Program Reviews

While volunteering at Steve Irwin’s famous Australia Zoo as well as small wildlife rehabilitation and conservation centers, I had the opportunity to engage directly with wildlife. Whether I was cuddling echidnas or feeding joeys from the palm of my hand, I felt so connected to the animals. I was so grateful to feel so trusted by the members of the staff, to have such independence, and to feel empowered to take risks. While at the Zoo, some visitors who had seen me working on habitat construction or cleaning would approach me with questions about the wildlife, and having the opportunity to spread awareness and share your knowledge is so meaningful. I am so appreciative to Rustic for giving me this experience in high school. I also had the privilege of being with a group of students who have become lifelong friends. We share such meaningful memories and we are always in touch. Every year, we travel on a new Rustic trip together, exploring new horizons.

What was the most fun on this trip? Perhaps it was running around the community late at night, playing Cops and Robbers with the local kids. Or, falling in the river one afternoon and laughing so much that it made swimming difficult. It could very well have been frolicking at the beach. One of the highlights was our third to last night. We were camping in the mountains, and it began to pour. So we rushed into our tents, mine stuffed with 6 people, and waited for it to end. Only, it didn't. So after half an hour, my friends and I recklessly left our tent to dance in the rain. It was freezing, and maybe a little foolish, but it was tremendous fun.
And what was the most impactful part of the trip? Maybe the long, informative bus ride through Santo Domingo and into the mountains. We experienced a completely different setting, climate, and culture. And the most unexpected impact was the bond our group built over those 9 short days. I cried the night before we left, and again at the airport when we all had to part.
But the definitive answer to both of these questions is service. It was during our service that we interacted with the community, learned about their lives and culture, and got to eat Dominican food!! Service is physically demanding, but insanely fun and a wondrous opportunity to learn.

When I left for my service trip in late July 2019 and I had no idea what to expect. I had never travel out of the country before let alone by myself! However, as soon as I arrived at the airport I immediately felt the sense of organization and control Rustic has over the situation. During my two week stay I never once felt unsafe. The program leaders were the only negative part of my journey as it was their last trip of the season and they were all a bit worn out. Not to mention our group was a little over enthusiastic at times. The service project it self was life changing! The children are nothing but amazing and kind and working with them was an absolute pleasure! The culture in Costa Rica is worth the trip itself! All of the people were so welcoming and excited to talk to us. The food was the best part!

My trip with Rustic to Cambodia was one that I will never forget. It was full of adventure, fun, and learning, not only about this amazing country, but of myself as well. The program was a perfect mix between tourism and service work. We spent one week in the Floating village where we built a house for a woman in need. This experience I am truly grateful for, because it was one of the most memorable! We stayed in a home-stay with a wonderful family who was so generous to us. The rest of the time in the country we spent learning about their history, from the founding to the Khmer Rouge, and exploring all the sites. We rode a bamboo train in the countryside while watching the rice fields zoom by, climbed to the top of a temple on a mountain, and explored the famous Angkor Wat temples at sunrise. I highly suggest this program because there is so much variety in it. I truly feel like I did and saw so many things in Cambodia, from the busy city to the countryside to the city of temples and the floating village. I will never forget the impact this trip had on my outlook and life. Thank you so much Rustic Pathways!

At 16 years old I wanted to travel, have an impact and experience the culture of other places. I was afraid of leaving the country for the first time by myself and not being safe. I found the rustic programs and was extremely excited to begin my rustic journey. Arriving at the airport I was scared about meeting people. Ten minutes after arriving all my fears disappeared. I met so many amazing people from all around the county and we instantly bounded. As we arrived in Thailand we were all amazed by the beautiful country. During the entire trip we were overwhelmed by the kindness that rustic staff and locals welcomed us with. It was also incredible to do service work in anitehr county. Volunteering within the states is very different. I felt like I was making more of an impact. Rustic pathways fouces on service projects that have lasting effects. Even after leaving the trip I know that the work I did will positively impact the community for years. Rustic pathways is an amazing way for kids to travel and learn. I would recommend rustic programs to everyone.

