Italy & Greece Semester: Resilience and Regeneration

I loved my gap year semester trip. I was definitely not expecting to make so many deep connections with the other American students let alone all the wonderful local contacts we met. Everyone was so welcoming and enthusiastic about being where we were. I particularly enjoyed the farms and natural landscapes we got to live on. Whoever was hosting us made us feel like part of the community. My group OE leaders made me feel supported and heard, plus we had loads of fun with them. Greece, the island of Crete, felt like a dream. We stayed in a beautiful mountain village overlooking the sea. There is so much more I could say-If you’re not looking for a traditional school experience, this is for YOU.

Oh what a few months I had with Carpe Diem. I will start off by saying that I didn’t nessecarily have a bad experience, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. I attended the first run of this program and it was marketed as a climate change education program with lots of interaction with diverse community sustainability efforts. What it really was was an experience teetering between being left to your own devices in cities (which was super fun) and working on farms (which was mostly awful). There was very minimal actual education about climate change (especially from the Overseas Educators) and if you wanted to learn more about permaculture or regenerative agriculture you had to seek out info from the people working on the farms you helped with. The other students had varying levels of interest in climate change resiliency and the OEs had absolutely no qualifications to teach anything about it.

In terms of the people on the program, I absolutely loved my group. The other students were incredibly kind, driven, and entertaining and there was never a dull moment on the trip.

My biggest issue with the trip was the Overseas Educators (OEs). I knew I was in for a rollercoaster when the first day we got to the airport in Bologna, Italy, they said here’s €12 and a paper map of the city, get yourself taxis with no knowledge of the Italian language and no wifi to find any directions to the hostel while we sit and watch. From there, my expectations of them were pretty much met. If you ever thought you had no idea what was going on, don’t worry, they had even less of an idea. In my opinion, they were extremely hands off and did not support students at all. That was a personal opinion though because I know there were a few students on my trip who really liked them. It did suck that they had different relationships student to student and treated people based on how much they liked them. The good thing though is that if you go on this trip again, you will not have the same leaders I did. I personally believe that if I did this same program over again with different OEs I could have had the time of my life. I also talked to Carpe students from other programs who exclusively had great experiences with OEs so I think my trip could have been an outlier in terms of that.

One thing I do have to note though is how much of a mess transportation is on this program. You essentially spend one week in 10 different locations around Italy and Greece and take public transportation. The budget they have for this is limited and you often ended up stuck on a bus to bus to train to train to walk to bus each week which absolutely drained everyone and lasted between 6-17 hours to get from place to place. If I am being honest though, my tolerance of shitty transportation is the best thing I got out of this trip. Despite the fact that no one on the trip spoke the native language of any place we were or had any wifi to look up how to get somewhere, we managed to go train hopping and somehow end up in the right spot.

Another thing to note is how much your experience differed from place to place. We stayed in such a variety of places that it never got boring or repetitive because you could essentially be living in a Tuscan resort one week and then be sharing a 10 sq foot room with 12 people the next week. I loved the change of pace though and how the program bounced between rural and urban so that you got a reset every week.

In terms of personal development, I think a lot of gap year programs are targeted at self growth and self care. If that is what you are looking for, this is not the program for you. I think it was an overall very chaotic experience and extremely stressful at times. I loved the go-go-go atmosphere in terms of never getting bored, but it did not lend itself well to self care. I personally feel like I regressed in stress management and overall sanity but that’s also going to happen on any program where you live 24/7 with the same 11 people. Also do not expect to be able to skip activities due to mental health because they will guilt trip you into going and silently crying in the corner of the room.

I think overall you are going to get out of the program what you put into it. My best memories were all outside of scheduled Carpe time and it was great being in a foreign country with other kids my age. I think if you go on this program you should go in with an open mind, low expectations, and a willingness to be flexible. If you wait around for the OEs to tell you what to do and when, you are going to be waiting for a while. If you expect to learn about climate change from the scheduled activities, you are going to be let down. If you however, spend your free time getting to know others and saying yes to random adventures instead of napping in your room, you are going to grow a lot and have a really great time.

Overall pros: the food was spectacular, the local contacts were incredibly kind and welcoming, other students were amazing and really made the experience what it was, great GREAT intro to permaculture and agriculture, lots of free time and independence in cities, well structured and well run on the HQ side, phenomenal accommodations (like seriously exceeded all my expectations for hostels)

Cons: bad experience with the OEs, awful transportation days, OEs we’re weirdly strict about some things but not others, poor treatment and tolerance of student mental health, misadvertised (although they will probably fix this as it was the first run of the program and they didn’t know how exactly it was going to look)

This trip was special because of the culture opportunities. Traveling in Italy and Greece would have been so much different if I did not have the same local contacts and support that I did on this trip. This trip also gave me opportunity to find myself even more. So many people jump into the same four year, college path. This break in between high school and college gave me so much more insight into who I am. The trip taught me things, given me connections, and created great stories that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

This was such an amazing program it really helped me clear up some questions about my future while also getting to learn so much about climate change and sustainability in a fun way. Every farm and city we stayed at were so different and taught us so much while giving us super cool opportunities like making wine, harvesting olives, or learning how to build using only natural materials. Everyone we met was also amazing. Our group was able to make really deep connections with all the hosts and other volunteers we met which gave us an opportunity to have a deeper understanding for Italian and Greek culture by connecting with locals.