🌎 He competed in the school's annual geography challenge: the National Geographic Bee. He was the school champion for both of the years he competed. This meant that he advanced to the statewide competition each time; his second year in this contest, he was crowned the Vermont State Champion. By winning the state, he was awarded a free trip to Washington, D.C. for the national bee. He did not "place" in this contest, but did enjoy getting to meet Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy and Peter Welch while on Capitol Hill! And here is Taylor getting Alex Trebek's autograph; he was the host for the final event. 🌎

Also in 2007, he got accepted into the Journey East program, which meant that he would be traveling to China with a group of about 25 students for a month in the spring of 2008. Journey East was a foreign exchange program that had our Vermont high school students designing their own show of music and dance, that they would then perform in China at multiple schools. The "exchange" included Chinese students from the Art College of Inner Mongolia University coming to stay in homes scattered around Townshend, and from those home bases, traveling around Vermont to perform their traditional music and dance show.