I've Never...

I've never...

- traveled without a family member.

- stayed in a hotel.

- eaten in a restaurant.
- seen a waterfall.
- riden a horse.
- been in a boat.
- gone swimming.
- been to a movie theatre.
- sat in the front seat of a car.

Can you imagine never having had any of these experiences? These are all things that the teenage girls I work with could have said before we went on our field trips. I took a group of 12 teens on five different field trips (the sixth still to happen) to different cities/areas of Azerbaijan. We hiked through a riverbed and had lunch next to a waterfall. We went swimming at the Mingecivir reservoir. We visited the Khan's Palace in Sheki and stayed at a hotel that hosted caravans on the Silk Road. We visited local museums. We explored rock petroglyphs and mud volcanoes. We visited the mausoleum of a nationally renowned poet.

It was an amazing experience for these girls to see parts of Azerbaijan that they had only seen pictures of in their textbooks. And it wasn't just a historical experience. It was also a social experience for them. They were exposed to things that they haven't seen and/or done in our little town of Ujar. Now they can know what a tourism university might teach because they've been to some tourist sites. They know of different employment opportunities because they've seen women working at restaurants, movie theatres, and other places.

One of the things that was done to evaluate the trips was to ask the girls what surprised them about the places we visited. Their answers included everything: how many stores there were in Ganja (the second largest city in the country), the prices of things, the size of the reservoir in Mingecivir, items like skeletons in the museums, the age of artifacts and places, how tall the mountains are, and on and on. While these girls (they're 13 - 16 years old) still have a little time before they enter university and/or the workforce, they have seen and experienced things that most of their peers haven't, and another perspective is always beneficial. But for now, it will be just as valuable to share their experiences with their friends and family.