By By GREG KATSKI
Community Editor
India Peele hopes to be basking in the Land of the Rising Sun by mid-summer.
Peele, an eighth-grader at P.S. Jones Middle School, has been handpicked to participate in the People to People Student Ambassador Program. She is preparing to travel with some 40 students from across North Carolina, Virginia and California to Japan from June 20 to July 3.
Their itinerary includes stops in Tokyo, where they will get a view of the city from the 45th floor of the Metropolitan Government Building, travel in a bullet train at speeds in excess of 185 mph and hike parts of Mt. Fuji. They’ll stop in Hiroshima, where they will visit Peace Memorial Park and Museum, a memorial for the thousands who died in the atomic-bomb detonation Aug. 6, 1945.
Peele said she is most excited about a session with professional animators in Tokyo. The animators will give the students insight into the Japanese art of anime. Peele, who keeps a diverse collection of scrapbooks and original anime stories in her room, plans to take some tips from the professionals.
Peele has found some success in the anime field. She wrote a book, “Busted: Spying on Bleach Characters,” based on the popular anime television series “Bleach,” which airs on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Several stories from the book have been published on her “fan fiction” Web site, www.fanfiction.net/~kinomikat.
She’s applied to attend Beaufort County Early College High School, and hopes to pursue Asian studies at East Carolina University after graduating with an associate’s degree and high-school diploma.
“She’s already looked up a course of study at ECU,” said Peele’s mother, Andrea Starkie. “She’s been wanting to do this for a long time.”
Peele said she became enamored with Japanese culture sometime during the fifth grade. Since then, teachers have recommended her for the People to People program.
Last year, Peele received a letter from a program representative explaining that she was a candidate. She had an informal meeting, before attending an informative session in Kinston in September. In October, she got the letter she had been waiting for — she was accepted.
Since then, Peele, and her family, have been trying to raise money to pay for the trip, which costs about $7,000. Peele has raised nearly $1,000 through a Chick-Fil-A sandwich raffle, Wal-Mart gift-card raffle, yard sale, homemade sweet potato-pie sale and Krispy Kreme doughnut sale. Ten percent of proceeds from the doughnut sale, which ends Sunday, will be donated to I Believe, a nonprofit organization based in Pitt County.
Asked why she is putting money back into the community, Peele said, “If I get something, I can at least try to give back what I got. It’s good to donate to other people.”
Peele’s next two fundraisers will be a hot-dog sale and Mother’s Day flower sale. As with the doughnut sale, 10 percent of her earnings will be donated to two different area nonprofits.
She also has a page on Facebook —Support India Peele to Japan.
“It’s a dream just having the opportunity (to go),” Peele said.
To prepare her for the trip, she has been going to monthly delegates meetings, where she learns about Japanese customs and manners.
“They tell us what and what not to do,” Peele said.
The meetings have given her a chance to make friends.
“I’ve met people that read some of the same books as me; basically interested in the same things that I am,” she said.
To donate directly to Peele’s People to People fund, send checks to People to People Ambassador Programs, P.O. Box 34902, Seattle, WA 98124-1902 RE: India D’Andrea Peele student ID No. 10065285 or by credit card at 1-800-669-7882