There are more than 20 students featured in the book, The New Global Student. Let me introduce you to a few of them....

Lang gets his head shaved as part of his preparation to spend two weeks as a novice Buddhist monk in Thailand.

Lang Van Dommelen grew up in an off-the-grid cabin in Bird Creek, Alaska.  He was homeschooled for several years and followed the Waldorf approach to education.  When he was 16, he seized an opportunity to go abroad as an exchange student.  He was thrilled that he was going to be sent to Italy, and set about studying the Italian language and culture.  But at the last minute, that plan disintegrated and he had only 24 hours to make a decision:  skip the exchange, go to Mexico or go to Thailand.  He picked Thailand--and had an amazing year during which he took advantage of every opportunity to experience the culture (see above). 

He'll be embarking on a different kind of adventure this summer when he takes time off from the University of Anchorage to cycle from Washington, DC to Kentucky, where he'll spend six months or so.  (No report yet on what he'll be doing there!)

Teal during firefighter training with other Norwegian Cruise Lines crew members. 

Teal Frost (daughter #3) spent her junior year of high school on exchange in Brazil, then joined us in Argentina for what would have been her senior year.  She finished high school online and took courses at an Argentine university, then transferred as a junior to a university in Canada at age 18.  She was both an RA and a TA, and graduated at 19.  Not sure where she wanted to live but interested in traveling, saving money and perfecting her language skills, she aced two interviews (in three languages) and got a job as an events coordinator for Norwegian Cruise Lines.  She's spent the last four months working the Charleston-to-Bahamas route.  When she's not leading massive bingo games, karaoke contests, or theme parties, she participates in staff trainings that require her to put out fires (see above) and jump ship to inflate life rafts so she can save passengers from whatever may happen on the high seas.  She's the youngest crew member among the 650 employees on board.  Teal is especially excited about her summer assignment--she'll be cruising in the Mediterranean!  Her off-duty time is spent relaxing in beautiful places, and though she rarely gets a chance to be online, she writes a fun blog about cruise ship life at http://www.TealFrost.com

Gabrielle with Pedro, her Brazilian fiance and fellow teacher in Boston.

I like to think of Gabrielle Wallace as the Bold School poster girl.  In the book, she tells the story of how she just wasn't thriving in high school so she started taking college courses at 15, earned her GED and completed her degree (which she paid for herself without going into debt) by 20.  She was involved in all kinds of activities in college and figured out how to create her own inexpensive study abroad experience. 

After graduation, she spent time in Brazil, then worked as an English teacher for a year in Japan. She's been teaching Spanish at a Jewish Orthodox private

high school in Boston. Tom and I met Gabrielle when she came to Buenos Aires last summer, and just attended her lovely wedding in Boston. She writes:

I have been teaching middle & high school Spanish for the last three years.  Each summer I take advantage of the time off and travel somewhere new to immerse myself in language and learn more about Latin culture--first cooking classes in Oaxaca, Mexico, then exploring Buenos Aires and wineries in Argentina.  This summer I am working as an ESL/TESL director and also also at the Cambridge Dance Complex as a work-study, where I dabble in dance classes from all over the world, but am most dedicated to samba.  This fall I'm planning to return to school at Boston University where I got a scholarship to study for my master's degree in teaching English as a second language.  

During my second year of teaching Spanish, I met my fiance, the math & physics teacher at the same school.  We ended up both coaching soccer during the last two years there together and so we got to know each other on the soccer field too.  Our students are pretty psyched to see their teachers/coaches getting married to each other! We are ending this school year with our wedding in the Boston Common Park and inviting all our students to come see the ceremony.  Oh, and I am so excited to go on our honeymoon next month, returning for a week and a half to Hawaii, which is where I spent two years growing up when I was a kid. We are both looking forward to taking surfing lessons!

Ryan on Mount Hood.

Ryan Hastreiter spent his junior year of high school in Taiwan at a massive all-boys high school--9,000 students!  He became fluent in Mandarin, survived the SARS epidemic, returned to Oregon, took community college courses his senior year and entered the University of Oregon at 18 as a junior.  There, he fell in love with whitewater kayaking and got a job with a Taiwanese electronics company that paid him handsomely and flew him all over the place.  He quit that job to spend more time on the river as an marketing intern for a watersports retailer in Colorado.  Ryan managed to get so good at kayaking that he was sent on a Gear for Good mission to Uganda with some of the world's top kayakers.

Watch this amazing video of Ryan and his friends in Uganda  at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDbP7SVJu80

After returning from Uganda, Ryan snagged a job in the global retail projects division at Nike.  He spent a lot of time snowboarding on Mount Hood this past winter, but had un unfortunate jumping incident and managed to mangle a vertebra or two.  In true Ryan form, he used his belt to secure his head to his car's headrest and drove himself to the hospital!  He's fine now--though carrying some metal in his spine--and recognizes that his helmet-required sports days may be numbered.  Well, he's had a great run. 

What's next, Ryan? 

