USA

I just arrived home last Thursday as I spent a month in Spain after leaving France. Geovisions did a superb job matching a French family and a Canadian English instructor!!! Thank You for being the liaison in connecting us. Besides having 4 wonderful children to work with I also had access to the countryside for daily walks with their chocolate lab dog. Living with and meeting friends and relatives of my host family was an excellent way for me to experience the French culture, and partake in French cuisine daily. My relationship with the family shall continue. I believe it is a plus that the application process with Geovisions allows for candidates to look at the family resumes and see if they would be comfortable living with the family and vice versa. Access to a Geovisions staff member is readily available, another plus! I would certainly recommend Geovisions to anyone wishing to share their English skills in exchange for experiencing a new culture. Thanks for providing opportunities for enhancing one's life.

My daughter used Abroadco to study abroad in Paris Last year. The first semester went well the housing that we arranged was changed but she liked the dorm. Actually the program was not bad and she enjoyed herself. However since she has returned she has been unsuccessful in obtaining a transcript for her spring semester. She did not receive the deposit for her housing as well. Chris will not return any calls or emails. Basically once they have your money it's gone. If there is anyone else out there having the same problem obtaining a transcript or getting deposits back please fill out the Arizona Attorney General consumer complaint form. The link is posted below. http://www.azag.gov/consumer/complaintform.html

This is the most personal and dedicated class in teaching I have yet to experience in the seven years I have been teaching. I took a class from The Language House in 2006, From Chris Westerguaard and I was teaching partners with Skipp Pots. The amount of teaching methodology addressed, practiced, and observed beats any USA teaching program that I have participated in. I am currently working in Texas as a public high school teacher (accreditation from alternative and certified routes) and I got my start at TLH! Prague is the most beautiful and romantic city on the planet, for me. And I would highly recommend anyone with an adventurous spirit takes this leap and start living the dream!

I have just finished my internships with David Adams and his Institute for Cultural Ecology, and I am so relieved my time with him is over. I highly advise anyone wanting to study abroad to avoid the custom placements with this organization at all costs. Here is why: I enrolled with ICE for two custom placements in Hawaii, one in Maui and one in Oahu. What could possibly go wrong, right? It all went very well in terms of travel experience - I met great people, saw beautiful things, and learnt a lot about Hawaii and its culture. However, anything and everything organized by ICE was either not worth it or very dissatisfying. You essentially pay ICE to organize your placement and accommodation for a very expensive price. And believe me, you could do so much more with your money. My first placement was working with a musician - I thought things were going to be better organized, that there was going to be some jobs and projects outlined for me, but it transpired that Adams had just phoned this musician up and got him to meet with me and take it from there. The musician had no clear instructions on what he was supposed to get me to do. It was very poorly organized. My second placement: there wasn't one!! I arrived in Oahu and I had no contact person or anything to do. Adams had ''organized'' for a person I could add and talk to on Skype who did not even live in Hawaii but could supposedly help me find musicians or bands to interview. That was it, that was my placement! So, I did my own journalistic work by myself, but was promised from the outset that there would be an ''extensive list'' of places for me to go, people for me to meet at universities and cultural centers, venues to visit. None of that ever came through. David Adams also got my arrival date wrong for Oahu, and notified me this several hours before I was supposed to board the plane!! He sent me an email telling me I may need to look for a hostel! I also had problems with my accommodation in Oahu: it was way out of the center of Waikiki which is where I was supposed to be working (1h30 walk up a steep hill), the landlord didn't provide bed sheets, the bathroom was dirty (giant bugs, hair, etc), it was a dorm for 6 student girls, and for the price I paid I could have got a basic hotel room, probably with a meal and maid service included!! I had to complain and ask to be changed location, thankfully the landlord was a bit more sympathetic than Adams and moved me to another one of her more central houses. But I had to sign a contract saying I should clean bathroom and toilet (shared by 7 other girls) on a weekly basis. OK, I get it if you are living as a student for a year/several months... But again, for the price I paid, I did not expect to be asked to clean a bathroom and toilet shared by 8 girls every week. So I had to make another fuss about that and Adams said, in a very hostile email, he would provide a maid to come in who never showed up during the integrity of my stay in that house. Here is the cherry on the cake: I had plans to continue with ICE to do some more music journalism work in the Caribbean. Adams said he could organize this and took a 1000$ deposit from me for this. To cut a long story short, he later asked for a phenomenal amount of money for organizing something that was very vague (and wanted an extra 1000$ to confirm everything) - and this time I was wary as the Oahu internship didn't even happen! But I was stuck because he had my 1000$ deposit. When I decided to cancel this Caribbean placement, I asked for my deposit back and was met with an extremely hostile and shockingly insulting email. That was the last I heard of David Adams, and I never got anything back. I will continue my travels alone to the Caribbean, will do my own research as I have done in Oahu, and have found two hotels with pools and private beaches which offer me rooms with views on the sea, breakfast, maid service for much much less money than what ridiculous amount Adams was asking for... Also, I have some experience with study abroad programs as I had been to India with i-to-i in 2009, on a music journalism placement. They were top notch, and everything was professionally dealt with from beginning to end. No problems what so ever. Honestly, don't make the mistake of enrolling with ICE. The only thing Adams is good at is taking a lot of your money.

