Program Reviews

I have just returned from Carpe Diems India program and it was such a fulfilling experience. We traveled to so many places and in each place Carpe had set up wonderful programs to do and interesting people to meet. I felt very supported by the group and the overseas educators, and even when we faced challenges we were able to discuss and navigate them in a productive way. Also throughout the application process and then through the visa process the staff in Portland were very helpful and easy to reach.

My trip to India with Carpe Diem was easily one of the best decisions I have ever made. India is the most wonderful, confronting, crazy, fascinating and beautiful country I have ever been to, and I've been home for a week but I'm already missing it so much. I'm so glad I got to experience it with Carpe Diem. I don't believe I would have been able to have the same amazing opportunities and experiences if I was travelling on my own or with a tour group. For me it was a perfect balance between a community and independent experience, and I felt much more like a traveller than I did a tourist. I couldn't have asked for a better group or leaders and they truly became like family to me. I was able to grow and push myself so much as a person while feeling completely supported and safe, and the things i have learnt about myself and about the world I hope I never forget. Whether it was learning about Buddhism, Sikhism or Hinduism directly from people who practised them, trekking in the incredible Himalayas, dancing and having broken Hindi/English conversations with locals, volunteering, just exploring and so much more, every experience was impactful and rewarding in its own way. If you are thinking about applying, I honestly can't recommend it enough.

I had the best time of my life. I was challenged to get out of my comfort zone many times. We went trekking, canoeing, rafting, camping, snorkeling, and scuba diving. We also went on a two day safari! For our student directed travel we stayed four nights at the Uganda Wildlife Education Center. So if you love animals this is the trip for you!
We also participated in a few volunteer projects. We helped paint a kitchen and tutor students at the Mufindi Children's Village. In Uganda we volunteered at school called Special Needs Education Center (SNEC) and at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary.
We stayed with three homestays. We got to practice our Swahili skills with our homestay families and we learned more about the East African culture.

To be honest, I will never forget this amazing experience or the people.

-Nanci

My daughter went on the Carpe Diem Cuba trip in the Spring of 2017. It was clearly a wonderful experience for her. There were 10 students on the trip with two overseas educators. The educators were very supportive and struck a good balance betweeen giving the students independence, responsibility and structure. The range of experiences they had was amazing - trekking, Spanish classes, dancing and music lessons, caving, snorkeling, service learning on farms and in classrooms. They met a huge variety of interesting people, from the Cuban families who ran the "casas" they stayed in to students at the dance school they studied at to a Santeria priest who made a prediction about each of their futures. My daughter told me that the trip was as much about personal development as it was about traveling and experiencing another culture, and that the personal development was facilitated by both the educators and the other students on the trip. The students and educators became very close over the course of the three month trip. I was surprised by how little friction there seems to have been among them given how much time they spent together, often in close quarters, and I suspect the skill of the educators in building a positive group dynamic played a significant role. The staff at Carpe Diem are great and I never felt as if the group didn't have the support it needed, despite the fact that it is still not trivial to communicate and organize travel in Cuba.

My daughter says she is extremely glad she did the trip and that she would strongly recommend Carpe Diem - and the Cuba Chango trip in particular - to anyone even remotely considering doing a gap program. (She plans to write her own review as well.) From a parent's perspective, I would definitely second her strongly positive recommendation. This was clearly an important learning and growing experience for her and something she will be able to draw on for the rest of her life. You will get to follow your child's adventures on the Carpe Diem blog - and by occasional email or chat messages - but as there is limited wifi access your child will also be unplugged for three months, something that my daughter confessed was another good part of the experience.

Carpe Diem is a wonderful organization!

I had no idea what to expect from this program. I didn't have any specifics that I needed to get out of this trip, or was trying to answer any questions of myself that I wasn't capable of answering. I just wanted to do something totally new that other kids my age were missing out on. And what is more new and have more Americans missing out on it than Cuba? This program put me in a group of 13 other strangers and made me live and travel the beautiful island of Cuba, and with each new adventure and each new day I became closer and closer to my group members and within 3 weeks was certain that I was in for a heart retching goodbye after 3 months.
With 14 different people all in Cuba for different reasons, you will hear a lot of conflicting beliefs of what this program does for an individual. And all I can share with you is my view of what Carpe Diem has done for me. If you are interested in taking a gap year because you are nervous for college and have no idea what you want to do with your life, and you hope that this will answer all your doubtful questions of your life, it won't. This program didn't slap me in the face with an answer of what I need to go study in college, that's not what this program does and I feel like that is a commonly seen misconception. What this program does is give you all the answers to questions you don't even have yet. Carpe Diem doesn't help prepare you for college, it helps you prepare for life. And I challenge all of you to question what is more important to you.
Carpe Diem has made me a more capable human being that is cultured and caring and now struggles with being in the same place for extended periods of time because all I want to do is travel. My best advise is that if you do not know what you want to do at this stage in your life, pick Carpe Diem and answer all of the questions that you never knew you had.

