Year In Review: Baltimore, Sunrise Beach, and Louisville Cultural Events 2018
As part of WWCE’s Week of Welcome, our coordinators arrange a cultural event to get the participants excited about the American culture. In Baltimore, we toured the inner harbor, in Sunrise Beach we bowled, and in Louisville we learned about baseball.
Baltimore, Maryland
Four Seasons Baltimore, where we placed Summer Work and Travel participants, is located at Baltimore’s inner harbor. Since our participants were were lucky enough to have stunning harbor views each day, we felt it was important for them to also know the historical background of the harbor. As a cultural event, we toured a collection of historic military ships: the US Sloop-of-War Constellation, the US Submarine Torsk, and the US Coast Guard Cutter Taney. Following our docked adventure, we headed out into the harbor via pedal boats. We ended the event at a well-known American fast food chain: Chick-Fil-A.
Sunrise Beach, Missouri
Many American celebrations are held in bowling alleys (I’m sure we’ve all attended at least one bowling birthday!), so we shared the experience with our participants in Sunrise Beach, Missouri. We had a blast together bowling and getting to know one another.
Louisville, Kentucky
Baseball is an important cultural component across the United States, but it has extra significance in Louisville because the famous Louisville Slugger bat was created there. We visited the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory to educate our participants on the sport and spark their interest to attend a game. Forbes has named the museum as one of the greatest sports museums in the world. The participants were able to view memorability, engage with interactive exhibits, and tour the factory. The museum itself is hard to miss; it is marked by a giant baseball bat that marks the location of the museum – you can see how big it is when you see the tiny Exchange Visitors waving at the bottom! Inside the museum, we took a tour of the factory where we saw how baseball bats are made, learned about the different types of wood that they use, and heard cool facts about the famous bats that they have made for MLB players! As an added bonus, each participant received a miniature souvenir bat to take home! After touring the museum, we took a walk to Fourth Street Live in downtown Louisville where we stopped for a photo in front of the world famous Hard Rock guitar sign.
