Two groups of Wareham High School students are taking their education international this week, during the school's April break.

One group will head to Spain as part of a program that has been taking Wareham students abroad for more than 20 years, while the other will be the first group of Wareham students to travel to Cape Verde.

Any trip overseas can expand students horizons, and the purposes of and motivation behind these trips are similar, but different.

Wareham High School's Henry St. Julien, Social Studies department head, has spearheaded the trip to Cape Verde, and the students who are going there have spent the last year raising money for it.

St. Julien says he thinks it's important for students to see how people in third-world nations live.

"A majority of the world live in this condition," St. Julien said.

He says that he chose the third world nation the students would be traveling to based on the demographics of Wareham, where so many people have roots in Cape Verde.

"Cape Verde is going to be the foundation" for future trips to third-world nations, according to St. Julien.

St. Julien has traveled to Haiti several times, but safety is the first thing on his mind. He says that based on what he's seen, he's not comfortable bringing  a group of students to Haiti.

"Cape Verde is one of the safest African nations," St. Julien pointed out.

The students will visit a school in their “sister city” of Santa Cruz, where they will give school supplies to a group of students with whom they've been talking via Skype.  The students will also visit cultural and historical sites, including a fort that used to serve as a slave-trading post.

Anybody who wishes to talk to Wareham's "Global Ambassadors" in Cape Verde may attend a Skype chat on Thursday, April 18, at 9 a.m. in the Wareham Middle School auditorium.

Vice-principal Debbie Freitas will be taking a group of students to Spain where they will have a chance to absorb the sights, tastes, and language of a European nation for the first time.

Freitas has taken many groups of students to a number of different countries, including Italy, Greece, and England.

"I guess the only word I can use is they were more worldly after the experience. I think they were more confident. I think they see a more global view of the world," said Freitas. "As a whole, we tend to be, Americans in general, pretty ethnocentric. … What strikes most students, and certainly myself, is how young we are as a country."

Seventeen-year-old junior Mackenzie Connell says that he is excited to see things that make the historical sites in Boston look brand new by comparison.

"My aunt went to Germany and saw stuff that was established in the 800s. We don't have that here," said Connell.

Connell has only traveled to one other international destination in his young life: "Canada. We just went to a Red Sox game and left."

Paige Vespa, an 18-year-old senior, is looking forward to seeing the architecture in Spain. "I feel like America isn't a pretty place," said Vespa. Spain is "a different experience, I guess."

The students will take a charter bus from Barcelona to Toledo, and then to Madrid. Along the way, they'll stop to see sights such as the La Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, will take a walking tour of Madrid, and will sample authentic Spanish cuisine.

Although the trip only lasts one week, Freitas knows from experience what a difference a week abroad can make.

"There's a maturity in them, and a different perspective in the way they look at themselves and the way they look at the world" when they return, she said.