by Jeffrey Stanley
Every fall, there is a buzz at BFS about the journeys and studies our students and teachers have undertaken during the summer months, with several visiting Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. The following stories, featuring upper school students Jake Karr, Miriam Gentile, and Asha Paul, as well as teacher Mark Buenzle, are reflective of the new accent that summer vacation has taken for many in the BFS community.
“I worked, interned really, in the Spanish office of the French architect Jean Nouvel. On my own I built a model of a really cool residential building designed for the coastal island of Ibiza.”
A recollection from I.M. Pei or Frank Gehry about their early days? Not quite, but perhaps a quote from the next Pei or Gehry: BFS senior Jake Karr. “I flew over to Barcelona a week or so after school ended in June, and stayed for five weeks,” he said. Jake also helped redesign some floor plans and drew up square footage calculations using AutoCAD, the software for professional 2- and 3-dimensional design.
Jake had been eager to work and live in Spain for some time, and had previously visited the country through Spanish language study abroad programs. This architecture internship of sorts was something he sought out and put together with his father's help. “I’m just lucky enough to have a dad who has been able to work with some very cool people in his time,” Jake said of world-renowned architect Nouvel, “and luckier that he makes friends easily.” Jake’s father is an architect who worked previously on a project here in New York City with Nouvel.
An added bonus for the young designer was the opportunity to live alone in an apartment near his host family, the Nouvels. “It was strange at first,” said Jake, “this preview of adulthood, but I came to love the responsibility.” He was soon cooking meals for himself and his guests, and doing his own laundry, “a real novelty,” he admitted. “I consider myself an independent person to begin with, but having to live on your own, in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language, takes it to a whole other level.”
Jake isn’t the only student who spent this past summer working abroad. Among others is sophomore Miriam Gentile, who spent a month in and around Beijing studying Chinese culture sightseeing, and helping out in a Tibetan orphanage. The trip was arranged through the North Carolina based Academic Treks, a college-credited language immersion program.
Tourist trips included a visit to the ancient mountain city of Lijiang, known for its folk culture and streets paved with bluestones. “One of my least favorite experiences was getting lost in Lijiang,” said Miriam. Her favorite: seeing the Great Wall.
Junior Asha Paul didn’t travel abroad but she devoted a healthy portion of her summer combining recreation with study. A New Generation Venture Fund Scholar in a program at Johns Hopkins University, she attended the Summer BizCamp sponsored by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship.
“I went for one week to learn how to start and run your own business,” she said. Guest speakers included executives from Goldman Sachs. In a competition reminiscent of TV’s The Apprentice, students were expected to use what they’d learned about business to defeat their opponents. “We were supposed to create our own business plan in teams of four or five,” Asha explained. “At the end of the camp we competed against each other to see whose business plan would be the most successful in the real world.”
Asha’s group elected to market fingerprint door locks. “We realized that there was already a company in Japan that does that,” she said, "so we thought we would act as the middleman and sell the products to the American public.” Her team was among the winners, and they will showcase their business plan to a larger audience in the next round at the National Goldman Sachs Foundation Youth Leadership Expo this coming spring.
BFS Upper School teacher Mark Buenzle added South Korea to his extensive travel portfolio in the summer of 2008, spending two weeks in a program for U.S. secondary school teachers sponsored by the Korea Foundation.
“Every year this group hosts groups of 52 history teachers, who study at Yonsei University and take guided tours of historic sites,” said Mark, a teacher of Art History, Psychology, 2D Art, and IB Art. He said the quality of the lectures was excellent, and his goal in attending was to become better informed about Korean culture and art, as well as the Korean War, in order to serve as a resource to BFS students and faculty.
One of the guided tours was to the DMZ, the 2 km wide demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, under armed UN escort. “It’s still considered an active war zone. The North Koreans had just shot someone who was walking on the beach at the border a day before, so it was rather tense,” Mark said.
Ironically this strip of wild land is one of the best bird sanctuaries on the planet, he explained, because there’s been no human incursion for over 50 years. Their guide pointed out the rivers strung with barbed wire and the massive concrete slabs built over the roads, wired to be exploded to block the roadways if the North Koreans were to invade.
The group also visited Gyeongju, an ancient city of temples and palaces in southern South Korea, and they visited a Buddhist temple in Seoul before sunrise. “The monk was so happy to see us he had tea with us and gave us prayer beads,” Mark said. “The ceiling was covered in lanterns, so there was a red-orange glow before sunrise, which was beautiful.”
There were also plenty of lighter moments during his stay. The group visited a high school, and although not in session at the time, some of the students gave the teachers a tour. “Their school day runs from 7 am to 11 pm,” he said, “and the students have toothbrushes in the classroom because they’re there so much.”
Mark’s most enjoyable experience was seeing a major league baseball game. (photo above) “Baseball is huge in Korea!” The main draw was the Dunsan Bears, a pro team based in Seoul. “The game was much more exuberant than here,” he said. “There were cheerleaders, a lot more cheering in the stands, and instead of hot dog vendors, they sold dried octopus as a snack.”