Before you study abroad, take the time to figure out how you will keep in touch with friends and relatives back home, and in your host country as well. If your cell phone and cell phone carrier offer international service to your host country for reasonable rates, great! But if not, don’t despair. There are options out there!
1. Cell phone: A great option is the Mobal GSM World Phone. They are fairly inexpensive to buy, require no contract, you pay only when you use them, you keep the same phone number whenever you travel, and work in 150 countries worldwide. Read an article about this great phone here: Keeping In Touch While Studying Abroad
2. Phone card: AmeriSpan has an international phone card with special low rates, access to over 150 countries, and your friends and family can even messages for you.
3. International country codes: Participants & their families should know how to dial internationally. Country Calling Codes is a website that includes all country calling codes, and instructions.
Why would you go to a place that might entice you to stay forever? The people are far too generous and they have too much fun. Who wants the freedom to sit on the beach with a glass of sangria, to eat tapas after 10pm or make the last meal of the night breakfast? What about taking a siesta could possibly call you?
Affordable luxury is way overrated. It’s simply too easy to travel from one metropolitan city to another in two hours on a world-class train. In one city one may overeat the finest ham, see three cathedrals and the world’s oldest university in one afternoon. Who needs it? Taking a relaxing drive along la Costa del Sol would just be entirely too beautiful.
Read this personal account from one of our volunteer participants, Mikel B., who is currently volunteering in Bolivia.
My name is Mikel and I am a 21 year old girl who has been doing volunteer work for the past year through Amerispan and I am continuing on my second year with them. One of the many programs I have done through them is the one located in Peten Guatemala. It was possibly one of the funnest experiences I have had through Amerispan (its very hard to pick, they were all amazing). You get to work one on one with the animals, alongside a very very very friendly and intelligent staff who know a lot about wildlife and are eager to share as much of the experiece with the volunteers, of working with wild animals, as is safe and possible.
The first week in Sevilla flew by in a flash and with a distinct rhythm. I would get up, have breakfast at home and then walk to school around 9:15am (though I still haven’t quite adjusted to the late day break after 8am in Southern Spain – it constantly throws me off). School hours were from 9:30am till 2:30pm. The classes moved quickly and everyday I was faced with fresh deluge of Spanish vocabulary, verbs and grammar. I was glad I had carried my Vox English/Spanish dictionary with me, as recommended by the Amerispan website, as it became an invaluable resource for me.
It was a cold, gloomy and wet Monday in Sevilla and hardly the weather I was expecting for my first day in language school. Luckily the school was barely a five-minute walk from my apartment and I did not have wander about too long through the complicated streets of Barrio Santa Cruz (though I would get hopelessly lost soon enough). I had taken a beginning Spanish class in San Francisco about a year ago, which gave me the over-confidence to indicate in my AmeriSpan application that I was “Beginner-2” (out of 3) level. I guess I thought that knowing the Spanish alphabet, numbers, and forms of “ser” and “estar” put me one level up from an absolute novice. However my illusions were shattered when I arrived at school and had to take the Spanish evaluation test, which would determine my placement level. Out of fifty odd questions, I could barely answer five of them correctly and the instructor promptly put me in Level A1(the absolute beginner level and followed by A2, B1, B2, C1 & C2). I understood pretty quickly that I knew nothing and my Spanish language journey was going to be a long haul.
Looking for a SALUD Medical Spanish program? Have you considered Santiago, Chile for a Medical Spanish course? Santiago is becoming a very metropolitan and modern city. Many people who visit notice its clean streets, wonderful metro system and attractive skyline. The city has its beautiful and not so beautiful neighborhoods. The SALUD Medical Spanish program takes place in one of the nicest neighborhoods, Providencia. Providencia’s main streets are lined with restaurants, shops, hotels, and nightclubs. You will find a diverse mixture of Chileans and travelers in Providencia. It also houses families in residential areas, while travelers can visit museums and various points of interest. It is centrally located within Santiago, and Santiago is centrally located in Chile, making it a perfect base for travel throughout the country and to other destinations in South America.
Spain Spanish Schools was the term you just googled, and "OMG" was your reaction when Google informed you that there are 8,700,000 results to your query. You thought you were over the hard part, you had finally found the time, the money and had even chosen Spain as opposed to umpteen other Spanish-speaking countries. You were ready to learn Spanish in Spain! It was going to get easy from here... but 8,700,000 results.
1. Buying & Bargaining. Shop
owners insist that they are giving a variety of discounts to you and only you.
i.e. the “Pretty Girl” discount,“First
Customer of the Day” discount, “Last Customer of the Day” discount, etc. You
can easily spot “touters” after getting taken once or twice. Often times, the
hotels and taxi/rickshaw drivers work together and they make commissions at the
shops. Bargaining is a must. If a street vendor tells you 50 rupees for some
bananas and an orange, he probably would have told a local 10 rupees. Never
accept a first offer. Walking away is the best way to get a good deal. If they
want your business, they will call you back over. When riding in rickshaws,
negotiate a price prior to getting in. Bigger cities like Mumbai have rickshaws
with fare meters. Also avoid buying tour packages until you get in country.
Many hotels have travel agencies on-site that can organize great tour packages
for reasonable rates.
2. Saris. Saris range in price from
15 USD to hundreds, even thousands of dollars. When Sari shopping, opt for
something more elaborately decorated if attending a nice function like a
wedding. The more intricate detail the better. Saris can also be extremely
difficult to wrap, so consider asking for help from a local instead of
attempting to do it yourself. Remember, you may only wear it once, but there is
tons of fabric so you can always get a nice sari turned into a fabulous western
style dress or wall tapestry upon return home.
Watch a video of AmeriSpan's volunteer program in Kenya. We offer volunteer opportunities in medical and community projects in Kenya, for both medically qualified and non-qualified volunteers. Click for more information about AmeriSpan's Volunteer Programs in Kenya.
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