I have recently returned home from spending a month in China (I did two Rustic programs back-to-back), and I can safely say that it was the best experience of my life! For the first two weeks, I was on the Silk Road Service program, and I cannot recommend it enough, especially for those who love adventure, or want to get out of their comfort zones! We spent those two weeks traveling around the Yunnan province, learning about China's diverse cultures, and getting to experience a lot of them! From hiking up to Mapingguan (a very remote city) with my group to all of us hanging out on rooftops wherever the trip took us for that night, I will never forget the memories I made on this trip or the people on it! People I met at the airport only two weeks before soon became family, and I now have an incredible amount of love for Yunnan, and all of the people who got to see it with me! After a tear-filled goodbye at the airport, I knew that I had one day of rest, and after that was a completely new adventure. This second adventure was the Panda Conservation and Wild China trip, a completely different look at the country that I had now begun to call home. The panda trip is another that I can't recommend enough, although for other reasons. While there is still some adventure, this trip is a lot more laid back than the Silk Road one. We usually stayed in one place for a while and were not on the move as much as we were on the first trip. This was nice in some aspects, but we got to see a lot less of the Sichuan province than I had hoped. With that being said, the highlight of that trip was obviously the pandas, but also we took a bus ride to stay in a Tibetan Sichuanese village. The immersion of Tibetan culture for those few days made the bus ride 100% worth it! Since I have prior knowledge of the Chinese language, I found myself communicating with the locals, and understanding more about their culture. All in all, I can say without a single doubt, that both of these trips are incredible, and provided me with the best month of my life!

It was my first time traveling abroad completely on my own. At the time I was a foreign freshman in an American high school, and this trip to Fiji somehow felt more challenging prior to departure because I had to plan the whole trip and convince my parents without being completely sure about how this trip could go. Over the two weeks in Fiji, I had some of the best time in my life. For the first time, I was able to meet people outside of the state my high school was in that year(exciting! lmao). There were just so many cool things. As a boy, I was able to do all the adventurous stuff I wanted: I jumped over huge sand dunes, climbed up many many hilly mountains(challenge accepted!), and went scuba diving. I came to develop really long-lasting friendships over these times spent on the beach, community home, and service center. These memories still make me very happy, so just try and go enjoy it.

I attended the college summer travel program there. I personally have an Australian Passport, but so far before the trip, what I had known of Australia remained in Sydney. I stay in a lot of places with my family all around the world and therefore don't get to be in Australia much. The trip got me to see Australia as a whole, from the East Coast to the Outback to the North and to the South, from the city to desert to rain forest to ocean. Everyone is going to have their own unique experience. For me, it opened me up to walk out of the past and into the future. I signed up for the trip to move on and to reaffirm myself of what I want to become, and the trip helped me to do exactly just that. I still wear the Rustic Pathway bond wristlet to remind myself of the trip and what I learned from it.

I went on a program last year in the Dominican Republic and I had so much fun so I decided I wanted to do another trip this year. I was hesitant about if this program would match up to how good my trip was last year, but it was honestly one of the greatest weeks of my life! The program is heavily structured so that we spend a lot of time working at different service sites helping with different projects and interacting with locals, but we also have days where we got to do adventure activities such as ziplining and white water rafting. One of the greatest things about Rustic, but this program specifically, is the sense of community that is created between everybody in the group which makes it so fun to be together and make new memories. It's weird to think that creating such strong bonds with strangers in such a short amount of time would be possible but Rustic is such an awesome organization and they have the best program leaders (PL's) who know exactly how to make everybody feel comfortable and have a good time. One of my favorite things about my program this year was when we were teaching one of the PL's slang words that we use like "flexing" and "salty" because he wanted to be able to use them and impress all of us!

This was a very unique Rustic Pathways program because it truly taught you team building because we got to create the camp from scratch and then we got to run it independently so the group of students got super close from working together. It was amazing to learn about another culture in this way because the children would tell us about their lives and Costa Rican culture well we were telling them about life in the United States. In addition, the work was super rewarding because the kids were so happy when they were at the camp. It was an amazing two weeks from white water rafting the first few days and ending the trip with a relaxing beach day. This was an amazing two weeks that was the start of my love of these service trips and have inspired me to do more in the future.