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SUMMER TRAVEL 
DESERT NATIVES: A camel bellows next to a citizen of Israel. Nataros said he snapped a great number of photographs of people on his trip.
photo by JOSH NATAROS |
By Jason Schaefer Taylor residents visit Europe, Israel on overseas adventures Three groups of Taylorites recently answered the call for summer adventure, which took them as far as Germany, Italy and Israel. Betty Jackson, a former German language teacher at Taylor High School, and her daughter Jan left the states in pursuit of family heritage. The pair visited Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland to search through archives and cemeteries for records of their family name, looking page by page well into the 1800s. To date, Jackson and her daughter have compiled a genealogical record back seven generations. While overseas, Betty Jackson saw Berlin crowds in throes over the European Cup soccer championship, with crowds of more than 500,000 lining the street downtown to watch the game on a giant screen at the Brandenburg Gate. Jackson said she enjoyed the multiculturalism of Berlin, in which one can hear many different languages, but she sweated the high prices for gasoline, car rentals and food. “We complain about high prices, but gas over there was the equivalent of $9.50 a gallon, and it went up 30 cents a gallon the next day,” she said. “Living expenses are so much higher. We expected to pay stadium prices for water and anything we ate. The most we paid was $5 for a bottle of water at the Berlin airport.” Noah Corn, a recent THS graduate, said the biggest different between America and Italy, which he visited June 11 to 23, was that life in Europe moved a lot slower. “I don’t know if it’s so much them taking their time rather than us going so fast,” he said. “You wait a little longer for everything over there.” Corn learned Italians also walk more than Americans. With everything more localized, including food, clothing and entertainment, one can find pretty much everything nearby, he said. Corn’s tour group visited several destinations in Italy, focusing mostly on its historical locations, including Rome, the Vatican, Florence and Pisa. The group also visited seaside Naples, the island town of Capri and the rural towns Jesolo and Spoleto. “Everywhere we went we had a tour guide, and it was always somebody different,” Corn said. “They always went through the culture and history, and they emphasized what we learned in school.” Corn said the trip made him appreciate being at home and in his own culture. With the language barrier between Italian natives and the tour group, along with the alien environment, Corn felt disconnected. Even his Latin teacher, Krystina Tellez, who accompanied the tour group and speaks Spanish, had difficulty navigating through the dialect, though Spanish and Italian are somewhat similar, Corn said. Josh Nataros, another recent graduate of THS, traveled to Israel with his family and his camera. Nataros visited Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Mt. Masada, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Nataros was excited to visit a high-conflict area. He said he wished he could have seen conflict first hand to take photographs of it. Once, when he was on a bus, he found himself seated between two armed members of the Israeli Defense Force. They were sleeping on their assault rifles, he said. Apart from the proximity to the IDF, the biggest difference from American life was the high cost of living, he said. A canned soft drink cost $2, and he was unable to bring back souvenirs other than his photographs. Nataros also said the sky looked a lot bluer in Israel, presumably because of its lower elevation. Living quarters are also a lot more dense. Tel Aviv, a city of 300,000, seems much bigger because it’s in such a small area, he said. Nataros said he had fun overseas, and that he learned a couple of Hebrew words. He plans to return to Israel, and in the meantime plans to learn more of the language.
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