Here in Kolkatta the Shiva crew is celebrating both Halloween and the half-way day of our semester. It is hard to believe that we are half-way through – I am so proud of what our crew has accomplished as a group already, and looking forward to seeing even more self-growth, adventures, and hilarity in the remaining half! I wanted to give a shout-out to all of the family and friends… Read More
Namaste friends and family!
Our Shiva family is in Calcutta now, doing some volunteer work at the Mother Theresa Home. Before Calcutta, we spent a lovely couple of days in Bodh Gaya.
Bodh Gaya was a breath of fresh air. Literally. After crowded, polluted, over-powering Varanasi, it was nice to take a couple days to decompress in such a beautiful, calm, and spiritual place.
We stayed at the Root… Read More
We are broken up into four groups every day; Daily Chores, Kitchen Crew, Gardening Crew and Farming Crew.
The Daily group is the only group who’s job is the same everyday; milking the cows! Your day begins at 6 am when you walk to the milking house and milk 55 cows whose milk is used to feed the baby calves. Then its off to feed the chickens before breakfast. The… Read More
Hello to the Itza group’s family and friends from Carpe Diem HQ,
We hope you all are well and have been enjoying the blog and following along on Itza’s adventures. We wanted to let you all know about a small change we’ve made to Itza’s itinerary. As some of you may have heard, there has been a stomach bug going around the Itza group, and while everyone has been treated… Read More
Hey everyone! We just got back from our week at pun pun farm, doing various acts of volunteer work for the farm. We learned a lot about eco-friendly farming and recycling various sorts of resources to save money and help the environment. It was a cool experience and we got to talk with a lot of people who have been working with these sorts of things for their entire life. … Read More
Leaving San Marcos was a bittersweet experience for the group. We greatly enjoyed our time in this beautiful town, but at the same time we were ready for our next adventure, which was sure to be exciting, just as every new place proves to be. On Sunday morning we left San Marcos and embarked on our 8 hour drive to Coban, where we stayed for a night. The Car ride… Read More
Hola from Xela guatemala. This is our last day in the city after over two full weeks. Tomorrow bright and early we will leave for the Lago Atitlan trek, a 3 day long endevor that is sure to be an exiting challenge for grupo ITZA. The general consensus throughout the group is that we are ready to move on, but that doesnt mean we havent had a blast in Xela!… Read More
Hello world! I am writing from the city of Quito right now and it is a beautiful, sunny day. The group decided to splurge a little bit on the hostal for our last 2 days in Ecuador.. . and the extra few dollars per person has definitely been well worth it. Last night, most of the group gathered on the rooftop (which has an amazing view of all of Quito)… Read More
We spent last week in Xela at a language school. I remember after our first day of class we met up afterwards and everyone was so excited! We all loved our teachers and were already learning a lot. After school we did a variety of activities. Our group did our first hike together, listened to a speaker about the revolution of ´44, enjoyed some live Guatemalan music, and took a… Read More
It’s day three on the Sentry Hill organic farm in New Zealand and we’ve been up to just about everything. Tom and P.J. have taught us how to herd flock, milk cows, feed chickens and pigs, thistle grub, plant crops, sheer sheep, and cook for 19 people three times a day! However today held a special suprise for the Hongi students; Pet Day! We accompanied Tom and P.J’s kids, Ben,… Read More
Namaste from Kailaji! Here blogging about our time in Calcutta and our transition into Bodhgaya.
We spent 11 days in Calcutta, and looking back trying to figure out what to write about, I realized we defiantly made the most of our time! We spent the first half of our days spread out through many of Mother Teresa’s houses, as Tully covered in the last blog. While we all walked away… Read More
So we know you weren’t expecting to hear from us for a few more days but we had the opportunity to post early so we thought we would update you!! We have been in the village with the Massai since Saturday. We are camping next to the primary school where we have spent a lot of time working. We are helping to build a road for cars to be able… Read More
After a long morning of leaving te Nananu village and spending a few days at a hostel in Nadi, we finally made our (long way of connecting flights from Nadi to Sydney back up to Auckland), where we would spend three days running around Auckland and indluging in the city. It was a great change of pace for many of us, from the use of internet to the choice of… Read More
We arrived on a late, chilly night in New Plymouth, NZ after a long day of traveling from Auckland. Tran, the leader of TOA, picked up up from the bus stop and piled all of us and all of our stuff into his truck. Trans family and Martin, another leader of TOA, had an amazing meal waiting for us at the cottage we would be staying at. Since it was… Read More
Day 4- Today was our last full day in Pasac! Ah!! Estoy triste! In the morning we went on another hike to see an absolutely gorgeous waterfall. It was so secluded from the town and felt like our groups little secret place. Once we got back it was time to prepare for our evening. We all got the opportunity to go in one of the tamascals and clean ourselves. The… Read More
We arrived in Pasac last Monday with mixed expectations. We knew it was another mayan village and were worried about the challenges we would face. We also heard that we were staying with families, which presented the challenge of communicating with families who´s second language was spanish. But the other Central America group said they loved it here so we kept an open mind. I guess our adventure begins with… Read More
Is going to be difficult for this fresh faced 20 year old. How could something like counting blessings during a trip like this be hard for someone experiencing it you might ask? Let me explain….
Put yourself in my shoes. I get to explain to all of the parents, family, and friends of my new found friends about how lucky, beautiful, and trying the last week has been for the… Read More
Where do we even begin.
We left Amritsar on our very first sleeper train ride. We spent much of the early evening together in our little nook of our train car. To paint you a little picture, there were three bunks stacked on a wall, the middle of which swung up from the back of a seat cushion to become a hanging bed. All in all there were 6 bunks… