June 20th 2008 - "Do not cry for what is ending, but be happy because it happened!!!"

Hi everybody, I do not want to be long with this post, I just want to be thankful towards all of you, because you made my west coast trip one of the best moments of my life!!!! I will remember you all, from the closer friends to the others, the roomates, the Belo staff and the chaperones, the bus drivers and the photographer. This trip became my dream trip, and I hope it is the same for you!!! Have a good one guys...keep rocking around the world...

Take Care...

Best Regards....ciao ciao

Simone Pagano from Italy

P.S. I love you... Vi amo... Je t'aime... Ich Liebe Dich... Ik hou vanjou... Aishiteru... Jeg elsker dig... Rak na... Seni seviyorum... Mina rakastansinua... Adoro-te... Eu te amo

sorry for the missing languages!!!"

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HI Guys,

You are all awesome. We will never forget you. This was an unforgettable trip,we will always remember Thank you SO much

Kiss on your noses

Jessica, Sonja, Sylvie

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It's the end of it, the last day of the trip, SO many things to say but so little comes out of my mouth right now! This whole thing was amazing! We've made great friends and memories that will last forever! PRICELESS!

Thank you guys from Belo for making this possible. I know you've worked really hard for this and I want to ask you to keep doing it, you make us all really happy! and it's a chance that nobody can miss, we have learnt a lot during this two weeks and I'm sure it will give us some good and it will help us in our future!

I want to thank everyone for being part of this, all of you guys that came here with all that energy, the bus rides were amazing! the walks! the shopping! The singing! hiking! and all the exciting things we've shared!! I'll never forget this trip!! Thanks guys for being SO AWESOME!

I wish you all the best always! You really deserve it!

Hope life is great for all of you and we meet again sometime!

Love always,

Maribel Aiquel - Argentina

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Hello

Is it possible to become addicted to a group of high school students?

Maybe it's because I don't have teenagers of my own.

Whatever the reason, knowing that you all were in San Francisco and that I might be seeing you made me distracted and agitated. I found myself having ahard time going about my business and wanting to be with you.

The weather was so unusually beautiful I began to wonder if you all didn't have something to do with it.

I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to spend time with young, open, curious minds. It feeds me in so many ways. Thank you. I am also grateful that the folks from Belo offered such a magical, well structured and professionallyconducted program.

I will miss the students and hope you were all seduced by the magic of San Francisco enough that you will come back and visit.

With a warm hug,

Greg Rowe

France 1979

rowegregory@yahoo.com

PS Don't forget to each send me one photo so that I can have a collective photocollection!

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Hey guys,

I had the best two weeks of my entire stay with y'all! I love you guys so much and will never forget the moments that we've spent together! I will always cherish these memories!!

Jagruti Khabiya - India

June 19th 2008 - San Francisco... wow!

Last day baby! Thirteen days of fun, craziness and intense friendship are already gone... today we crossed the Golden Gate bridge, almost as a symbolic passage from the beginning of the trip to its inevitable end! An end full of tears and full of friendships broken by the necessity to go back to the origins!We ate lunch at the Golden Gate Park, surrounded by a beautiful naturalistic view! We had finally the occasion to take a break and enjoy deeply the trip.1,2,3 it's time to " grab our sailor's hat ", because we are taking a boat tour around Alcatraz!

After the empresonament, it's time to be free; in fact we went through a shopping spree for about 3 hours in the "Pier 39" dock.Meeting at 7:00 in front of the hard rock cafe', where we had the "last dinner" together and where we celebrated our beautiful chaperone Elisa's, Rube’s and Yoshi's birthday. Another “touchful” moment!

The best part came finally at the talent show that we organized. We started with the national anthems, chosen randomly by Raphael. Somebody was blushing because they didn't even remember their anthems, the Italians were even too loud, somebody was not very good at singing, but everybody was already having fun!!! A thousands of laughs later, it was time to get serious, even sad. It was time to say goodbye! Guys, it's time to leave !

Between the tears, we help each other to keep going and to be strong, because today is the last day, but we know this is not THE END but the beginning of great friendships that will go beyond the bound of space and time!

Thanks to every single body for every single moment you gave to contribute tothis trip

With love

your "most popular" Duilio from Italy!

June 18th 2008 - City Tour in San Francisco!

