Written By Sydney & Alex After a 4 day track through the cold, dry Himalayas, a week of yoga and exploring Rishikesh was just what this group needed! It’s easy to understand why this place is regarded a sacred! Lush, green forest stretches from the mountain tops to the shores of the Ganges. The smells of incense fill the town and you can hear the insects wherever you go. Teaming… Read More
Written By Meagan salam from Rabat!
We’ve been settling into life in Morocco with our host families and learning Darija, the local Arabic dialect. The entire group has fallen in love with our amazing teacher Khalid, who has displayed an impressive level of patience as well as skill and talent as a teacher. He is funny and kind and a fantastic human being. We’ve managed to learn bits and pieces… Read More
Written By Lucia Hello! Lucia here with what we’ve been doing for the past two weeks. First we spent a week in El Paredon where we worked with La Choza Chula, a sustainable development organization dedicated to improving the community of El Paredon. They funded a school and they provide employment to many people in the community by offering tours around different parts of El Paredon. La Choza Chula gave… Read More
Written By Claire C. Lots of Monk No Chat
(Monk Chat Meditation Retreat)
Hello, everyone! Before we get into the juicy stuff, we’ve got to reflect for a second. This trip is halfway through! How was it six weeks ago that we met at the airport, had those do-we-hug-or-do-we-not-because-we’ve-never-met-but-we’ve-snapchatted-what-do-we-do moments (you know what we’re talking about…) and engaged in awkward small talk about the weight of our backpacks. Look how… Read More
Written By Rasheed & Lily Kia Ora! It’s Rasheed and Lily here and we are extremely excited to update everyone on our upcoming adventure. Since our time in Nakuku village, we have been vigorously planning and brainstorming on potential ideas for our week of student directed travel. During student directed travel, us 12 students have come up with an exhilarating itinerary. We have all put in lots of hard work… Read More
Written By Sydney Welcome back family and friends!
We are happy to say that we are in our Student Directed Travel week, meaning that we students budgeted and planned the whole week. After weeks of planning and excitement building up we were finally able to put our preparation to the test!
Following our week with Whinua Iti we headed off to Nelson to quickly get our groceries for the next… Read More
Good Day from Noah, Lottie, and the rest of Hongi!
It is hard to grasp the fact that our week on the Hart Farm is finally coming to an end… It feels like just yesterday that we rolled up in the “Blue Whale” van a tad soaked from our town time grabbing lunch before meeting our lovely hosts Rachel and Greg Hart. Hongi instantly felt at home and couldn’t contain… Read More
Written By Audrey After two rest days in Chiang Rai, we headed North and took a four-hour bus ride to the small town of Thung Chung in the Nan province of Thailand which is about a forty-minute drive from the Thailand-Laos border. The bus ride left the group feeling quite car sick but the gorgeous, lush, and green mountain views were breathtaking.
This past week we stayed at the Sahainan… Read More
Thinking about taking a gap year after high school?
Or maybe you’ve started college and are wondering if participating in a college gap year program abroad is still something you want to do?
Perhaps you’re weighing your options between a gap travel program, gap year volunteering, gap semester programs or another experience, like study abroad? You’re not alone! We meet students all the time who are interested in gap year… Read More
Written By Daniel and Mira We finally made it out of Tena, the protests ended by some random miracle, as the government agreed to place subsidies back on gas prices. This week, we were more than eager to continue on our program and travel to the indigenous town of Peguche, outside of the city of Otavalo. The week has warmed our hearts, minds, and spirits as we did homestays with… Read More
Written By Nicole & Alex Kia ora!
A big hello from Alec, Nicole, and the rest of Hongi! We are excited to be the ones to fill you in on everything that has happened this last week. This week’s leaders were Alec and Sofie!
Alec: Being a leader for a week was honestly very stressful at times. It challenged me in many different ways that I never would have thought… Read More
We started our time together surrounded by the towering, barren, and snowy mountains in the Himalayas in Leh, Ladakh. On arrival, we spent a couple of days acclimatizing to the extreme altitude of 11,000 feet. A few of our group members started to feel the symptoms of altitude sickness, while others begin to battle the slowly spreading flu. Even so, the excitement about the new climate and the upcoming stay… Read More
Hey and welcome back to the blog of the Walkabout Crew!
We have been a busy bunch these past 9 days. We started in Wellington where we got to be in a big city for the first time while being in New Zealand. We got to have time to explore, eat great food and be independent. We had a few options of some things that we got to choose to… Read More
Kia Ora. Hello everyone, it’s Jackson and Trish and we are so excited to have the opportunity to blog for you all again. Tonight we have the official changing of the guards which means that tomorrow we will have new jobs and will no longer be the group bloggers. I know we only had the opportunity to blog twice but I am so happy we have been able to give… Read More
Written By Meredith & Tyler On Sunday we left Banos and travelled to the city of Tena in the Amazon. We arrived late in the afternoon and got settled into our beautiful new hostel, previously picked out by Ava and Joey.
The next day we met up with Stephanie from Amazon Learning and she taught us all about the Amazon and what they do as a company. Following her presentation,… Read More
After trekking through the treacherous olive fields and weathering the daunting paved and unpaved roads of the Camino, we arrived in Cordoba. The light at the end of our tunnel, our flower in a dried up flower bed, our Harry to our very lonely Sally. We had found our salvation. We were saved.
Dramatic sighs of relief exchanged and many cups of Joe drank, we pressed on, running blindly through… Read More
Officially one month in! We left Chico Mendez last week for our three day trek to the lake. It was a challenging trip but everyone worked really hard and it was also lots of fun. It was so rewarding to look up at a mountain knowing we had just climbed it that day! On the last day, we got to see an amazing view of the sunrise over the lake.… Read More
Deciding to take a gap year after high school or during college is a big decision! That’s why we asked some of our gap semester program and Latitudes year alumni to share their experiences with you.
Introducing…Alex, Emily, and Patrick!
CDE: Hi, everyone! Let’s start with an easy question. In which gap program did you participate?Alex: Latitudes Year: South Pacific group semester, and FVP in San… Read More
A trek in the hills of northern Thailand. What a wild five days it’s been! Leaving our home in Ban Apa, we started our four day trek on October 6th. Our first destination was Ya Fu village. On our first day, we had a one and a half hour trek to the first stop at a waterfall where we got a delicious lunch wrapped in bamboo leaves. Paulina was a… Read More
Your semester is finally here! You’re leaving for your gap program in a few weeks and it’s time to start packing….but you don’t know where to start. You’re not alone – don’t worry!
I find packing to be a pretty fun process but I know a lot of people would disagree with me. I can’t promise that packing for your gap year semester or year is going to be fun… Read More