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.

My trip to Centroamérica gave me a new perspective. I picked this program because of the different options and diversity that it offers. Carpe Diem Education encourages students to travel consciously, we not only learn explore as a traveler (not a tourist), but we also learn about ourselves and how we fit in a group dynamic. Through my exploration in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, I had the opportunity to learn Spanish, engage in outdoor adventures, and participated in service learning. I gained a new perspective through community developing and service-learning projects. One of my biggest take away from my trip was that there is no rush. It is okay that I did not know what I want to do with my life, as long as I keep exploring my options, I will find a purpose. In my trip, I found my passion in helping others through interactions with host families, partner organizations, and my group members. I learned the styles of how I communicate and how others perceive me, along with the mindfulness of other cultures and diversity around me.

My name is Nicholas Hughes and I recently returned from Central America's Nicaragua.
Carpe Diem is a great way to start traveling the world! They provide safe housing and there is always something to laugh about at the end of the day!
Carpe Diem also provides their students to have an experience unlike any other study abroad program.
For me the most experiential place we went to was a permaculture farm that kept us for 10 days.
I had the chance to live with the land and interact with local Nicaraguans. I actually learned that I this program helped me figure out that I want to take native knowledge from other parts of the world and apply their practices to the developed world!
Also its affordable for what you might find in another program.

As my group and I toured the grounds of the site where the Buddha attained enlightenment, I wandered off in search of something stimulating. Before I could get very far, a man grabbed me by the hand and started to pull me with him. In America, if a random man started pulling me with him, I'd probably freak out. But India is different. I had no concern for this man, but rather enjoyed his bold confrontation. He spoke no words to me as he led me to a bench and sat down. He gestured that I sit next to him. I did, and it became clear that he spoke no English and I spoke no Hindi. He calmly opened his book, started to read, and placed a croissant on my lap. I ate the croissant and sat next to him in silence. We sat there for maybe 20 minutes, saying and doing nothing. Every once in a while he would look at me a grin a toothless smile. I was having a blast. There was a mutual understanding between me and this man that could be felt and experienced without words. If you've ever read the alchemist, this is what I believe to be the language of the world. It's a feeling, an emotion, and an understanding in your soul. I have continued to carry on conversations in this language in my travels across India, to Tanzania, Europe, and even in the United States.
My gap year experience with Carpe Diem has solidified loose ends in my life. I am becoming the person I want to be from this experience. If you're looking for a sign to tell you to take a gap year then these words are for you; do it.

I knew Carpe Diem was the perfect fit for me when I read how valuable education, new experiences, and community was to each of their programs. Carpe accepts students who can take optional online college credits, and expands the minds of each student in a way I didn't think was possible. Starting in Portland, Carpe gives a crash course on traveling to that semester's student community, before the leave with their leaders into parts unknown. Traveling with the leaders is entirely safe, because they already have a plethora of countries under their belt, but they also won't coddle you when traveling, which proved to encourage the most growth in my case. Traveling through the South Pacific, I learned more about myself in those three months than I had in almost all of high school. I made lifelong friends within my group, and got cultural experiences I never would have set up on my own. We learned the values of hard work and volunteering, of team building and how to maneuver around a place where you can't speak the language. Living in foreign countries prepared me to live on my own here in America, it made me feel like I could do anything. Next, I traveled alone to Thailand after coming home for Christmas. If you're in the Latitudes Program, you get to choose what country and which organization you want to volunteer for. The process was very easy, my councilor Simone, was a magic maker when it came to checking off every wish I had to experience Thailand. It was scary at first, traveling alone to a country like I did, having to make your own way. But now I am fiercely independent: I can mange money, find a place to stay, good food to eat, all the while never speaking a word of Thai other than thanks and hello (still hard to say though). If I could do it all again, I would. The seven months I spent traveling were the best months of my life. I learned to most, felt the most, and lived the most in those days, and I hold those invaluable memories close to me everyday.