Rachel at the calcium deposits in Pamukkale, Turkey at the foot of Hierapolis, an ancient ruined city.

Rachel Lewis grew up in Kamiah, Idaho, a tiny logging community in which she saw few prospects for international travel.  Thanks to her local Rotary Club, she was given a scholarship to study abroad for a year during high school. Here's an update she sent in April:

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been 10 years since my journey from small town Idaho to Denmark for a year as an exchange student. In this time, I’ve continued my travels as much as life has permitted. I graduated from college at Washington State University with a bachelor’s in business administration and started my career at a global business risk management consulting firm in Seattle. These days, I am busy planning my wedding for July of 2009!

Culture and travel have remained very important in my life. While in college, I returned to Denmark for a few weeks to re-connect with the friends and family I gained while living there. That trip took me up to Norway where I had the chance to experience a Norwegian Christmas with the family of one of my closest friends. After college, I traveled down to Central America with a few friends. We spent five weeks at a Spanish school in Guatemala where we got 25 hours of one-on-one tutoring a week along with room and board with a local family. The best part: all of this for less than the cost of one 3-credit college course!   I spent a few more weeks traveling around the rest of Guatemala and Costa Rica. More recently, my fiancé and I traveled to Greece and Turkey where we met up with my cousin and her husband who are serving in the Peace Corps in Romania. What a rich experience!  And now, its time to start dreaming of the next great adventure.

Talya was featured in an article in The Ithacan last fall.  Photo:  Sarah Ganzhorn

Talya Frost (our youngest daughter) never went to high school in the U.S.  We moved to Mexico just after her 8th grade year, and she enrolled at a private high school in Mazatlan where she was the only foreigner.  After a year there, we decided to move to Argentina--she picked the country!  Talya spent a month in a private international high school in Buenos Aires and then recognized the advantages of "smarting out" of high school at 15.  She studied with tutors, took university courses and then enrolled as a junior at Ithaca College in New York at the age of 17.  (She never took the SAT or ACT--but she did get a nice scholarship/grant package.)  She was interviewed for her college paper (read the article here) within days of arriving on campus, and has loved her role as a TA for two psychology professors.  She surprised herself by acing her financial accounting class this term, spent her spring break marveling at the mansions and music in New Orleans, and has fallen in love with art history.  Talya is spending this summer in Argentina doing an independent research project and will graduate with a BS in December just days after she turns 19.

Joshua (back left in hat) and Matt "Where the Hell is Matt?" Harding (back center with glasses) and students in Seoul.

Joshua Davies started taking community college courses while still in high school (Bainbridge Island, near Seattle) and transferred to Bard College in New York.  After spending semesters in India and France, he graduated and spent some time in Prague, where he was certified to teach English.  Four years ago, at the age of 26, he got a teaching job in South Korea, and earned a master's degree from Shenandoah University via a limited residency program. Joshua has worked his way up to a sweet university teaching position--and gets five months off (PAID!) each year, allowing him to travel the world. You can learn more (and contact him for tips!) by visiting his site at joshuawdavies.com  He sent this update in January: 

Currently I'm on my winter vacation between semesters and planning trips to Hong Kong and Japan. I'm still loving living in Seoul, South Korea, and in March I'll start teaching at Yonsei University in the College of English Faculty. I was recently appointed coordinator for teacher training with KOTESOL (the national affiliate of the worldwide TESOL organization), in addition to my existing role as webmaster for them.

I've also been getting involved much more in my local Toastmasters Club as I've been working on writing a university level presentation textbook for non-native English speakers and I wanted the chance to continue improving my own skills. Despite Seoul's convenient location for making forays throughout Asia, this year has brought fewer international travels (although I was in Tokyo in October to give a presentation at a teachers' conference) but many more Korean ones as my parents came to visit for a month in June. We traveled everywhere in Korea from the North Korean city of Kaesong to the East Sea volcanic island of Ulleungdo and almost everywhere in between.

Earlier in the year my students got the chance to be inspired to travel themselves when we danced with Matt Harding in front of Namdaemun gate (sadly 2 weeks before it was burned down). You can see my students and me at minute 2:47 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY) and he's also blogged about us at http://wherethehellismatt.typepad.com/blog/south_korea/index.html. Matt's a great guy and a real inspiration to just get out there and do it.

I am currently studying at the American University in Cairo and taking classes in Arabic and political science. Every Saturday I work with an NGO called New Women's Foundation, a research center here in Cairo based on women's rights. We have been working on everything from sexual harassment against women (which is a huge issue in Cairo) to women's rights in the workplace.

Through my NGO, I am learning so much about Middle Eastern culture and the roles of Egyptian women. We actually just had a hand in winning the FIRST SEXUAL HARASSMENT CASE EVER for an Egyptian girl named Noha. Her offender was sentenced to three years of jail time and I am so proud to be a part of Egyptian history in the making. Egypt is slowly but surely making steps in the right direction. I have also had the honor of bringing young Egyptian women together in a meeting at my NGO to learn more about their rights and about their reproductive health as well. My work at the NGO is so empowering; I have found a new sense of independence and strength that I didn't have when I first arrived in Egypt.

