More often than not, summer vacation destinations are full of the same type of people: tourists.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but a far-off location full of moon-eyed Americans wearing cargo shorts, sunglasses, sandals and reeking of suntan lotion can prevent vacationers from experiencing the real side of a city or country. Not so for certain OU students, who took summer trips to exotic locales far from luxury resorts and room service.

Bert Snider, criminology senior, said he had always dreamed of traveling to the Galapagos Islands. This summer, he chose to live and work for a month on the island where Darwin first landed, San Cristóbal.

“Though I wanted to travel to the islands, I didn’t just want to go and do the tourist thing,” Snider said. “I wanted to do something. So I found a reserve that did environmental work.”

At the reserve he got a taste of the island while disposing of plant life that is not indigenous to the island and replanting plants that were.

Snider described his experience as monumental, from meeting people from all over the world to swimming with sea lions. As fantastic as swimming with sea lions may sound, it didn’t come without a price.

“A girl on the reserve while on the beach got bitten by a baby sea lion,” Snider said. ”A week later she got blood poisoning from the bite.”

Despite the treacherous elements, Snider still enjoyed his stay.

“I miss waking up every morning and looking out my window that overlooked the jungle and the ocean,” Snider said. “Some mornings it was hard to see where the ocean stopped and the sky started.”

Shaygan Fakhari, native Iranian and psychology senior, traveled back to his hometown of Tehran, Iran. Fakhari said his trip was a continued reminder of the differences between his home country and the United States.

“People over there are really tired and not happy with the state of things or their President,” Fakhari said. “Everyone is stressed and you just have to keep that in mind. But whenever there is a car accident in the street people rush out to help people immediately.”

His time in Iran, however, didn’t come without any time to enjoy catching up with family and old friends. Fakhari said he went out almost every night during his three-week stay.

“I smoked lots of hookah, which is very popular there,” Fakhari said. “I also ate in the mountains by the river and enjoyed chi tea. One night I even saw a phenomenal daf [drum] player. It looked like the daf was floating as he played it. It was amazing.”

Fakhari said that while he would like to move back to Iran permanently, he didn’t think he ever could.

“It’s a shame really,” Fakhari said. “I went back to my old house and it’s beautiful. I missed it so much [but] I don’t ever want to live there with the way things are.”