Around The World With Patrick Blute

Harwich Student Chosen To Help Promote Student Travel

How hard is it to keep a really spectacular secret? Harwich High School senior Patrick Blute found out last month.

Earlier this spring, Blute entered a contest sponsored by a Texas-based student group called STA Travel to spend 80-plus days over the summer traveling the world. Eventually, he received an email from STA asking him to be available around 5:30 p.m. on a certain day for a phone call.

Patrick Blute in Australia. Beginning in June the graduating Harwich High School senior will be traveling around the world as an “Ultimate World Traveler Intern.” PHOTO COURTESY OF PATRICK BLUTE

At 5:30 that day, Blute found himself in the midst of a rehearsal for "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at the high school. Blute, who starred as Joseph, was half-way through one of his songs when his cell phone rang.

"I ran out of the room, stood in the hallway of my high school, and listened to every word the marketing team said. I believe the first two minutes of their speech included phrases like: 'It was a tough competition' and 'It was a hard decision to

make,' so I was really geared up for the worst. When they told me I had won, I was ecstatic," Blute recalls. But "they told me I couldn't tell anyone until it was officially on the website. So, I returned to rehearsal just shrugging."

For two whole days Blute kept his secret. "It was extremely challenging to keep it low key," he says.

Blute lives with his parents Lorrie and Kevin on Idle Way in Harwich. His older sister Jackie graduated from Harwich High in 2006. When he learned that STA Travel, which bills itself as "the world's largest student and youth travel organization," was accepting applications for the group's second "Ultimate World Traveler Intern," Blute prepared a three-minute rap and dance video in which he explained why STA should send him around the world. The video made Blute into a finalist, and STA said it wanted another video in 24 hours.

Blute's second 3:44-minute video begins with Blute, in a suit, tie and glasses, standing in front of what he calls "the famous Chatham Bars Inn." Next, he is shown jogging in from the ocean in a wetsuit, carrying a surfboard. "Sand, sun, swimming and fun — there's something for everyone on Cape Cod," he intones. He interviews Bruce Scott and Jonathan Beaghan at Chatham Fish and Lobster Company. The scene then shifts to the Chatham Candy Manor where Blute interviews Sue Carroll in the fudge-making kitchen.

The video ends with Blute climbing into a small airplane in which he appears to fly off. Blute, who will turn 18 on April 26, beat out more than 2,000 other applicants nationwide, many of them already in college studying video.

"Good stuff is happening to him," Blute's father Kevin says, adding that he is very proud of his son.

Travel is something Blute, who has already been to Australia on a month-long Rotary Youth Group trip, is about to find out an awful lot about. Blute's journey will begin on May 1, when he flies to Santa Barbara, Calif., for a long weekend of training in how to tell travel stories. Then on June 1 he'll fly to STA's headquarters in Dallas before moving on to London to begin his all-expenses-paid whirlwind trip to 14 countries in four continents. (It just so happens that Blute is tied for Harwich High class valedictorian with Caitlin Chin. Blute's graduation speech will be piped in from Paris via live web feed for the June 8 ceremony.) He'll spent 14 days in Europe touring Spain, France, Italy, and then travel east to Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and Venice. He then flies to Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and winds up in the Galapagos Islands.

Along the way he'll be spelunking in Slovania in the Post Onja caves, skydiving in New Zealand and tango dancing in Buenos Aires, and posting videos, blogs, pictures and tips on STA's website all summer long.

"The whole goal is to get people to realize there's a whole other world out there," Blute says. "This will be a ground-breaking, life-changing trip and I am so overwhelmed by every possibility. I cannot believe I will be seeing the world, hosting my own online TV show, and doing this all for free. It's still just surreal."

"This Ultimate World Traveler Internship was a way to inspire students to travel through unconventional methods," says Amanda Webb, spokeswoman for STA Travel. "Rather than reading a brochure about Western Europe or the Galapagos Islands, students can follow the World Traveler intern via videos, photos and blogs and view their experiences first hand."

Blute will return to the U.S. a couple of days before he is due to matriculate at Columbia University in New York City for his freshman year. Blute feels his round-the-world journey will prepare him for college and life in New York City.

"I'll understand people. I'll have classmates from some of these areas, and they'll open my perspective on the world," he says, "When you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, open yourself, who knows?"

You can follow Blute around the world through the STA website at www.statravelers.com.

4/17/08