Making foreign countries come alive

April 17, 2005

JOEL DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

WASILLA - When husband and wife duo Troy and Stephanie Schulz decided to spring from their Oakland, Calif., home last March to travel the world, they had no idea that hundreds of Alaska middle-school students would track their every move.

From March 2004 to January 2005, the Schulzes visited 26 countries in a tour that took them on a long trek around the globe, including stops in New Zealand, Cambodia, Thailand, Africa and Europe.

Troy's sister, Kristi Shea, teaches geography at Teeland Middle School in Wasilla. When she found out what her brother and sister-in-law were up to, she recruited them to serve as international correspondents to her classroom.

As the couple traveled around the world, they sent e-mails and postcards back to Shea's classes, describing the foreign countries and bizarre incidents they encountered.

They never planned to be international travel journalists, but they embraced the role.

"It started out, we were just looking to move from Oakland to somewhere else," Troy said. "In the interim, we decided to do something else."

The Schulzes began their adventure by heading for New Zealand to visit some friends for a couple of months. Once there, they realized they wanted to visit Australia, then Africa, and before long a 10-month journey was under way.

Once their trip ended and they were finally back home in Oakland, a parent group at Teeland Middle, called Partners in Education, started asking Shea when her brother and sister-in-law were coming to Alaska to share stories, face to face, with the Teeland students who had been following them.

"I was like, 'They're broke and Alaska is a long way away, and they're not coming,'" Shea said.

The parent group wasn't deterred, however, and decided to foot the bill to bring the world travelers north.

"Things just kind of rolled into place," Shea said, sitting in her seventh-grade geography classroom next to a giant world map with the words, "Where in the world are Troy and Steph?" posted across the front.

Throughout the day, Tuesday and Wednesday, the Schulzes shared photographs and PowerPoint presentations and recounted stories to hundreds of Teeland students packed inside the school gym.

Shea teaches about 120 of the Teeland students, the ones who closely tracked the Schulzes. Those kids were most excited about finally getting to meet the young, fashionable travelers and local school celebrities.

"Local celebrities? Yeah, they are, just because they're really cute people," Shea said of her field-reporting relatives. "The kids love their stories, the funny stories of the people they come in contact with and the different cultures. The kids just sit and eat it up."

From jumping up and down while bartering for a hat, to wrecking scooters and running from charging elephants, the Schulzes both entertained and educated hundreds of attentive kids as they retold dozens of stories over a two-day period. By the end of Wednesday, almost every child at Teeland had seen the Schulzes' presentation and heard their story.

"It's always surprising when people have any interest in what I have to say," Troy said. "It's kind of humbling. Unfortunately, we don't recognize the students, but they know a lot about us. It's been pretty cool, they're a little giddy about it."

The Schulzes' contact with Shea's classes increased as their trip progressed. Initially, they just sent weekly e-mails to their family members and Shea incorporated those messages into her classes. As time went on, however, Shea's students wanted to ask the Schulzes direct questions about their adventures and they began an e-mail correspondence.

One of the first questions the Schulzes received asked them why they wanted to visit Turkey.

"One day, on a bus, we brainstormed 15 answers to that question and e-mailed it back to them," Troy said. "That was kind of the start of our main correspondence with them."

Stephanie said the students' interest changed her own experience of their trip.

"Once I saw how interested the students were, I started sending them postcards," Stephanie said. "It made it more meaningful, knowing that there were these young students who were interested in the places we were visiting. Quite frankly, I was very surprised that they were so interested. It made it more meaningful and exciting knowing that someone cared."

Shea had her students research the different countries and events the Schulzes attended and her classroom walls are now plastered with posterboard presentations of international events, cities and cultures.

"It was Kristy that took our trip and made it a point of education for her students," Stephanie said. "It was a way to make the different places come alive."

Contact Joel Davidson at joel.davidson@frontiersman.com.