Travel Programs

This 12-day trip includes tours of Madrid, Toledo, and Salamanca. Students have a homestay for 5-6 days in Galicia. In Madrid, students see the great Spanish masterpieces in the Museo del Prado, visit the most important bullfighting venue, and see the home of soccer giant Real Madrid. In Toledo, we take a trip back in time as we visit a city begun by the Romans and influenced by Christian, Jewish and Muslim presence since the Middle Ages. Salamanca, home to one of Europe's oldest and most prestigious universities, serves as our midway point in the trip to Vigo, where students will spend time with families in a homestay.

This sister-school program has been in existence for over seven years and provides students an experience with the world’s second most populous nation and tenth-largest economy. The CHIREC School is located in Hyderabad, India, the country’s second-leading technology center. The trip includes a homestay with Indian families and excursions to Agra, to view the Taj Mahal, and Delhi, one of the world’s great capitals.

Sample Itinerary

This service and learning trip to the Dominican Republic includes service work, a Spanish language course and exploring the beauty of the island. Thayer currently partners with IIC (Institute Intercultural del Caribe) and Project Esperanza to achieve our goals of having a meaningful week in a Caribbean Spanish-speaking country. Students perfect their Spanish in interactions with the children and through the experience of daily living with Dominican families.

Sample Itinerary

Sample Itinerary

Since February 2014, Thayer has maintained a rewarding alliance with Students Shoulder-to-Shoulder (SStS), a non-profit organization promoting experiential learning, service, ethical leadership, and global citizenship. Since the summer of 2014, over 65 Thayer students have traveled with SStS to such foreign destinations as Bolivia, Nicaragua, Kenya, Costa Rica, Nepal, and Cambodia; and to domestic locations such as Detroit, New Orleans, southern California’s Mexican border, and South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. SStS anticipates offering 13 courses in the summer of 2024 to international destinations such as Costa Rica, Nepal, Kenya, Panama, and Peru. Domestic courses will explore local issues in New Orleans, Dartmouth, MA, San Diego/Tijuana, and Puerto Rico. All Students Shoulder-to-Shoulder experiences involve active work with local NGOs focused on issues such as climate change, gender equality, food insecurity, health care, immigration, and more. So many participants have reported tremendous excitement about these SStS offerings and profound and lasting impressions left by the experiences. Thayer and SStS continue to work together to provide our students with the opportunity to explore global issues and develop ethical leadership skills.

As envisioned, our relationship with Students Shoulder-to-Shoulder has demonstrated value on a number of fronts. Among other things, this program:

• Complements Thayer's mission as we seek to inspire our students toward excellence, achievement, and contributions “to the common good”
• Offers Thayer students access to a set of truly intriguing and unique travel experiences
• Encourages an ethos of global citizenship that will augment our current Learning-Through-Travel efforts
• Provides valuable professional development opportunities for Thayer faculty members, more of whom we hope will become SStS course instructors
• Corresponds fittingly with our Global Scholars Program, which has been so well-received by so many elements of the Thayer community

Our membership in the Global Schools Coalition assures one spot for a Thayer student on each of the SStS trips. Those spots are held until February 15, after which student applications from non-member schools are considered. A limited amount of financial assistance is available. 

Sample Itinerary

This Senior Project to Sicily serves as a capstone experience for Thayer students. A unifying theme across the diverse range of activities of the expedition is the cultural complexity of Sicily as we strive to understand and appreciate the conflation of Greek, Roman, North African, Arab, and Norman influence upon the art, architecture, culture, and history of the island.

Upon arrival in Palermo, our driver will pick us up from the airport on a private bus in which we will travel for the duration of our trip. Our first stop is Castellamare del Golfo where we will hike the Riserva Naturale del Zingaro to explore dunes and coves, taking in the stunning coastal views as we fend off the jet lag. The following morning brings us to the mountains southwest of Palermo to hike the ancient site of Segesta—originally an Elymian settlement, later settled by Greeks, colonized anew by the Romans, and the eventual site of a Norman fort. Segesta is the location for the first of several episodes throughout our trip in a mini-seminar on Greek Doric architecture, as well as on Greek history in Sicily. We then proceed to Erice, looming over the plain upon which the funeral games of Anchises, depicted in Book 5 of Virgil’s Aeneid, had been set. The importance of food as a bearer of cultural identity is brought home by the evening’s cooking class with Maria Grammatico, Erice’s renowned maker of traditional Arabic marzipan pastries.

