the world. We might be confused about why they had the capacity to go through the tough tasks. But after the challenge course, we found that maybe this is human being’s potential: to survive in any situation. We have forgotten what we used to have, but it is still in our body.

We just need to have chance to realize and release our potential and capacity.

-Carolina Yang, Taiwan

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