Playa del Carmen: Reflections on a Busy First Week

Playa_class By Alisa W., guest blogger studying Spanish in Playa del Carmen, Mexico

I have been in Playa del Carmen for exactly one week now.  The week has flown by, and I'm amazed by how quickly I became comfortable here in Mexico.  Yesterday, I took a tour with some of my new friends to Chichen Itza.  Chichen Itza is about two hours from Playa del Carmen, and is one of the new 7 wonders of the world.  It was interesting to see the cenote, which is where the Mayans sacrificed people to the gods.  A cenote is a naturally occurring sinkhole that occurs in porous rocks.  The riviera maya is primarily made up of limestone, which is very porous.  Due to this, cenotes are very common. 

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Meet the School: Sosua, Dominican Republic’s Director

Meettheschool_domrep Meet Tanja Hölzer, Director of AmeriSpan's partner school in Sosua, Dominican Republic!

What is your background?
I am a public relations consultant and worked in education as a Divisions Manager for Marketing and PR business trainings in Germany.

I am 41, originally from Germany where I have studied history, politics and languages and became later on a public relations consultant.

I have now been living in Sosua in the Dominican Republic for almost seven years. When I came here the first time, I went on holidays to learn scuba diving. Which I did – and I met my husband, who was my scuba diving instructor. He is from Luxembourg. Funny coincidences of life: In Europe we only lived 250 kilometers apart, but we both traveled 7,000 kilometers to actually meet here in the Caribbean.

Do you travel abroad often?
Whenever possible because I love to visit new places, meet people and different cultures.

Have you studied abroad?
Before entering university I was living in Canada for a year, which was a great experience.


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Ramadan Mabrouk: Visiting Morocco During Ramadan

IMG_1090 By Niki, AmeriSpan Study Abroad Consultant

Ramadan, the 9th month of the Muslim calendar, is celebrated by roughly 98% of Moroccans.  Every Muslim is expected to fast, which means abstaining from food, drink and some other activities during the daylight hours. Ramadan dates change every year since the Islamic calendar is based on the lunar cycle. This fasting, known as “sawm,” makes traveling and/or studying abroad in Morocco during August to September a bit difficult for non-Muslims visiting the Arab nation. However, after visiting I believe the pros certainly outweigh the cons. 

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Discovering Vienna, Austria

By Lauren S., guest video blogger from AmeriSpan's Teen program in Vienna, Austria

For details about studying in Vienna, see Studying German in Austria

See all of Lauren's video blogs from Vienna


 

Meet the School: Beijing, China’s founder & Director

Beijing_school
Julia Zhou is founder & director of AmeriSpan’s partner school in Beijing, China.  She shares her own story about her background and how she started her language program.

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Meet the School – Taormina, Sicily’s Founder & Director

Taormina_school
 Alessandro Adorno is the founder and director of the Italian language school in Taormina, Sicily in the south of Italy. In our opinion, Alessandro is one of the hardest working and most enthusiastic school directors we have ever worked with. His school was awarded the LTM Star award for best Italian school in 2008 and was a runner-up in 2009 and 2010.

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Ecuador Situation Analysis – Participant Feedback

Two weeks ago, Ecuador was in the news when the current President was in a showdown with parts of the police force related to proposed cuts in benefits.  We blogged about this here.  Basically, Quito was the city most affected by this, the airport was closed for most of the day and very few policeman were working. 

In a follow-up to the situation, we wanted to share some feedback from participants in Quito on the current safety situation. As you can see by the following comments, the situation is back to normal.  So why not consider a study abroad program in Ecuador.

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A Visit with a Peruvian Shaman

Peru_centralmarket By Miki S., guest blogger, Cusco SALUD participant and AmeriSpan Delegate Scholar.

 One afternoon we got to have a meeting with a real shaman!  It turns out she also worked as a Registered Nurse and a massage therapist.  And there I was expecting this witch to come in with a cape or something.  But she was really sweet and gave us an explanation of the three types of work she does: the first one is reading of our cocoa leaves, the 2nd involves an egg, and the 3rd a guinea pig (cuy).

 

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Lyon Living: A Few Pointers

Lyon_group3 By Ashley C., guest blogger studying French in Lyon, France

Here is a short list of tips based on my first month here that I thought everyone might find helpful for French study in Lyon!

Eating:
Eat well! This may be entirely obvious to most people, but it wasn?t to me. During my first couple weeks here, I lived by the motto “if I?m only going to be here a short time, I should be able to eat whatever I want!” When you travel, though, your diet changes so much. I didn?t realize that my diet would even change that much! I didn?t realize I could even gain weight (I?m pencil thin, and I?ve never been on a diet). Eat fruits and veggies!  Eat healthy food! Don?t eat croissants every spare chance you can get! I started to get sick a few weeks in (I think because of my diet), and I?m now still trying to figure out how
to eat well in Lyon. You can do it, but don?t think it will come naturally.

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