DAVID BELL
Bell, his wife, Julie, and daughters, Jennifer and Emily, took a three-week tour of Western Europe that included visits to France, Great Britain, and Germany. The trip was built around a visit with Martina Junkermann, an English and math teacher at the Gauss Gymnasium in Worms, Germany, Mercersburg’s exchange program partner for the past decade. Junkermann stayed with the Bells during several visits to Mercersburg, and the two families enjoyed time together on the other side of the Atlantic. “As a history teacher, this was a chance for me to see firsthand many places where history was made,” Bell says.




GRETCHAN FREDERICK
For a week in August, Frederick and her mother toured southwest Ireland almost entirely on horseback. To Frederick, a native of Kentucky who has loved horses since age 4, the trip was a way of thanking her mother for 20 years of riding lessons and horse shows, veterinarian expenses, boarding expenses, and the like. “It was wonderful to be able to reconnect with my equestrian background, as well as my Irish heritage,” she says.




TRINI HOFFMAN
The week before the drawing to determine the faculty recipients of the travel grant, Hoffman and her husband, Manny Clement, saw Thailand featured on an episode of the Travel Channel’s 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. “We decided then that if we won the lottery, that’s where we’d go,” Hoffman says. So as luck would have it, the couple is off to the Southeast Asian country during the winter break, with plans to visit Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Phuket. Napat Waikwamdee ’09, who lives in Main Hall (where Hoffman is dormitory dean), will serve as a tour guide of sorts for a portion of the trip.



TOM THORNE
Thorne, his wife, Barb, and oldest daughter, Elissa '06, will visit southern Italy and Sicily over the winter break. The family will meet up with youngest daughter Julia '07, who is spending the year abroad on an English-Speaking Union scholarship, as well as current Mercersburg School Year Abroad students Hillary Smith '08 and Kiva Rudd '08. Elissa, an ESU participant last year, will lead a tour of parts of Rome she discovered during her travels. "It will be a trip strongly connected to Mercersburg people and programs," he says.