If “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” was still a topic for school essay assignments, Taylor Watson’s entry would stand out.
Watson spent a large part of her summer touring Europe, as part of a student delegation with the People to People Student Ambassadors program.
The program was first conceived in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the idea that citizens of different nations could solve their differences and achieve peace if they were able to communicate directly.
Since 1963, thousands of U.S. students have ventured abroad through the program.
Watson, 16, took part in a 20-day “Heart of the Mediterranean” tour, visiting Malta, Sicily, Italy and France, among other locations.
The Caldwell County High School junior and her fellow travelers used that time to see some of the world’s most famous art and architecture and soak up the European culture that has developed over centuries of history.
The group, comprising students from the greater Clarksville and Bowling Green areas, left the States on Saturday, June 21.
Watson and the rest of the Clarksville group flew from Nashville to Chicago, where they connected with the Bowling Green group.
From Chicago, they crossed the Atlantic, and, after a brief stop in Frankfurt, Germany, landed in the island nation of Malta.
Their total airtime was between nine and 10 hours; with the time change, though, they arrived in Malta at about 7 a.m. local time (around midnight Princeton time.)
From there, the cultural education began.
After meeting their delegation manager (who would remain with the group throughout their stay), the young ambassadors, ranging from 14 to 18, ate in a restaurant, had a half-hour of free time to explore their surroundings and were then sent off to the homes of their host families.
Watson and three other girls on the trip stayed three nights with a local family: a husband and wife with three daughters, two living in the house.
Though Watson and her companions were gone the majority of the day, their home routine was similar to their stateside lives: late bedtimes, early mornings, corn flakes for breakfast.
Suppers, also shared with the host family, were also similar: baked rice and beans, steak burritos, spaghetti.
The family lived on the third floor of the building and owned the fourth floor.
“We slept in the room by the roof and left the door open, so the breeze could blow through,” said Watson.
Outside of life in the host home, though, the European experience was a world apart from life in rural Kentucky.
The plan for the students’ first full day in Malta, Watson said, began at 8 a.m. A bus was supposed to pick the girls up and drop them off at a rendezvous point with the rest of the group.
The students were then supposed to take a cruise ship to the Blue Lagoon, a picturesque bay in the Maltese archipelago.
The bus, though, was more than an hour late, and Watson and the others on the bus missed the ship.
They found alternate transportation in the form of a speedboat, and they arrived at their destination three hours before the rest of the group.
The group spent the whole day near the lagoon and rode the cruise ship back to the main island.
The next day, the group visited operations of the Gaia Foundation, a nonprofit environment management group, and toured Valletta, Malta’s de facto capital.
On the third day, the group toured the Baraka Gardens and St. John’s Cathedral, two Maltese landmarks.
They rose early on the fourth day and traveled to Sicily, stopping in Syracuse and learning about its Greek history.
They climbed Mt. Etna, one of the world’s most active volcaones, and visited the Greek Theatre in the city of Taormina.
In Segesta, Sicily, they visited an ancient unfinished temple, possibly built to honor Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt.
The group also had the opportunity to interact with some of their peers, in a volleyball match against some Italian students in a local school.
They concluded their Sicilian tour in the medieval town of Erice, and then traveled to mainland Italy.
Their Italian stay offered them a chance to see some of the world’s most famous sights: Pompeii, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and the Vatican, to name a few.
Those stops included exposure to some of the art world’s greatest treasures, like Michelangelo’s sculpture of David and the Sistine Chapel frescoes.
The group left Italy for Monaco, then France, with stops in Lyon, Versailles and Orange, where Watson’s family links its own history.
Watson is the granddaughter of Diana and the late Jimmy Orange of Princeton.
Her parents are Fred and Makia Watson, and her paternal grandparents are the late John Laceon and Louise Watson of Caldwell County.
The tour, and the People to People program, wound down in Paris, with visits to the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre Museum, where the group saw the Mona Lisa and other world-renowned works of art.
They flew from Paris back to the U.S., and the group’s members were forced to go their separate ways.
“It was sad,” said Makia. “They didn’t want to separate. They really got close in 20 days.”
The trip provided Watson with a cultural education impossible to find in books, and forged long-term bonds with her fellow travelers, her mother added.
“They made good friends. Friends for a lifetime.”
The Watson family extended thanks to all family, friends, businesses and organizations known and unknown that offered financial contributions to help fund the People to People trip, and special thanks to Diana Orange for help and support.
“Without all of you, this would not have been possible,” said Makia.
