UKELODEON: For The Next Generation (11/14/04)

UKELODEON

For The Next Generation

New Haven girl travels as student ambassador to England, France

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - In July 2003 Alexandra T. Lodynsky, then almost 11 years old, received a letter from an educational exploration program founded in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the People to People Student Ambassador Program. She was invited to travel and study in England and France in the summer of 2004. Alexandra was so excited - it all seemed like a dream come true.

After submitting an application to participate in the program, Alexandra had to get three letters of reference from her teachers and be interviewed by the two delegation leaders. On October 2, 2003, Alexandra received a Federal Express envelope which informed her she'd been accepted into the People to People Student Ambassador class of 2004. Next came bimonthly meetings to prepare the students for their extraordinary trip, dubbed "Tale of Two Cities 2004."

On July 12, 2004, 22 students and two teachers traveled by bus to JFK International Airport in New York, from where they flew to London's Heathrow Airport. Once in London, the group was met by a delegation manager. Their first stops included Windsor Castle and Eton (where one of England's most prestigious schools stands), as well as the John F. Kennedy Memorial in Runnymede.

In subsequent days the student ambassadors met with a member of the British Parliament, went to the Tower of London and saw "Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Coat." They visited the Cabinet War Rooms, Buckingham Palace (where they viewed the ceremonial changing of the guards) and the London Theater Museum, and took a ride on the London Eye, the largest Ferris wheel in the world.

They traveled also to the beautiful university city of Oxford, where they visited the Science Museum, and afterwards to the medieval castle in Warwick, Stratford-upon-Avon (birthplace of William Shakespeare), the city of Bath (a famous spa town) and the Cotswolds, a prominent range of limestone hills spanning over 50 miles in rural England.

The trip to England was capped off with a visit on July 19 to Christ Church College, a location that was used in the movie, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

After taking the overnight ferry to France, the student ambassadors arrived in Le Havre and crossed the Normandy Bridge to spend some time at the picturesque port of Honfleur, then they went to Le Memorial de Caen Museum and to the famous beaches of Normandy, site of the D-Day landing during World War II, and then to the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach.

The next days' itinerary took the group to Caen, the city of William the Conqueror, the Chateau de Versailles, where they walked the Hall of Mirrors and the vast formal gardens, and Paris where they visited the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and climbed to the Eiffel Tower to enjoy the view of the city. The historic Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and Le Sacre-Coeur rounded out the group's tour of Paris, which ended on July 24 with a visit to Disneyland in Paris.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Alexandra. She learned so much and met so many nice people. On September 11, Alexandra's mom hosted a reunion for all the students and teachers that went on this trip at a family pool club.

Alexandra, daughter of Adrian and Halia Lodynsky, of Bethany, Conn., turned 12 on November 2. She is in the sixth grade at the Bethany Community School. She takes piano lessons and has a red belt in karate. She also goes to Ukrainian school and takes religion lessons every Saturday in New Haven, Conn., where the Lodynskys belong to St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church. She loves to read and play basketball. Alexandra has two brothers, Andrei, 9 1/2, and Adrian, 2 1/2.

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If you would like to know more about this program and see pictures of the trip, you may log on to Alexandra's website: http://www.peoplepupil.com.

Mishanyna

To solve this month's Mishanyna, find the words on the list below in the Mishanyna grid. All the words below are names of evergreen trees. In three instances the names of several varieties of a tree are given - you can find those names in the grid also.

arborvitae; baldcypress; fir: balsam, Douglas, Fraser; hemlock; larch; pine: longleaf, Ponderosa, Scotch; spruce: blue, Norway, white ; redcedar; tamarack; whitecedar

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