Did a year abroad in Brazil, AFS USA is polite, well organized, and does a good job keeping their students safe, AFS Brazil, on the other hand, is a complete disaster.

This is very beautiful hotel.Me and my partner are very much impressed.we have decided that whenever we will go to Orlando we are going to stay at this hotel.I stayed at this hotel with my 2 years old baby.The staff is very polite and attentive.Staff members took extra effort for my baby.They provided me a crib.

To interested interns, I just finished my internship, and it was an amazing experience. HOWEVER, I.C.E. is not a good company. Although I loved the place I worked, I feel you all need to know the truth and not just all the posts that I think the company is posting on this sight. I lucked out that I had a good experience, I can only thank the museum for that, and NOT I.C.E. Throughout the planning process, I.C.E. gave very few details and I had to constantly ask for updates, which were usually not very detailed. I was often met with passive-aggressive replies to important questions that I would ask. I did not know the address of where I was living until 4 days before, and a fellow intern did not know until she got there. She was from out of the country, so this was very upsetting to her because she had given the immigration office a different address. And this was just the beginning! I.C.E. makes it seem like they have personal connections with the companies we are assigned too. Between the two interns I met and myself, NONE of our companies had ever met him. All Dr. Adams did was email them asking if they wanted an intern. The museum I worked at was never shown my resume that I gave him, and if I hadn't called and talked to the museum myself, they wouldn't have even know I was coming. Moreover, apart of the program fee is a travel book and a contact person that is supposed to check in with us to make sure we are adjusting. Another intern and I never got a book, but another intern did get a travel book, just not the Lonely Planet book that was promised. Our contact person never checked in on us, but she did offer to drive us around the island, IF WE PAID HER. I am so lucky that I met people that lived there to show me around because this company completed abandoned us when we got to Hawaii. But wait there’s more! One intern did this I.C.E. internship for academic credit, and he was supposed to be doing some specific work with plant life. When he signed up for the internship, he was assured he would be able to do this. He worked at a garden in Hawaii for a couple weeks and he still wasn’t doing anything like he was promised. He emailed Dr. Adams about maybe moving to another garden and was met with much hostility and name-calling. Then he was offered to work at a garden on another island, which he would have to fly to daily, on his own dime. Overall, this company seems to want nothing but money, at least from my experience. Their other programs might be better, but I would not recommend the program in Hawaii. If you want to intern in Hawaii, just call the companies individually and ask yourself. You will probably save a lot of money.

I was very pleased with United Planet. Their people were friendly and kind and their programs are affordable. It was nice to be able to help people in other countries. I would definitely recommend United Planet to anyone interested in traveling and volunteering.

I very much like AFS program in Iowa, US. It was a great experience. The staff were very professional and the orientation was great. I got to meet students from different parts of the world. My experience with hostfamily was great in general. There were problems, but just consider how different it was to live in a country you've never been before and stay with a family you've never met. It was hard, but both my hostfamily and my local AFS liaison tried to overcome the problems. I especially loved my high school. All the teachers there were great and they loved to talk to an exchange students, so were the students. I still have connections with a lot of my American friends, and other AFS friends around the world. I DID see some students having problems with hostfamily and something else, and one of them was my friend. She ended up going back home early...I was really sad. But it's a special case though....we had maybe 50 students(I'm not sure the exact number as I did not meet all of the students in my area), and she was the only one. All the students who stayed were happy I promise. We used to complain a lot when we got together during some orientations, cultural shock, host family issues...etc. but now it's been a year since I went back to my home country. And I look back to the experience, it really changed my life in a more positive way. I could have been more mature to solve some problems I had that year, and have a greater year. But there is NO WAY to blame AFS for my personal issues. I would recommend AFS to anyone who wants to go to the United States, and Germany (my friend had a great year, too) But for other locations, I have no right to comment.

We were asked to host a student from China for a year of high school. Host families, beware -- it is very common for students coming to China to come for one reason -- to get admitted to a U.S. college. Little or no interest in their host family, any cultural exchange, or any reciprocity. supposedly, this is not the purpose but it happens all the time. Be careful that you won't be "used" by a student for room, board, food, and transportation, with their having little or no interest in you or your family.