Latitudes Gap Year w/ Carpe Diem: Group & Independent Travel

My time spent here in SE Asia has been spectacular. We started our journey in Siem Reap Cambodia. We dipped our toes in this city learning about each other and getting curious about our new surroundings. We then spent time visting temples, teaching kids English, going to a floating village and learning about life. We also spent time in Phnom Penh practicing qualities that would be important for student direct travel. In Thailand we spent a week in Bangkok a week at a retreat in udon and also a week with the hill tribe villages in chiang rai. Finally our tripped ended in chiang mai. For me the experience was something I never imagined would come to life. Like many of my fellow cohort members I felt like as a first generation Mexican American I would never have an opportunity like this. I got to travel to quite literally a different world, I got to learn new things about myself and I learned a lot about my peers here.

My time spent with Carpe Diem Education was one of the most impactful periods of my life. My group semester was spent in East Africa, exploring Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda. We learned about vast amounts of history and culture, spent time working with multiple orphanages and schools, learned to scuba dive, dug deep on self-reflection, went on a safari, completed a yoga and meditation retreat, stayed with incredible homestays and built relationships that have lasted the five years since the end of our semester. The relationships I built during Carpe Diem are some of my most treasured. My latitudes semester was spent at a school for children with special needs in rural Uganda, and it was empowering and impactful in ways that I continue to learn about and realize today. I finished my attitudes semester in the spring of 2018 after spending 3 months working every day with the most incredible group of students. In January 2022, I started a Master's Degree in Special Education. My time with Carpe shaped who I am in a dramatic way, and I can't give enough thanks to the incredibly purposeful design of my program. My group semester gave me the confidence and traveling know-how to travel to Egypt solo after my latitudes semester. In May of 2023, I am going to the wedding of a friend I met on group semester. If you are thinking about a gap year program, Carpe Diem Education will help you learn more about yourself and the world around you than you could in any other setting. Anytime I have the opportunity to tell people about Carpe is a privilege. Their programs are designed to push you to learn, grow and step out of your comfort zone.

We read often of the benefits of gap years, how they are life-changing, prepare young adults for college, and often termed "the best year ever." While these claims hold much legitimacy, few programs can unequivocally fulfill all of them; that is, except Carpe Diem Education. I was lucky enough to find Carpe Diem for the year after my high school graduation, 2010-2011, and can to this day stand by them as indisputably the best gap year program internationally. I could never imagine how my life would appear today had I not participated in the Latitudes Program, spending one full semester in Central America on a group trip and another semester on an independent internship in Ecuador. I gained essential skills in organization, writing, budgeting, and leadership; I tackled fears head-on while cultivating an insatiable curiosity; I grew more confident in my abilities scholastically and personally; I became completely fluent in another language equivalent to the level of my mother tongue; I created life-long friendships with other participants and locals to this day. Carpe Diem stood by me, answering my plethora of questions before the trip, appeasing my nervous mother during the trip, and accommodating me to practice my religious observances as a modern-orthodox Jew throughout the program. The coordinators supported me in arranging my internship placement, while simultaneously giving me enough space to be independent too. My trip leaders on the group trip were inspiring, confronting, and were the catalysts toward driving the personal developments of participants as we all pushed our comfort zone together with volunteer work that included arduous physical labor, language school, teaching English, and working with wildlife. My independent internship at an Inca ruin Hacienda gave me ample opportunity to dabble into a variety of fields, including farming, local cooking, horseback riding, translating, writing, and being a tour guide to hone my interests for my future career and quench my diverse interests. Carpe Diem pushed me emotionally and physically every day to find comfort through discomfort, to understand and be proactive in my surroundings, and to cultivate empathy. I was also able to earn college credit through Portland State University (PSU), which was an incredible opportunity considering that at the time of my gap year, I was unsure where I would attend school. Today, I have finished a degree from an ivy-league institution, consider myself a world traveler (whatever that really means), and am confident in following where the wind blows for my next steps. And for my accomplishments, strengths, attitude, determination, courage, and drive, I will forever be indebted to Carpe Diem. If you want a program that will open you up and allow you to carve out who you hope to be, to gain inspiration for your future, to truly make a difference, to build life-long relationships, and to push your comfort zone, look no further, because you’ve arrived at the best possible place.