Lucas Reiberg's IU Honors Trip to Spain

Lucas Reiberg has been accepted into the 2023 IU Honors Program in Foreign Language and is planning on going to study Spanish in Ciudad Real, Spain this summer! The IU honors program is a 6-week language immersion intensive where attendees stay with a host family and study with other students from Indiana. They speak nothing but the target language of their program (in Lucas's case, Spanish) with the goal of becoming fluent speakers with a lifelong connection to the language and country upon completion of the program. Lucas would be a third-generation alumnus of the IUHPFL program. Both his grandmother and father attended the program in France during the summer before their respective senior years in high school.

While Lucas is working at a cafe, washing dishes on the weekends, to help support his travel plans, minimum wage alone will not pay for this amazing opportunity.

This is where you come in. As a friend, family member, or just general supporter of Lucas, any small contribution you can make will help ensure his participation in the IU Honors program. His Spanish speaking has already grown by leaps and bounds as he has begun preparing for this trip. We can only imagine how much better it will get and how many new doors it will open educationally and career-wise after he completes it.

The program is not extravagant in cost for intercontinental travel, but it is also not cheap. We are hoping friends, family, and any organizations who are interested in supporting Lucas's education can help us with expenses. The cost for the trip is a baseline of approximately $8,000 and there will certainly be other expenses; clothes, travel gear, spending money, etc. But we have set the goal for this GoFundMe to simply be the cost of the program.

If you are able to contribute, we'll make sure you receive updates via this GoFundMe and any social media interfaces about Lucas's trip progress. Ideally, we'll be able to post pictures and news from Lucas himself, but the program participants do not keep their phones with them while they're in the country, a sacrifice in terms of keeping connected to all the internet hubbub, but an essential part of the language immersion process. We'll make sure Lucas sends at least a few snail mail letters and let all the contributors know how things are going via that ancient technology.

Mostly, you can be assured that Lucas is participating in a program where, by the end of this time in Spain, he will have learned the language to a level only surpassed by those who have spoken it since birth. As an alumnus myself, I can say it is still an unmatched formative educational experience in my life.

We thank you in advance for any funds you can contribute, but we'll also continue to thank you and keep you updated frequently. The best thing in this world is being able to ask people you know and even some you don't for help doing things that you wouldn't be able to do on your own. It connects us and our individual experiences to the world and the people who make our lives possible. Please know that Lucas would not be able to make this trip without you and for that we will be forever grateful.