As spring approaches, many Santa Fe students are beginning to make decisions about college and deliberating on whether or not to take a gap year.

Next fall, David Garcia and The University of New Mexico are launching a new program called "Love One Love All" with the hope of making that choice less hard for students.

"The goal is to give a student right out of high school an opportunity to take a year to mature and see the world in their own eyes," Garcia said. Garcia is the founder and program coordinator of a 300-day trip that would take students to 14 different countries and 22 different cities.

"When you are traveling the world, you are being exposed to so many cultures, so many cities, so many people of different backgrounds, it is just a fortune of wealth and experiences," Garcia said. "It makes you truly be able to say you are a world citizen because you have been able to experience the world through your own eyes and your own judgment."

The program is unique from other gap-year programs because it ties into UNM's curriculum, allowing students to complete their freshman year at UNM while traveling abroad.

"The courses that are being provided by UNM are courses that will help students to crystallize what they are experiencing" abroad, he said.

The format allows students to keep their lottery scholarship to cover tuition at UNM. The program also accepts transfer students from any school in New Mexico, and it provides aid to help participants pay the $22,500 program fee.

Considering the amount of international travel, the fee is kept low because of a creative performance that participating students do in each location they visit. Garcia described it as a platform in which, "the participants can express themselves through music and dance."

Dan Young, director of Research and Service Learning Programs at UNM, has been working on the designing the curriculum with Garcia.

"I really believe that it's difficult to get a handle on your own culture unless you have something to compare it with," Young said. "Any time students have the ability to travel abroad and have their cultural assumptions tested by the reality of the experience, that's a good thing."

Many Santa Fe students who have had the privilege to experience foreign travel say they recommend it.

Stowe McMurry, a senior at Santa Fe High, spent her junior year in an exchange program in Beijing. "Seeing a different culture so thoroughly like that gave me a lot of insights to American culture," McMurry said.

While in Beijing, McMurry stayed with a host family, took American classes on a Chinese high-school campus and spent three months traveling all across China.

"It opened up my eyes," McMurry said, "as far as where I want to take my education, what I am interested in and what I to major in college. It also influenced where I applied to college."

Clay Balasmo, a classmate of Stowe's at Santa Fe High, had similar sentiments. Last summer, he spent four weeks in Ubud, the cultural center of Bali, with seven other Santa Fe High School students. "It was a completely different culture than you see in Santa Fe," Balsamo said. "The whole thing about Bali is that everything is in balance, you have exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of nighttime."

Because of his trip, Balasmo said he is planning to travel to India this summer and take a gap year to travel throughout Europe.

"It was really eye-opening to see a completely different culture," Balsamo said, "showing me and seven other kids how other people live and connect to different environments."

"If anybody has an opportunity to live abroad, I'd say, 'Take it,'" McMurry said. Balsamo echoed this, adding, "If you want to travel, do it while you can, because you might get tied down with other stuff when you're older."

This is music to Garcia's ears. He hopes the "Love One Love All" program will be able to provide the same experience that Balsamo and McMurry had. "The students that come to the program the first year are the pioneers," Garcia said. "These first hundred are really going to cut the trail for future students as well as for the program itself."

For more information about the program, contact Garcia at daveholyfe@aol.com.

Alex Wirth is a senior at Santa Fe Prep. You can reach him at alxwirth@gmail.com.