Many students look forward to winter break to be done with final exams and back at home catching up on TV shows and drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace. The much needed rest that has seemed an eternity away for the last month is finally in reach. With this said, many others get excited for the opportunity of no school to be busy in a different way. Whether that was being in Iceland spotting icy mountains or hanging out in the desert with camels, you know that QUEST students couldn’t sit still. Here are some of QUEST’s students’ highlights from their adventures over break:
Some of our QUEST students got to spend even more time together embracing QUEST ideals on the QUEST to Spain trip. They got to check out design thinking and the process behind it all over Barcelona and Madrid. Ari Riske from Cohort 29 loved getting to know more people in the QUEST program as well as all about Spain’s culture. Ari said, “Design was everywhere. We explored it in the architecture of hospitals and the Sagrada Familia as well as in wineries.”
Doron Tadmor Taking in the Views
Q29’s Doron Tadmor spent about half of his break backpacking through Chile. He said that discovering the affordable flight tickets opened the door to practicing his Spanish (being that he is a Spanish minor) as well as visiting a startup incubator in Santiago. Doron recounted that in the Patagonia region in Torres del Paine, “The views were by far the most amazing [I’d] seen. Mountains and the bluest glaciers surrounded [me] and the weather changed every five seconds from rain to sun to snow to hail.”
QUEST Students Together in Israel
Birthright also led some of our QUEST students on a memory-filled adventure through Israel. Melissa Maurer (Q29) said, “My favorite part was Tel Aviv because it was fascinating to see such a modern city unlike any of the other places we went in Israel. It has a lot of fun things to do. The Dead Sea was so cool because you were always floating and had to make a conscious effort to stay vertical.”
Chineme Obiefune (Q25) and a few other QUEST students found themselves in Iceland. Calling it their own QUEST adventure, Chineme described his trip to Iceland as “an experience that took [me] out of [my] comfort zone in many different ways. The temperature felt like it was below freezing and the roads basically had no speed limit, but the biggest thing was the environment. Everywhere you looked it was clear that the structure of all the buildings and the products that were being produced were influenced by the environment and the culture of Iceland.” He advises any future visitors to Iceland to “bundle up and make sure that you go with friends because there will be a lot of long car rides during your stay.”
There you have it. Some of the wildest adventures our students embarked on this past winter break. Get inspired and go on your own trip soon! I’m sure any of these people would argue that it’s worth the long plane rides any day!