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How Alicia turned an interest in teaching into a Colombian adventure. Honestly, I don’t even know how it happened. All I know is that it happened—and it happened quickly. Ever since I visited Peru in 2008, I knew that I wanted to teach English in South...
- Type: Article
- Author: Alicia Williams
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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How to handle the ups and downs when living abroad isn't exactly what you'd imagined. For the nearly eight months leading up to my departure for Ecuador, I had plenty of time to contemplate every aspect of my nearing experience abroad. I daydreamed...
- Type: Article
- Author: Carley Clement
- Category: Work Abroad Blogs
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"Dos" and "don'ts" for building a community abroad. Making friends used to be simple. You went to school and you made friends. You went outside and just. . .met people. Then, once all studies ended, your "work people" became your "work friends." If you...
- Type: Article
- Author: Izabela Wlodarczyk
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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Bringing clean water to communities in need. We all have different reasons to travel. Maybe your original motivation was to get a tan or to get out of town; or to get over your ex or to run from your student loan debt. But then you get comfortable and...
- Type: Article
- Author: Maggie Kirkpatrick
- Category: Work Abroad Blogs
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What does it mean to discount something as operating on "African time"? Recently on our "London to Lagos by bicycle" trip, we have crossed over from the luscious Casamance region of Senegal and are riding strong through lusophone Guinea-Bissau, hoping...
- Type: Article
- Author: Tom Collins
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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Navigating the bureaucracy of long-distance love. Recently, I’ve been working through one of the tougher points of long term travel and living abroad: defending your ability to do so. For the last seven months—after I returned home from an extended...
- Type: Article
- Author: Taylor St. John
- Category: Work Abroad Blogs
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How to find a temporary home for your furry friends. On a previous trip to Dublin, I met an American girl not much older than myself who had recently relocated to Ireland. At the time, living abroad was something I desperately wanted, so I devoured...
- Type: Article
- Author: Ahnika White
- Category: Study Abroad Blogs
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The advantages of doing post-graduate study abroad. Graduating from college was the first time I truly felt my life was completely my own. There weren’t classes for me to show up for, a paper to write, or a reading assignment to finish. I had no...
- Type: Article
- Author: Ahnika White
- Category: Study Abroad Blogs
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As an international volunteer, success isn't about speeding up; it's about slowing down. For a UK volunteer in Ghana, there are a few words which need relearning. For example, when people say they’re "coming" in Ghanaian English, that usually means...
- Type: Article
- Author: Nick Benson
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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Sleeping is for when you're between overseas placements. 7:15 AM Wake up: nearly every day is sunny. Isn’t it great to be alive? The birds are chirp...zzzzzzz 8:00 AM Run out of the house and attempt to grab one of 20 mini buses hurtling in my general...
- Type: Article
- Author: Izabela Wlodarczyk
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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Five colloquialisms Kiana picked up in her brief six months in Vietnam. ?i Gi?i ?i. In the brief six months that I’ve lived and worked in Vietnam, there are very particular things that others say that you find yourself picking up. At first, I found...
- Type: Article
- Author: Kiana Zemenchik
- Category: Work Abroad Blogs
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If your summer travel plans include playing or working outdoors, know how to recognize, avoid—and get rid of—these dangerous hitchhikers. It’s the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere and tick season is well underway in North America and...
- Type: Article
- Author: Daphne Hendsbee, Tullia Marcolongo
- Category: Travel Health
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Tourism in Gambia exposes how prescriptions for Africa are only skin deep. It’s hard to know what to make of the Gambia. Growing up in England, if you’ve heard of anywhere in West Africa, it’s probably Gambia, possibly Ghana. Both ex-British colonies,...
- Type: Article
- Author: Tom Collins
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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How to cope when homesickness strikes. I thought that I'd done everything to prepare myself before my trip to Bolivia, where I would be volunteering with Cuso International at a technical institute in La Paz for an entire year. But when I arrived in La...
- Type: Article
- Author: Izabela Wlodarczyk
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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How jazz and religion go together in Africa. Coming out of the austere Mauritanian desert at the Mauritanian-Senegalese border town of Diama, it was a mere 32 kilometres to our next destination, Saint Louis. Having spent the past couple of weeks living...
- Type: Article
- Author: Tom Collins
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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Don't worry. Mauritanians may be asking themselves the same thing. The Sahara desert. A barren landmass bigger than the United States that has for centuries enthralled and excited a mix of travellers, rebels, nomads and troubadours alike. As we cycle...
- Type: Article
- Author: Tom Collins
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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When you struggle, you're doing something right. Travel isn't always comfortable—and it shouldn't be. I believe that if you're not struggling, you're not growing. Being completely outside of your comfort zone and learning along the way is a rewarding...
- Type: Article
- Author: Tina Chow
- Category: Work Abroad Blogs
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Why I overcame my fear to work abroad. It has officially been a little over a month since I’ve stepped foot into South Korea. I still wake up every single morning and think to myself how unreal it is that I am here right now. I am living my dream of...
- Type: Article
- Author: Tina Chow
- Category: Work Abroad Blogs
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Five must-haves for volunteering abroad. No matter how hard you try, you always pack something you never end up using and forget something you didn’t know you’d need. With hindsight from other trips I’ve tried to second-guess those essentials and...
- Type: Article
- Author: Nick Benson
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
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How can you prepare for the unknown? When you’re up-to-the-minute on what’s happening in the world it’s easy to think you know things. Every day we’re getting tweets from warzones, pictures from the “global south” and an endless stream of...
- Type: Article
- Author: Nick Benson
- Category: Volunteer Abroad Blogs
