Haley Otman has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies and Spanish from Grand Valley State University, and spent a semester studying at the Universidad de Granada in Granada, Spain through API (Academic Programs International).

My name is Austin Conte and I am currently a graduating senior at the College of Charleston, SC. I am API alumni and I am now also an API Campus Advocate for the College of Charleston. I am a International Business Major with a concentration in Marketing and Management accompanied with a Spanish Minor and Economics Minor.

How do you get to know a place? By being IN it. Not by rushing by, seeing the main attractions, and then zipping off to the next place.

Lash is an expat American who's been traveling the world solo since 1998. She loves immersing herself in nature, culture and the arts of countries she visits.

Prior to that, Lash lived in Kyoto, Japan from 1991-1997 teaching English in order to save money to travel the world.

Gina Granauro is an International Economics and Modern Language student at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. She enjoys learning about different cultures, exploring new places, and seeing the world in different perspectives. Her favorite destination she has visited is Istanbul, Turkey!

I love reading memoirs - they give us a glimpse into another life, of course, but also another way of being in the world. It's like traveling - and traveling through time. Such is the case with a beautiful memoir by Eileen Cronin, entitled Mermaid. Now anyone who knows me will know that this book was meant to find me. And find me, it did, for which I am grateful.

Emily Dorso is a senior Advertising and Public Relations major, Spanish minor at the University of Tampa. Her experience studying abroad in Granada, Spain for a semester not only confirmed her passion for travel, but solidified her need to work with a company after graduation that shares her core values and unites both her passion and college degree.

Amy Whitley is an outdoors and family travel writer making her home in Southern Oregon. An avid traveler, backpacker, skier, and hiker, Amy has written about family and outdoors travel experiences ranging from yurt camping to hut-to-hut skiing to city touring for family travel site Pit Stops for Kids and national publications.

If you’re wondering about Valentine’s Day gifts, I have an idea (and this goes much further than today’s holiday).

Kim Reiner is the PR coordinator of a nonprofit in Omaha, Neb., and a mother of two beautiful kids. She's spent more than 2 years abroad, studying in Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Belgium. She dreams of traveling the world, but until then, she writes at OhMyOmaha.com, a parent's guide to her hometown.