Teachers lead many international school trips, but the India trip differs from most others in the sense that its focus is not centered around a language, but rather on history and culture.

Because the trip is not a part of a language class, the participants don’t have a structured time during the school day to meet and prepare for the trip. The students and teachers have had to find time during x-periods, tutorial, after school, or on weekends. Even without this structured time for research, and preparations, they have made the most of the time they do have and have done lots of things to make sure students are prepared for the trip.

“We did a fundraiser, we’re donating to some charities there, and we went to an art museum,” sophomore Will Schavee said.

“The preparations we’ve been doing is mostly just going over Google slide presentations of each city we’re going to,” sophomore Senai Assefa said.

“[The preparations] make me more excited every time, because I kind of forget about [the trip], and then I come back to it and remember it. They’ll be talking about something we’re gonna do, and it makes me excited,” Schavee said.

He also likes the fact that he knows what is happening for the trip, and has some control over what they do. “It’s more hands on. When I went to China, they kind of did everything for me, so I kind of never really had to talk about it, now they want me to do stuff too, and that makes me more interested in it,” Schavee said.  

Some students on the trip think that the preparations get to be too much and take up too much school time.

“In my personal opinion, I don’t think [the preparations] are extremely necessary because they’re really time-consuming and take up a tutorial per week,” Assefa said.

The pre-trip meetings serve as a time for students and teachers to get to know each other before the trip.

“It’s been fun to see how everyone is getting ready,” senior Gabby Harmoning said.