Alumni Interview with Meghan Ford 

What inspired you to travel abroad?

I have always been interested in spending time abroad and it continues to be important to me. I began studying Spanish in middle school and wanted to improve my language skills by putting them to the test.

Additionally, I was driven to step outside of my comfort zone and take on a new challenge of being away from home. I was very interested in living with a host family and creating connections with people from outside of the US. I felt that spending an extended period of time abroad would allow me to truly experience a different culture.

Why did you choose Amigos de las Americas?

I chose AMIGOS because of the trust my family and I had in the organization. AMIGOS has been around since 1965 so we had faith in their health and safety system. I also really liked that AMIGOS was not focused on the tourist side of travel but instead allows students to work alongside local youth on a service project.

I thought this was a great opportunity to match my interest in cultural immersion with my interest in service. Additionally, I was drawn to the local community I had access to via the local chapter pre-departure training as well as the cost and length of the program.

What was your favorite part about Panama?

My favorite part about Panama was how different the environment and weather was from where I am from! It was so hot and I had never experienced that before. They also grow a lot of foods there that aren't able to grow where I live so I got to experience trying new fruits and vegetables. 

My favorite thing about my host community was how welcoming everyone was and how everyone was related to everyone else in some fashion. This is also pretty abnormal in the U.S. so it was fascinating to learn more about what draws people in rural Panama to decide to live where they live and how that impacts how their communities function.

What made your experience abroad extraordinary?

What made my experience abroad extraordinary was definitely my host family. I had one host sister, a host brother, and host parents. They were so incredibly welcoming and accommodating to me.

Being away from home for the first time for that length of time was very scary for me at the time and they welcomed me with open arms and answered all my questions and helped me with my Spanish.

I felt like part of the family very quickly and that experience was invaluable to me. I keep in touch with them still. I also really enjoyed the other connections I made in the community.

How did the local program staff support you throughout your program?

AMIGOS has a great local staff support system. My project supervisor came to visit for 24 hours every week to do one on one check-ins and help my AMIGOS partner and me with the service project. She also checked in with our host families as well.

Additionally, the local staff team runs a 24/7 on-call system so we were able to access them whenever an issue came up and we needed assistance with dealing with the situation. This included reaching out when I needed to take a trip to the local clinic. That amount of support really made me feel empowered to take on the difficult situation I was in.

What's one thing you wish you would have done differently during your time abroad?

Being away from home for 8 weeks while in high school was a big challenge. I had never been away from home for that long before so while I really enjoyed my time away, I was pretty focused on going home and counting down the days until that happened. I even kept a calendar in my journal counting down how long I had left in Panama.

Now, looking back, I would have spent less time worrying about how much time I had left in my host community and try to focus more on the experiences that were occurring in front of me. This can be a hard thing to realize in the moment though!

Describe what a typical day in your life abroad looked like.

Part of the AMIGOS program structure is to run day camps for the local students, so each morning my AMIGOS partner and I would get up and go eat breakfast at the house that was on our rotating meal plan that day. Then we would prepare for the day camps, have lunch, and run the camps for 1-2 hours in the afternoon.

After that, we could do different activities with our host families or friends we made in the community, like going for a hike or watching a telenovela. Then we would eat dinner and return to one of our host family's houses to spend time together playing games before bed.

What did you enjoy doing in your free time abroad?

During my free time, I did lots of different things! We played baseball, soccer, learned to cook local dishes, wrote in our journals, went hiking, and chatted with our host families. Our community was the local hub for baseball games in the local league so we often watched those. 

We also went on some trips into town to go to the mall or shopping. Of course, we watched telenovelas and movies with our host families. One of our favorite things to do was to watch the local music video station and sing along to the songs with my host cousins.

What type of accommodation did you have? What did you like best about it?

I lived with a host family in their house. They lived on the main street of the community in a house typical for the area of the region. I shared a room with my host sister who was a few years older than me. I really valued the host family experience.

As I mentioned before, it was the best part of my experience as it allowed me to connect quickly and deeply with people from the local community. There isn’t an aspect of my accommodations that I would change or did not enjoy. AMIGOS does a fantastic job finding host families for their students and I really grew from this part of my experience.

What is one thing every future participant should know about your program before their program begins?

I think the one thing every future participant should know about AMIGOS is that it is going to be challenging but that is what makes it such a once in a lifetime opportunity. Since I did AMIGOS, I have done a great deal of traveling and participated in other study abroad programs and AMIGOS is the only program I have found that provides such deep immersion for their students. If you are looking to really experience and learn about another culture, AMIGOS is the program for you!

Would you recommend Amigos de las Americas to others? Why?

Yes, I would recommend AMIGOS to others. I believe the program provides the most authentic immersion for young people and also provides them the opportunity to develop leadership skills that they will use in their academics and jobs for years into their future.

I found that AMIGOS set me apart from my peers not only on future applications but also in my ability to face challenges with flexibility and a solution based focus. These types of skills can not be inherited or taught, they have to be learned and gained.

What do you feel the biggest benefit of traveling abroad is?

I feel that the biggest benefit of traveling abroad is that it grounds you. 

You realize that the way you do things in your house, community, or country is not the only way to approach life. You are exposed to different cultures and norms and ideas and this allows you to evaluate your role in the world in a more holistic way.

AMIGOS has played a huge role in shaping me into who I am today because of all I learned about myself and my role in the world from being so incredibly removed from my norm. There are very few experiences in life that can do this and I have found that traveling abroad for extended periods of time is one of them.

Now that you're home, how has your time abroad impacted your life?

Time abroad has shaped me into who I am today. My time with AMIGOS lead me to spending more extended time abroad in the future where I continued to grow from what I learned from my first AMIGOS experience.

I became better at Spanish and developed a deeper passion for the language. Also, I became interested in alternative education experiences and how they shape the leadership skills of young people, which lead me to seek out other organizations that work in that space both professionally and on a voluntary basis.

What does meaningful travel mean to you?

To me, meaningful travel is conscious travel. How does my being here help or harm the community? What am I learning from being here? A lot of people don't travel this way. They travel to escape.

Meaningful travel is to travel to learn and discover in a way that sustains and benefits the local community you are learning from and teaches you how to be a better citizen both globally and locally. 

Experiences like AMIGOS are meaningful travel and I continue to seek them out each time I travel.