From Erice, we venture to Marsala and ferry to Motya where we explore the island’s archaeological park, admire the famous Charioteer of Motya, and enjoy a traditional Carthaginian/North African barbeque lunch. From Motya, we continue southwards to Selinunte which presents students with the most expansive archaeological site found in Italy. After a visit to the three temples outside the city walls, students move to the acropolis. A special feature here is evidence of continuing North African presence alongside Greeks and then Romans, indicated by a mosaic of the Carthaginian goddess Tanit in a house entrance-hall.

The next day we visit the archaeological park of Agrigento, with its prominent ridge of Doric temples, and continue with a third installment on the fine points of Doric architectural fashion. Agrigento also includes a museum visit so students can see and be dwarfed by one of the monumental telamones that decorated the temple of Zeus here, one of the largest Greek temples ever built and the greatest in Sicily. The afternoon concludes with free time on the beautiful beaches of the Scala dei Turchi.

Our itinerary then takes us to the Villa Romana del Casale, one of the largest & richest collections of ancient Roman mosaics in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The afternoon introduces students to the baroque presence in Sicily through visits to Modica and Noto, where the Norman architecture presents a remarkably harmonious complex of churches, monumental staircases, municipal halls, and broad avenues, all placed in strategically theatrical positions vis-à-vis the landscape. Food is featured as well, with a sampling of the distinctive production of chocolate - for which Modica is known - at one of the oldest chocolate factories in Italy.

Our next stop is the city of Syracuse. The group visits Ortigia, the island that was the focal point for both the fateful Sicilian expedition of the Peloponnesian Wars and the second Punic War, when the scientist Archimedes was killed here by the Romans. Students then make their way to the spring of Arethusa, the remarkable fresh-water spring that attracted the first Greek colonists to the island, and hear the myth of Arethusa’s journey to this spot from mainland Greece. A high point of the day is the Duomo of Siracusa—yet another baroque church, built not anew but incorporating the substantial remains of the Doric temple of Athena erected in the 5th century BCE. Later that afternoon, in the archaeological park of Syracuse, students learn about the Greek soldiers held prisoner in the quarries there and test the acoustics of the great cave known as the ear of Dionysius. The Greek theater provides a setting for an introduction to Greek drama and its relationship to the design of the space. Finally, in the evening we visit Catania where we will embark on a street food tour, tasting various Sicilian treats while taking in the vista of Mt. Etna along one of the city’s broad avenues. Once again, the cultural complexity is evident everywhere, from the baroque Duomo and municipal buildings all constructed of volcanic stone to the Egyptian obelisk surmounting an ancient elephant, perhaps Carthaginian or Roman, sculpted from the volcanic rock.

The following day we head for Aci Trezza, one of Catania’s suburban beach resorts, to admire the large rock formations in the water that are fancifully associated with the rocks the Cyclops threw as Odysseus and his men escaped from the island. The next two days, students experience the natural history of the island through a visit to the largest volcano in Europe, Mt. Etna, covered as it was in a layer of snow, as well as a guided trek through the Alcantara Gorge, a natural wonder carved out by the Alcantara River. Our trip culminates with an evening and morning spent in the peaceful seaside town of Cefalu as well as the nearby archaeological site of Solunto before bidding our final farewell to Sicily.

Sample Itinerary

Mme Toussaint invites you to explore the fascinating history and culture of Québec, one of the most “European” cities in North America.

This linguistic and cultural excursion will be chaperoned by Mme Toussaint, and her husband, Thayer sixth grade teacher Jeff Toussaint. The city of Québec is the center of French culture in Canada, and the Old City, inside the walls pictured above, is reminiscent of villages all over France. Although there is no homestay element to this program, business and everyday conversation are conducted almost exclusively in French, which gives our students a chance to hear French spoken in the daily lives of everyday Canadian citizens. This trip will provide an authentic language experience for our middle school French students.

Sample Itinerary