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Links: Home and Hospitality Exchanges; Volunteer and Educational Programs Abroad
The goal of each civilization, all religious thought, all that sort of thing, is simply to have a good time. But man gets so solemn over the process that he forgets the end.
Don Marquis
Home and Hospitality Exchanges
General
Home Exchanges
- About.com features good advice on home exchanges
- Budget Travel.com presents informal home exchange/vacation rental listings
- Home Link (a home exchange listing service) presents a comparison (biased) of the different costs and advantages of several major home exchange programs.
- Global Home Exchange (a home exchange listing service) provides a good, basic information on home exchanges offered by home exchange services (see visitor?s section of the website).
- Home Base Holidays (another home exchange listing service) has an excellent newsletter that addresses many common questions/concerns for home exchangers and profiles real home exchangers.
- Transitions Abroad lists home exchange companies and features an articles with useful tips about home exchanges.
- Go Nomad presents a simple, useful introduction to home exchange issues.
- Tripod has the most complete list of home exchange programs. The list is however a bit hard to read. The author mixes hospitality and home exchanges.
Hospitality Exchanges
- SERVAS is the granddaddy of all hospitality exchange organizations. They have, by far, the largest listing of hosts throughout the world. They have a particularly impressive list of hosts in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. SERVAS also has membership meetings for hosts worldwide.
- About.com has a short article about hospitality exchange programs in Japan
- Hospitality club is non-profit, free hospitality exchange organization.
- Travel Hoo is another informal, free hospitality exchange club.
- One World, one family provides a gay/lesbian home and hospitality exchange club.
- The Open Directory Project links to all hospitality clubs with short description.
- MSNBC has prepared a short summary of hospitality exchange programs.
- Click here for a thorough, basic guide to hospitality exchanges (repeated several places on web).
- Globalfreeloaders.com provides a well organized, free hospitality listing service. The site also features a short discussion of one hospitality club participant?s experience.
- Transitions Abroad provides a good guide for what to expect if you?re staying in someone?s home in a third world for a longer period of time.
- Amerispan features a thorough article about staying in Latin American homes.
- Another article about staying in Latin American homes.
- USA Today presents a good discussion of hospitality exchanges in general with a table summarizing the different hospitality exchange program options.
Homestays
Most volunteer and learning opportunities listed on this page also include homestays. You can also find homestay opportunities in most guidebooks. In my experience Rick Steves and Let?s Go guidebooks feature particularly good listing for homestays.
- Transitions Abroad provides a small listing of homestay opportunities.
- American International Homestays arranges homestays with families who also provide guide tours, in China and the former Soviet Union for around $100 a day. They will also assist you in getting visa support for Russia.
- Earthfoot lists organizations that provide eco-tours with homestay components (one particularly intriguing option includes living with Indigenous people in Guyana) around the world.
- Himalayan Homestaysprovides homestay and tours in the Ladakh region of India.
- Profile of Dreamcatchers, a travel company in South Africa that specializes in arranging tours that immerse people into South African culture, including homestays.
- Go Without Borders provides travel opportunities that combine homestays with classes in cooking and festivals in Thailand.
- Homestay in Korea
Meet the People Experiences
Goodwill Guides: Provide tours and hospitality for a day in:
Clubs and Professional Exchange Programs
Learning Vacations
Study Abroad and Exchange Student Programs
Educational Travel Experiences
- Shaw Guides presents an excellent listing of learning vacations throughout the world. Each listing has some good background information to help you choose the right experience for you. These summaries seems to be written by firms providing the courses.
- Travel Learn has a lot of intriguing educational tours.
- About.com contains some interesting learning vacations options in the USA and a couple decent articles about learning vacation experience (the pop-up ads are annoying, however).
- Travel Dish has a good list of different types of learning adventures. It features some intriguing, little known options like a kickboxing school in Thailand.
Studying a Language Abroad
- Language School Guides (part of a network of guides to learning and volunteer experiences worldwide) presents the most complete listing of language courses anywhere. Language School Guides is the only place to find information about schools with less popular languages like Georgian and Amharic.
- Spanish4Students offers discounts for a comprehensive list of Spanish schools. The site contains an informative listing of programs (there isn?t any easy access to links to member schools? website). It also has a forum to discuss quality of schools, which, unfortunately, does not have many listings.
- Latin America links has another good list of Spanish schools. There is not much supporting information, however, you can access links to the member schools? websites easily.
- Planeta.com contains another list of Spanish schools. Planeta has a particularly strong emphasis on schools in Mexico. The site doesn't have a lot of information: just address and contact info ? however, it is easy access to member websites for more information.
