16-year-old me stunting outside the Finnish Embassy in DC. The program included an orientation in DC where we toured the Capital and got to meet the Finnish Ambassador!

Cultural exchange programs – When I was in high school, I spent a summer living abroad (2011) with a Finnish host family through the Senate-US Youth Exchange program via Youth for Understanding (YFU). YFU is an organization that focuses on getting high school students to spend a school year or summer abroad. It offers a few scholarships, such as FSUYE. I was 1 of 14 students awarded the scholarship, which required a $500 co-pay and covered everything, including flights (although now the scholarship requires you to pay $3,000). For more information about my time in Finland, I kept (or at least attempted to keep) a blog about my summer abroad. This was couple years ago, so the amount of scholarships available has probably went down. My sister applied for a scholarship to go to Japan through YFU – decisions come out later in March so fingers crossed!! With or without scholarships, programs like these are great to get your foot in the door to traveling.  ***Keys to success: research! programs like these are competitive, so it’s vital to put together the best possible application***

College

Ushuaia – The southernmost town in South America. I visited Ushuaia when I was traveling around Patagonia (the south of Argentina) for a week!

Study Abroad – During the spring semester of my Sophomore year at FIU (2015), I studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was fortunate enough to have my FIU scholarship cover my tuition at the Universidad de Belgrano, so I only had to pay for my housing, travel, and other personal spendings. Although it is important to know that you will have to pay the same tuition abroad as you do at home, regardless of the actual tuition of the foreign school: good if you go to a public university, bad if you go to an expensive private school. Within FIU, I applied for additional scholarships and earned a $500 scholarship from the Latin American and Caribbean Center. Although $500 may not be much, it’s better than nothing – for me, it was one month’s worth of rent! Also, in Buenos Aires I taught conversational English for a little extra cash and because of my job, I was able to travel around South America! ***Keys to success: start planning to study abroad plans early, apply for internal and external scholarships, teach English to get extra $$$***

Teaching abroad – Now that I am graduating FIU, I’ve been looking into programs to teach English abroad and give myself a gap year before continuing my education. Personally, I am applying to the Language and Culture Assistant program in Spain. However there are a few other programs to teach in Chile, China, South Korea, France, and Colombia! Some programs offer a decent monthly salary but it’s always better to teach English on the side for additional cash. Programs in China and Japan require a teaching certificate, but they also pay a lot more than the other programs, so it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of different programs. Also, all the programs I’ve mentioned are government-sponsored, but there are maaany programs that will place you in countries for a [sometimes hefty] fee. ***Keys to success: do your research, see what program works best for you***