On Friday, January 8th, representatives from three foreign exchange programs, Youth for Understanding USA, AFS, and Experiment in International Living, presented their various and diverse global travel options to Academy students.
Youth for Understanding USA (YFU) is a high school study abroad program that offers students the opportunity to spend a semester, summer, or a gap year in one of 40 countries. YFU’s gap-year programs also allow participants to choose programs that focus on a particular interest or hobby. If students want to experience a new culture and get to know different people, but cannot travel abroad, YFU also offers families the opportunity to host an exchange student from another country.
AFS allows high school students to spend a semester, summer, or a year abroad in any of 43 nations worldwide. Their destinations include major countries such as Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, China, and India, but also more exotic locations, such as Peru, Iceland, Turkey, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Egypt, and South Africa. Over 13,000 students travel with AFS every year, which has been operating for 60 years.
The programs from Experiment in International Living (EIL) allow high school students to spend 3 – 5 weeks during the summer in one of 30 countries. Their program operates in 47 countries, including Botswana, Chile, Korea, Thailand and New Zealand. If students would rather stay in the U.S., an immersion in the Navajo Nation is also an option. EIL offers many diverse opportunities, including community service projects, travel and cultural adventures, ecological/outdoor adventures, language training, and art-centered trips.
Traveling abroad sometimes seems too impossible and bold, but what these programs offer – the ability to expand your cultural, social, moral, and intellectual horizons – is infinitely valuable. Although their brochures advertize “the learning adventure of a lifetime,” as well as the opportunity to “gain a new perspective,” it’s hard to understand the real significance of global travel from these sometimes trite slogans. It’s only when you wake up in another country, continent, or hemisphere, and realize that what you do today make you a different, better person, that you begin appreciate the unthinkably spectacular possibilities of traveling.
For more information, go to:
www.yfu-usa.org
www.afsusa.org
www.experimentinternational.org