- Travel Quest feature a small list of language classes around the world.
- Language Studies Abroad is an agency which serves as a clearinghouse for classes in many languages.
- Europe for Visitors features a good basic discussion of what to expect at a language school abroad and what language school agencies do. Though, the site is written for studying in Europe, it contains useful advice for everywhere.
- List of Spanish classes in Ecuador.
- Language school and homestay programs in Europe.
- Study Russian in Russia.
Cooking Schools
- Shaw Guides provides a thorough listing of cooking schools.
- Here is a list of cooking classes and tours in Italy
Sports and New Age Classes
- Adventure Sports Holidays lists sports classes throughout the world. Most of their listing are for hard-core sports (like kitesurfing and hang gliding). However, the list does have some more traditional sports like surfing and skiing. This is comprehensive though the listings can be a bit hard to follow at times.
- Dance with Me lists of Latin dance classes in Western countries.
- Om Place has a comprehensive (even somewhat daunting) list of new age classes/experiences in the USA.
- Yoga Everywhere lists hundreds of yoga classes around the world.
Specific Education Programs:
The following list are some learning vacations/study abroad experiences that either: 1) I may cover in the Big Blue Marble newsletter or 2) sounded particularly interesting to me.
- Language Adventures features a combination language school and eco-tourism tour in Mexico and Guatemala.
- Eco-Maya provides a combination of Spanish language schools and environmental education/volunteer opportunities in Guatemala. It also offers a chance to live a small, Indian town. The profits go back to the community.
- CETALIC offers classes in Spanish along with courses in Gay and Lesbian issues in Mexico and social justice issues at their center in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
- Cornerstone Foundation teaches courses in herbal medicine in Belize.
- School of the World offers Surfing, Digital Photography, Ecology, and Spanish classes in Costa Rica.
- Centro Maya gives classes in Quiche in Guatemala (Maya) and weaving classes. It also has some intriguing volunteer opportunities.
- Classes in Afro Brazilian culture and Portuguese.
- More classes in Afro-Brazilian culture in Salvador Brazil.
- Classes in Quiche the language of the native population of Peru (website is in Spanish).
- Spanish in Peru offers the opportunity to learn Spanish in the Manu Jungle Reserve in Peru.
- Crow Canyon gives archaeology classes in Colorado and archaeology tours worldwide.
- The Chautauqua Institute has been providing classes, seminars, lectures, presentations by famous entertainers. and workshops in upstate New York for over 100 years.
- Yemen Language Center provides classes in Arabic and Arabic culture in one of the world's most offbeat and intriguing destinations -- Yemen.
- Ashrams in India offers a list of religious study institutions throughout India.
- Martial arts and Chinese language classes in China.
- Japanese language classes in Japan.
- A list of places in Thailand to study Thai Massage.
- Study yoga in Mexico
- Learn Shao Lin (Martial Arts) training in China.
- Incas del Peru provides one-on-one instructions with Peruvian artists involved in dancing, weaving, gourd carving, pan flute making, jewelry making, and spinning (in addition to Quechua and Spanish language classes).
Volunteer Experiences
Read English language newspapers in your destination for information about organizations that need volunteers.
Great listings of volunteer opportunities
Volunteer work camp listing
Clearinghouse for volunteer opportunities
Good basic information on volunteering abroad
Advice and listings for medical volunteers
Other great volunteer websites
- Passport in Time. US Forest Service sponsored archaeological volunteer opportunities in the US.
- Archaeo link is a comprehensive list of archaeological volunteer opportunities.
- Charity Guide provides an excellent guide to luxury volunteer vacations.
- World Volunteer Web contains a good selection of topics of interest for volunteers around the world (strong US emphasis).
Learning and Volunteer Experiences
These agencies provide help arranging/listing for both learning and volunteer experiences abroad.
These organizations provide extensive lists and advice to help you plan a learning and volunteer experience abroad.
- One Small Planet gives useful advice on work, study, volunteer and travel abroad.
- Let?s Go provides a comprehensive list of classes and volunteer opportunities worldwide.
Notes
- I, (Paul Heller, founder of Big Blue Marble) have prepared these reviews after scouring the internet and book stores to select the best resources to help you travel-like-a-local more inexpensively, safely, joyfully, comfortably, and purposefully.
- Check out my reviews of books about volunteer and learning vacations, home and hospitality exchanges, and other exciting travel like a local opportunities.
- Do you agree or disagree with my comments about the books listed on this site? Know of any books that should be added? If so, please send me your comments. I promise to post your comments on the Big Blue Marble blog.
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