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By Tyler Conway, Staff Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cHow was your summer?\u201d Followed by \u201cwhat did you do?\u201d are the most popular questions shared among students as they return back to school. Some students use their summer break to get a job, visit potential colleges, or even just spend time with friends and family. However, some students decided to hop on a plane and travel abroad independently. Seniors Maria Hartung, Robert Dass, and Ben Peters dove head first into new cultures, countries, and languages that will impact them forever.<\/p>\n Hartung, 17, spent 2 \u00bd weeks of her summer traveling with National Geographic Student Expedition to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands from July 19th<\/sup> to August 5th<\/sup>. She was among one of the 14 students that received the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel the country as a native.<\/p>\n There was no shortage of adventurous activities to participate in while she was abroad. Maria had the chance to climb the Cotopaxi volcano, which is ranked the 26th<\/sup> most active volcano in the world. The group then traveled to Mindo, a rainforest, where she went hiking and zip lining.<\/p>\n \u201cThe view was breathtaking from the air. That\u2019s when the realization that I was actually in Ecuador came about,\u201d says Maria. One of her favorite parts of the trip was when she had the opportunity to swim with sea lions and snorkel with tortoises while in the Galapagos Islands. It wouldn\u2019t be an authentic experience if food were overlooked, so Maria tried something she would have never expected: a Guinea pig. Maria is grateful for the experience she had on her trip and is planning on traveling to Paris during the summer of 2015.<\/p>\n Peters and Dass, who are very good friends, boarded a 17-hour flight to Africa on July 1st<\/sup> in the hopes to serve those less fortunate, go on a safari, and get an inside look into Ben\u2019s dad\u2019s profession. Ben\u2019s father is a doctor that does medical service work in foreign countries, especially in Africa.<\/p>\n Their trip began in Kampala, Uganda, where they began their service at the Naguru Remand Center. The center is a location for children that have been sentenced for breaking laws or do not have a home. Some kids were falsely accused and only put in the remand center because of the corrupt government. While they were there, they got to really bond with the kids by just talking and playing soccer with them. Ben and Robert also helped to plant a new garden and harvest food from existing gardens for their meals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very unreal because there were no other Americans so Ben and I had to figure out how to get around Kampala by ourselves\u201d says Robert. \u201cIt was as if we were just dropped there out of no where.\u201d Next, they flew to Nairobi for a trip that was purely fun. They took on three different safaris, took tons of photos, and experienced the nuances of African life.<\/p>\n Trips like these offer students the opportunities to become global citizens, expand their world-view, and have an epic adventure. The experiences Maria, Ben, and Robert had during their summer are sure to impact them for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Tyler Conway, Staff Writer \u201cHow was your summer?\u201d Followed by \u201cwhat did you do?\u201d are the most popular questions shared among students as they return back to school. Some students use their summer break to get a job, visit potential colleges, or even just spend time with friends and family. However, some students decided…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[45,47,43,44,46],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-did","tag-do","tag-summer","tag-what","tag-you"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/get-attachment.aspx_.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}