I recently climbed Mount Sinai, requiring a four-hour vertical climb to the top. We climbed through the night just in time to see the sunrise. It was the most beautiful and spiritually uplifting feeling I have ever experienced. I am planning a trip to Israel during the December Eid break from school. My Arabic is going well and although it is a very difficult language to conquer, I am proud of my progress so far and trying to soak up as much of it as I can!

None of this would have been possible without the generous scholarship I won earlier this summer. The Benjamin Gilman International Scholarship has given me the wonderful opportunity to learn about the Middle East from the inside. Coming from a low-income family, I am extremely grateful to organizations like Gilman International and Rotary International that have opened my heart and my mind to so many new cultures, languages and beautiful people. I've been able to embark upon adventures that most people only dream about..

Adam Young-Valdovinos (he now goes by his middle name, Christian) spent his junior year of high school on a Rotary exchange in Japan. After his senior year in Oregon, he was accepted at many top schools and picked Yale. And then, well, I'll let him tell it:

I am entering my third month in Beijing, and it has been so much more than I could have imagined. A little over a year ago, I decided to take some time off on a fellowship from Yale to learn Korean but mostly to dedicate a year of undivided attention to my artistic/musical career. While I was in Korea, I learned a lot about songwriting, was in a professional musical, and even ended up getting scouted by a record label in the States. This has currently come to a bit of a standstill but the show must go on!

Along with taking full-time Yale classes at Beijing University, I am a member of the premiere hip-hop crew "Sexy Bear" and have gotten heavily involved in the local music scene, playing regular shows every week. With my dancing, performing and songwriting, I have begun to move in an amateur-professional direction. It is something that could have only happened for me abroad where I am less inhibited about pursuing my passions and growing as an artist. Through my exposure in the past couple of months, I have been asked to do interviews, perform on television, arrange Chinese songs for films, among other awesome opportunities. Also, I will begin filming a major motion picture in February, by which time I need to be fluent in Chinese, because the director's English isn't very good!

I am currently in Europe again, and I love it! I have been here since June actually. First, due to the German skills I learned abroad and a business trip I was able to take with my university in Indiana, I was able to score a sweet marketing internship right back in Switzerland. It was weird and awesome to be back there four years later, and live a more grown-up life. I absolutely enjoyed my internship there and if anything, it made me fall in love with Switzerland that much more.

In September, I moved to Vienna, Austria to study for my uni back home and get credit for going to a language school. It's very nice here as well. It's funny that now I am even thinking about options like, "Do I wanna stay here or Switzerland for my work? What are the pros and cons of each?" Just being able to consider this now is so great! Realizing that I have so many connections all over the world and I would be fine living and working abroad is so crazy to me.

I go back to the States at the end of December (after a quick trip to Germany :) I can't get enough German, haha) to finish my degree which should take either half a year or a full year. Then after that, who knows? I would LOVE to see myself in Europe again sometime soon, or hey, maybe it's time to go explore elsewhere. There are always new places and new languages to learn :)

Philip Storey took a gap year between high school in Houston and attending Vanderbilt University and went on a Rotary Exchange to Argentina. His time abroad inspired a passion for language and culture, and rather than focus solely on his planned major (biotech), he blended the science path with his new interest in travel, spending time studying in several countries and taking intensive summer sessions to get his science courses in. After graduation, he got a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to study for his master's in public health in Australia, then spent three months in Senegal to work on his French. Now, he's a student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He doesn't have much time for updates, but he sent this:

I'm a first-year med student and loving it! I do miss the globetrotting and adventures of the past, but I am grateful for those experiences and feel they add a new dimension and sense of urgency to my study of medicine. Of course, my travel days are far from over, and I'm already planning my next trip--possibly to Geneva for a WHO internship this summer!

Emily with her fiancé's sisters and cousins at a family member's engagement party in India.

Emily Montgomery spent a year in Hungary on an AFS exchange, and after she returned to Texas, she figured out how to get into Wellesley without actually graduating from high school or even taking the GED! She's done quite a bit of traveling since her exchange, and there's much more ahead. Here's what she sent me in November:

I've spent the last few months working at the Bridgeway Foundation, which focuses on peacemaking and ending genocide, but before that, I spent the summer in Asia, including a month in India with my future in-laws learning the family traditions and recipes.

You see, next month, I am getting married in a three-day ceremony in northern India! We have 88 guests coming from my side, most from the US, but including three friends from my year abroad in Hungary and one from Japan who was an AFS student my family hosted when I was in 10th grade.

My fiancé and I met my first year at Wellesley while he was studying for his master's degree at MIT. He works in finance and lives in Hong Kong, where I will join him after the wedding. I am currently applying to different master's programs in international development. So, I've got a lot on my plate! The adventure continues....

Want to go global?