Exploring the World One Summer at a Time

Alex Mudd, Lauren Hogan, Paiton Raines, and Samantha Bowers (from left) all enjoyed soaking in the minerals at the Blue Lagoon natural pool in Iceland.

As a student, I can personally vouch for practically the entire student body when I say that June is a heavily anticipated month. June promises the end of another school year and the beginning of summer vacation. Before high school, summer was highly anticipated because of the freedom from school it provided, but as we have gotten older we have began to appreciate summer as an opportunity to travel the world.

Though summer is sadly almost over, these three rising seniors of Memorial High School have taken some amazing trips so far over the course of the summer of 2014. This trip was the most removed from Houston; it took place almost 4,000 miles away from Lauren Hogan's home. Lauren participated in National Geographic’s trip to Iceland over a period of 10 days. Her trip began in Reykjavík and they kicked off their expedition by exploring the old town and its famous church. Following their first day, they experienced Iceland’s ice-capped volcanoes, magnificent waterfalls and glaciers, and the country’s famous geysers. Lauren said that one of her favorite experiences of the Iceland trip was their expedition to hike up a branch of the largest glacier in Europe.

Lauren said, “Climbing wasn’t as hard as it would seem because we had all of the right equipment: crampons and pick axes. And once we got far enough up the glacier, we could look out into the lava fields and mountains. It was absolutely breathtaking.”

A group of rising seniors gathered to take a break from their long hike in Colorado.

 

Kathryne Graves stayed inside the boundary of the United States; she traveled northward to Colorado to hike in the Young Life Wilderness Ranch program. When I asked Kathryne for details about her trip, she said, “We hiked every day through all sorts of terrain- tall grass, rivers, rocks, mud, honestly anything you can think of we probably hiked through it. We pitched a couple of tents and camped at night and we all carried a meal in our pack that we would eat throughout the week. The hike was tough, both physically and emotionally- we had to push our bodies harder than we ever had before.”

Even though the hike seemed quite grueling, Kathryne said, “It was definitely worth all the hard work though, my favorite part was sitting down every night and talking with all of the other girls. We learned everyone’s life stories and it was amazing to learn things about the other girls that you never knew before.” 

All the students who take German as a class in school had the chance to travel to Germany this summer and explore the country over a five-week period. They toured four major cities in Germany: Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and Garscing. Katie said her favorite experience in Berlin was the fanmeile (fan-mile), in front of Berlin’s most famous monument- the Brandenburg. The fan mile is a stretch of road that is packed with people cheering for Germany to win during the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Friends Rebekah Koehn, Katie Ohman, and Arabella Benavides in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany.

Katie added, “The architecture in Berlin had an amazing contrast, half of the city is very, very old, and the other half is super modern.” Katie enjoyed Dresden because of the other German students they met at the jugendherberge hostel that they stayed at She also remarked, “I appreciated Dresden because it taught us so much about World War 2.

Because all of the buildings were bombed, when they city was rebuilt they used the black burnt stones to remind people of the cost of war.” Katie said that Munich was the least “touristy”, and they were able to learn about the city’s weird quirks, such as rubbing the noses of the brass lion statues located outside of the Residenz building for luck.

To finish up their trip in Gascing, Katie said, “Even though we were only there for a weekend it was still incredible. We hiked the Wankbahn Mountain and the views were spectacular”. Even though everyone’s vacation destinations were thousands of miles away from each other, the three girls all learned incredible things, had an amazing time, and explored new parts of the world. I’m sure they will remember the summer of 2014 for the incredible trips that they went on and the amazing things they were able to experience.