In the summer of 2006, I signed up with a non-profit organization called International Student Volunteers. The country that I chose to travel to was New Zealand. Before this trip, that ended up being the adventure of a lifetime, I had not travelled very much...I had been to a few other states and Mexico. Anticipating my departure, I nervously packed my bags, said goodbye to family and friends and was on my way. See...this was the first time I was going to be travelling Internationally (besides Mexico), but I was doing it all by myself. I boarded a plane in Milwaukee, WI and flew to LA for an orientation. It was a bit overwhelming flying Los Angeles because a big city to me is 100,000 people, so LA was off the charts. As we were decending, I was thinking, "Oh my god, what am I doing?" I did not want to get off the plane because that would mean that I had to find this hotel in this rediculously large city on my lonesome. So, I sucked it up...i mean what else can you do? I walked around LAX for an hour or so and found my way to a shuttle that was going to the hotel i needed to be at. I was so relieved when I saw some other people getting on the bus with sleeping bags and luggage because I was pretty sure they were doing the same thing that I was...and I was right. The students travelling with ISV were so unbelievably nice, although to my saddness, some of them were going to other countries to do thier projects. But...all in all...the people that I travelled with to New Zealand that summer were some of the most generous, caring people I had ever met...and I was able to be with them for five weeks...yeah!!! After an 18 hours flight, five extra because we had to back track to Fiji because we could not land at Auckland due to the heavy fog...NEW ZEALAND: THE LAND OF THE LONG WHITE CLOUD! Finally, we were there. My group ended up doing conservation projects, such as sand dune restoration, trail maintainance, planting trees and plants, along with doing research on depleteing mangrove bushes. We also worked with school age children and mentally handycapped people. The volunteer work happened during the first two weeks of our trip and the second two weeks was the much anticipated adventure package, where we did white water rafting, black water rafting in glowworm caves, skydiving, bungee jumping, glacier hiking, zorbing and so on... So if there is anyone out there that would like to travel for a greatly discounted, somewhat structured, amazing adventure...you should sign up on www.isvonline.com. I promise you won't regret it!!!