While some students use their breaks from school to sleep the day away and catch up with the Kardashians, this spring others are choosing to travel to a foreign country to learn about its culture, polish their Spanish skills and giveback to the community that’s hosting them. Niles North Spanish teacher Susan Ranft is taking a dozen of these adventurous students to Guatemala during spring break. The group leaves for Guatemala the first Saturday of break and will return on the following Sunday, the day before school starts.

While in Guatemala, the students will get to experience the Guatemalan lifestyle first-hand as they “will be staying with Guatemalan families in [the city of] Antigua for most of the time that we’re there,” Ranft said. Because many of the families that are hosting the students speak little to no English, students going on the trip “must be in at least second-year Spanish in order to communicate with their host families,” she said. While in Antigua, the group will explore the city by visiting the market, a volcano and a coffee plantation.

There’s still time for fun scheduled into the trip– students will go on a zip-line adventure and spend a day at the beach in Monterrico. The group will also get to learn about the ancient civilization of the Mayans as they’re going to fly to Tikal National Park and visit the ruins there which, in their time, were the capital of a conquest state that became one of the most powerful of its time. At some point during the trip, the group plans to work with young children in either a school or an orphanage. Ranft said that the group is bringing school supplies to be donated and that the Spanish National Honor Society is doing a project to create bilingual books to give to the children as well. Students are spending their final night in Guatemala City prior to returning home.

“I’ve always wanted to go to a Spanish-speaking country, so when the opportunity came up I couldn’t turn it down,” senior Linda Jung, one of the students going on the trip, said. “This is my first time traveling without my family to another country and the experience of being with other people my age and learning about a new culture is exciting.”

Despite her great enthusiasm, Jung does admit that she has some nerves about the trip. “I’m very nervous to stay with a host family, partially because I don’t know what to expect,” Jung said. “I’m also nervous about speaking Spanish. I know that in Spanish class, our teachers always tell us to speak in Spanish, and even if we don’t, we know they understand us. But being in Guatemala, we can’t guarantee that they’ll know what we’re talking about if we accidentally speak in English.” Jung’s hope for the trip is that the great amount of practice that she’ll get while in Guatemala will help her improve her Spanish-speaking skills.