You’ll spend about a half day volunteering (up to 4 hours of direct interaction with the kids, plus preparation time, transportation, and clean up), Monday through Friday.

You may be volunteering in the morning and afternoon, or the afternoon and evening; the times are determined by your Local Coordinator so that they work best with the program there, but either way, you’ll have quite a bit of time outside of your volunteering hours. How you spend your free time has a big impact on your semester — living abroad should be spent out exploring, not spending hours watching Netflix, (even if that means waking up early to fit in some fun before you start teaching)!

Here’s one example of what your day could look like, if you want to make the most of things:

Wake up to FaceTime or video call with your family (you may be 2 hours ahead of them, or 12!) then you could go for a quick jog with your ILP group before eating breakfast at your apartment. Next, you’ll have some time to plan lessons before visiting a nearby cathedral or maybe try a new snack at the nearby market. Have lunch with your group and finalize some details that you’re planning for your upcoming vacation.

Next it’s a commute to school … you may walk, or take a bus, ride the metro or take a taxi. You’ll spend a few hours with your class  — you’re teaching kitchen today and the kids loved the idea of celery, peanut butter, and raisins as “ants on a log”, but not every lesson goes perfectly! After class, time to tidy up before commuting back to your apartment for dinner, prepping tomorrow’s lesson, and playing a few games with your ILP group before bed.

There will also be days where you want to stay inside instead of exploring, lessons don’t go according to plan, or you are homesick. Through it all, we highly encourage all volunteers to get out and make the most of your ILP experience each day because the experience really does go by quickly.