Today we left the hotel at 9.00 am to have a city tour of San Francisco.
Our first impression of the city is that there are many hills and steep roads. The weather was nice and we really feel in summer with all the flowers around us.
Once we picked up our guides we got into a typical cable car of San Francisco. It was a fun ride and some of us even high fived people from other cable cars when we passed them.
After the cable car ride we went to "Twin Peaks", the highest point of San Francisco to have a Panoramic view of the city.
Then we went to the "zig-zag road". It was beautiful, but not easy for car drivers to go down this way. We went to pier 39 to have lunch, and we had the opportunity to see wild sea lions.
Once our stomachs were full, we went to the cable car museum. It was interesting but we were happy to leave for Chinatown. There we went to a fortune cookie maker. It smelled nice...
We walked around in Chinatown. It was fun but the shop keepers weren't very polite. Chinatown is very different from the rest of the city. We had dinner at a chinese restaurant, it was good, but there was too much food. We, non-asians, had troubles with using the chop sticks (How do you eat rice with sticks?)
We are back at the hotel and we are having fun writing this to share our day with you. TADAAAAAAM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (<--- for Cajsa's mum)

Cajsa Nolskog - Sweden

Gilles Van Herck - Belgium.

Hey this is Finja and Asli writing.

Today we had a great time in San Francisco. After a delicious breakfast we met our tour guides, Joyce and Henrietta, in downtown San Francisco. They taught us a lot about the history of the cable cars. All of us were so excited to get on the cable car and have a great view over San Francisco. It was an amazing experience.

The city hall was our next stop. We were able to take pictures there. All of us had even a better view over the city at the highest hill of the city. We saw the golden gate bridge, Alcatraz island, the bay, the pacific ocean and colourful houses. It was great.

At lunchtime all of us were getting hungry so we headed back to the downtown of the city. Before we had free time for lunch at pier 39, we visited the “crickedest” street in the world -> Lombard street.

At pier 39 our tour guide had some tips for us to find good restaurants. The sourdough bread is very famous in San Francisco so a lot of us decided to eat clam chowder soup in a sourdough bowl. It tasted very good. Our tour guide also told us to watch out for the sea lions. They were really cute but they smelled pretty bad ;)

After some free time at the pier we went to the cable car museum. Chinatown was the next place we were heading to. We also had time to shop there which some of us used to go to Macys and see David Beckham. Some others shopped in Chinatown and had their hand full of bags at the end of the day.

For dinner we had Chinese food. All of us were really full after eating there =) The bus picked us up at 7.20 in Chinatown and brought us to the hotel where we had free time to go swim, play soccer or just sleep.

This trip has been so much fun and we made so many great friends. It is amazing. We are sure tomorrow will be the last great day of this trip.

Finja Draxler (Austria) and Asli Alkan (Turkey)

June 17th 2008 - "Frances, move that bus..."

Hey y'all !

This is Carolin. I am having such a good time on this trip!

It ist amazing to see so many cool and beautiful places! I can't even tell which of the cities was my favourite, they were all fabulous!

There hasen't been one day, that we didn't have lots of fun!

Today we drove from Yosemite to San Francisco, so I can't tell you a lot about San Francisco yet!

We had dinner at T.G.L. Fridays, I had a club sandwich, it was very good! Then we went shopping in the mall! Somehow most of the people bought underwear today, maybe they are running out!? :D

It is very sad that this trip is nearly over, I met so many nice people and made such good friends!

I think that everyone would agree with me, if I say that we had the time of our lives this year and this is the perfect ending for it!

Please stay in touch everybody!

Carolin Kirschner (Germany)

June 16th 2008 - Yosemite... speechless!!!

Hello everyone!

This is Doruk…

Today we went to Yosemite National Park. It took us 2 hours to get to the park and 1 hour inside the park to the Yosemite Lodge. Most of us had brunch at the restaurant in the park.

Sonja, Jessi, Sylvie and I took the Shuttle together. First we went to the Happy Isle and walked around. Then back to the shuttle we went to the Southern Down Falls.

So, we went to the most exciting part of our day: Rafting! It was a light rafting, but the cold water and the scenery made it really nice. After rafting we all swam in the water of the Merced river, it was cool!!!

Back in the shuttle, we met the group. The return took us longer because of a natural disaster that happened months ago on the road that we should have taken. We had chicken barbecue and was good and hit the spot.

Back to the hotel very fast, the temperature had dropped and we are heating up at the hot tub and getting ready for another day tomorrow.

I had fun!!! I just loved the nature; Yosemite is so cool and it is just an amazing place!

I also want to add that I love everybody on the trip. It is so nice to see people nice to each other. It has been a dream trip! Hope to keep in touch with all of you…

Doruk Erduran - Turkey