Depending on where you travel with Rustic Pathways, you may be required to get a visa ahead of time. If you haven’t done that, the time to start is NOW! For students leaving from the USA ONLY Contact G3 Visas and Passports, our partner who can help you through the process of getting your visa. Or visit…
Added together, Rustic staff members have visited thousands of countries and spent years traveling and living abroad. I asked these travel aficionados and packing ninjas to share their secrets. Keep reading for some of the most ingenious travel and packing hacks you’ll ever hear! (Pssst Make packing for your trip e-a-s-y with our exclusive, branded…
Each year we create a special pre-departure package for students who are traveling with us! Continue reading to find out what’s inside (and more behind why we designed and included each piece). Rustic Travel Log – NEW for 2017! A mini journal for you to record your Rustic experiences. This is the first year we’ve…
Brielle Friedman is Rustic’s Marketing Director. She’s also an internationally-ranked professional salsa dancer. And she’s managed to do that while figuring out how to balance her full-time job with her passion for dance, while still having time for a personal life. So we wanted to share Brielle’s secret. Name: Brielle Friedman Age: 26 Current job:…
In the last three years, I've lived in a sorority house in Indiana, a rented room on Northwestern University’s campus, a dream of a first apartment in Chicago, and countless hotel rooms and Airbnbs. Needless to say, I’ve packed and unpacked more times than I can count, and I’ve gotten better at the art of…
Two weeks ago, I thought I lost one of the most important things to me when my backpack was stolen—my journal. For the past four years, I’ve written a sentence or two a day, filling the pages with adventures shared with friends, so many Rustic moments, and the little things that bring me joy every…
You visited country X. You were impacted by global issue Y. And you returned home with fire in your gut determined to tackle that issue. Then...life got in the way. More often than not life DOES get in the way, but it didn't get in the way for a group of Rustic gals who traveled…
It’s OK if there’s something you don’t know as you prepare for your Rustic Pathways trip, or even if you’re nervous about traveling abroad. Everyone is thinking about something, and probably the same things you are. We asked members of the Rustic Squad, a group of dedicated Rustic alums, what they wished they had known before…
The Rustic Pathways Foundation is excited to announce our first-ever Alumni Advisory Board. This is an exciting new initiative aimed at engaging our most active alumni, providing exciting skill-building opportunities, and helping to push the Foundation toward our highest-impact year. The Alumni Advisory Board is comprised of six inspiring Rustic Pathways students who were among the top fundraisers for…
The following post was written by Victoria Shanghai Academy Deputy Principal Les Millard, who has partnered with Rustic Pathways for four years to provide his students with transformative travel experiences. Les plans all the CAS Week trips and other experiential learning opportunities for students at the school in Hong Kong. Victoria Shanghai Academy sends about…
Did you know we spend about nine hours a day consuming some type of media on our phones? That number startled me until realizing I read this statistic on one of the eight tabs open on my Macbook while snapping on one of my iPhones and scrolling through Instagram on the other. Whether I’m texting…
Trekking through the Himalayas is likely the last thing on your mind when you’re trying to find time to grade an Everest-sized stack of papers and still get enough sleep to keep a classroom full of teenagers engaged the next day. What these two distant realities have in common—aside from the mountains—is that they can…
One of the most amazing things about travel is who you meet and the connections you make along the way. You learn that all people are basically the same. We have the same hopes and dreams, the same concerns and fears. It doesn't take long to realize that we're all connected by a shared humanity.…
Gaining a global perspective should be something you do when you're 18, not 67. Seriously. Think about it. Why wait until you're retired to explore the world? If you travel after graduating from high school, you'll not only be able to apply what you experience to the rest of your life, it will shape who…
The Rustic Pathways staff who operate our programs in more than 20 countries where students travel have a ridiculous amount of travel knowledge. Many have worked in multiple countries so we thought who better than them to ask about what programs to recommend? If you're still trying to decide between summer travel experiences, check out the…
We couldn't be more excited about our partnership with Thrival World Academies. Together we're creating the largest network of publicly-funded travel abroad high schools in the country. The first class left Oakland for Thailand in January, where students are spending three months immersing themselves in the local culture as part of their state of California curriculum. Thrival Executive…
With the latest news this week in Washington, we want to reassure families that Rustic Pathways programs are open to all students — including those who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming. As an organization, we have been committed to these principles of inclusivity for decades. In 2014, we established a formal policy that outlines…
Ten years after traveling with Rustic Pathways, we caught up with Rustic alum Heather Lyon to find out how traveling as a teenager forever changed the trajectory of her life. In 2006, Heather traveled to India and participated in two programs with Rustic Pathways. She enrolled in two more programs the next summer in Peru, including Sacred Valley…
Feb. 20 was the one-year anniversary of Cyclone Winston, the strongest storm ever recorded in the southern hemisphere. The storm left a trail of devastation across many of Fiji's 332 islands, killing 44 people and impacting 350,000 others. The total estimated damage reached $1.4 billion. We wanted to take a look back and share with…
Last year, Rustic Pathways students completed 1,351 service hours with Baltimore City Community College's Refugee Youth Project. Those students served 100 refugee youth, one-third of the 4 to 21 year-olds the Refugee Youth Project supports each year. We're proud of that, but we need your help to continue our work with the Refugee Youth Project…