Rachel Opperman leaned back in her chair, studied the ceiling, then made her best guess.

If everyone involved in the three-year process to organize an environmental youth summit were to log all the time they've worked, it would total about 6 bazillion hours, she said.

"It's been sooooo much work," said Opperman, 17, pushing her hair back from her face. "I swear I haven't gone home after school yet. I mean, if I don't have any homework, I'm working on this."

The South Salem High School senior was planning activities for more than 100 students--some who speak little English--who arrived in Salem this weekend for the first International Youth Environmental Summit.

She'd sent a ton of e-mail messages to participants and checked and rechecked what music would be played at a semi-formal gathering. And just days before the conference was to start, she still was trying to get 60 bandanas for a game,'     A half dozen of her peers also hustled around the small, hot "war room" in the high school's basement last week, sewing up plans.

Anne Leeper, 16, put final touches on black and white signs in Japanese, Elaine Whitton, 17, walked around barefoot making sure everyone had enough to do. Juniors Kris Kolta and Chris Kalter-Strand skimmed the summit's Web site and helped solve computer glitches. Teachers Molly Kellar and Andrew Goldstein directed the frenzy.

"We've been working full-time, all summer," Kellar said. "I go to bed around 1:30 a.m. and get up around 6 a.m.

"We're kind of on cruise control right now. Part of that is not knowing what to expect."

The conference starts tonight with an opening ceremony for the high school delegates from South Africa, Japan, Israel, Australia, Brazil and the United States. The students have slowly become friends as part of the 21st Century Schoolhouse, a collaboration of the six schools via the Internet to study environmental issues important to their countries.

This week, they'll meet face-to-face to work at the Oregon Capitol, Willamette University and Western Oregon University.

The six multinational teams will debate and develop solutions to concerns such as deforestation, rapid urbanization and toxic waste. On Friday, they'll draft a resolution to give to their country's government and the United Nations.

Sierra Club's president, Adam Werbach, and David Brower, a two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, are summit guest speakers.

"This initially started off as a pipe dream, then the kids had some questions about what's going on globally and one step led to another," said Goldstein, watching the group work.

"It's amazing what they can do when given the opportunity to research something and work to solve it."

Many of the South Salem students involved in the project have been in Goldstein and Kellar's environmental issues class and have strong feelings about the topics they've spent months studying.

Some have become so engrossed in planning the biennial summit that they work on their home computers long into the night.

"This whole thing does take away from family time, but they're really proud of what I¹m doing in the summit," Kolta said. "It's been a lot of work, but a lot of fun too. Before this year, I had never programmed a Web page."

Whitton said the class and project has changed her thinking about corporations and the environment. Before, she had an environmentalist point of view, she said.

"Now I know a compromise can be made, and there is a solution out there," she said. "You can't just please the environmentalists, and you can't just please industry."

Senior Shannon Steiner is on the screening committee to review the declaration. She quit her job at a Salem day care to spend two years working on the project.

"It's worth it because you don't get experience like this every day," she said. "I just hope there's some type of changes made and this is not something with a big name to put on a resume.

Students from around the globe-

These high schools will be represented this week at the 21st Century Schoolhouse International Youth Environmental Summit in Salem:

        South Salem High School, Salem.
        Alexander Sinton High School, West Cape, South Africa.
        Daimon High School, Toyama, Japan.
        High School for Environmental Studies, Negev, Israel.
        Colegio Moyses Chvarts, Recife, Brazil.
        Warnbro Community High School, Perth, Australia.

        Students in Australia will select a theme and host the next summit in 1999. The 2001 summit will be in Israel.