ARCC Gap has been offering programs for young adults since 1983. ARCC Gap Semester programs are an opportunity to live and learn in some of the greatest classrooms on earth. Our Semester programs take students on a journey of discovery of local peoples, places, cultures and ideas.

Program Locations: International — Africa, Asia, Latin America, and India

Phone: 415-332-5075

Email: gap@adventurescrosscountry.com

Thinking Beyond Borders

Thinking Beyond Borders’ gap year programs are specifically designed for students who like learning and are eager to create meaningful social change in the world. We combine working with inspiring local leaders, and engage readings and discussions to create an exciting, supportive, and transformational learning environment.

TBB’s full-year and semester options include a 7-country Global Gap Year.

Program Location(s): International — Global, South America, Asia

Phone: 203-993-0236

Camps International

Our inspirational AGA programs give you the chance to live with the communities you will be supporting and work with locals on service projects that make a significant and lasting difference to people’s lives. You can also contribute to protecting the environment and endangered wildlife.

Program Locations: Kenya, Borneo, Cambodia, Ecuador, Peru and our newest locations Costa Rica, Nicaragua

Phone: 44 1425 485 390

Email: rcig@campsintemational.co.uk

Raleigh International

For more than 30 years Raleigh International has been running life-changing Expeditions to some of the most remote places on the planet.

A Raleigh Expedition is overseas volunteering. Our 5, 7 or 10-week Expeditions provide exposure to different people, new cultures, situations, and environments. This is your chance to create a real change in the communities that need it most, and to develop a range of skills for yourself.

Program Locations: Africa, Asia and India

Phone: 00 44 (0)207 183 1270

Sometimes we experience pain that seems just too big to feel, too frightening to face - it looks like a tsunami. So, we run. My tsunami came when I was nine years old.

I was woken up by my mother’s screams - “Bob? Bob?! BOB!” I ran to my parents’ bedroom. My father was on all fours, unconscious. My mother was crazy - desperately trying to figure out how to stop what was happening. I ran to the phone - 9-1-1, the neighbors, anyone - “help us!” Soon rescue came, but my father didn’t come back to life.

When my friends came to comfort me, I remember “pulling myself together” as I walked toward them, determining to show them that I was fine.

The more I denied my pain, the more I was praised by the adults around me-”Oh, look how strong she is!” So, I kept saying “I’m fine.” Over and over and over. I said it enough - performed it enough - that I even fooled myself. I believed that I was okay.

But pain doesn’t just “go away” - that whole “time heals” thing is a total crock 30 years after my father died, when I looked around for an explanation for all the years of destructive behavior, I couldn’t find the root of the pain in my life because I had covered it up so well. All the “I’m fine” - 30 years of them - buried the pain of that nine years old girl.

Her pain had been trying to come out, to be heard, to be healed.

And, finally, it was.

After years of treatment, I found my way back to that night where the pain started, back to the tsunami. This time, I didn’t run. It hurt - it still hurts - but now, when it hurts, I let the pain come. I m not scared to say, “I’m not fine” - because I know, eventually, I will be.

“Auld Lang Syne” is a song that everyone drunkenly sings, which marks the start to a brand new year. No one ever seems to know the words (something about forgetting old acquaintances?) or what they mean (why would we want to forget people?), but, in America, it’s as much a part of New Years’ tradition as wine. But why?

The lyrics (歌词) to the song come from a poem written by the great Scottish poet Robert Bums in 1788. Its title is believed to be an old Scottish way of saying “a long time ago.” Phrases like “In the days of auld lang syne” also appear in other Scottish fairytales and poems, usually as a way of saying “Once Upon a Time.”

While it still causes confusion, it is believed that the opening lines of the song are meant to be rhetorical (夸张的); “Should auld acquaintance be forgotten, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgotten, and auld lang syne?” therefore means we should have a drink in honor of whatever is passing, and remember old friends.

When the Scots immigrated to America in the 19th century, they brought the song with them. But its great popularity can be largely due to the Canadian bandleader Guy Lombardo.

In 1965, he explained how he himself came to associate the song with the end of the year to Life Magazine:

“Auld Lang Syne is our theme song—and was long before anyone ever heard us on the radio. In our particular part of western Ontario, where there’s a large Scottish population, it was traditional for bands to end every dance with Auld Lang Syne. We didn’t think it was known here.

If you want to see the singer in action, check out his final performance on the eve of 1977, after performing for 48 years in a row.

A dragonfly barely an inch and a half long appears to be animal world’s most productive long distance traveler - flying thousands of miles over oceans as it migrates from continent to continent - according to a newly published research.

Biologists who led the study say the evidence is in the genes. They found that populations of this dragonfly, called Pantala flavescens, in Texas, eastern Canada, Japan, Korea, India, and South America, have genes so similar that there is only one likely explanation. Apparently — somehow — these insects are traveling distances that are extraordinarily long for their small size, breeding (繁殖) with each other, and creating a common worldwide gene pool.

But how do insects from different continents manage to meet and hook up? Ware says it appears to be the way their bodies have evolved. “These dragonflies have adaptations such as increased surface areas on their wings that enable them to use the wind to carry them.”

Dragonflies, in fact, have already been observed crossing the Indian Ocean from Asia to Africa. “They are following the weather,” says Daniel Troast, who analyzed the DNA samples in Ware’s lab. “They’re going from India where it’s dry season to Africa where it’s wet season, and apparently they do it once a year.”

Wetness is a must for Pantala to reproduce, and that, says Ware, is why these insects would be driven to even attempt such a dangerous trip, which she calls a “kind of suicide.” The species depends on it. While many will die on the route, as long as enough make it, the species survives.

For the moment, the details of this extraordinary insect travel are an educated best guess. Much more work is needed to bring many loose ends together. Ware and Troast hope that scientists can work on plotting those routes.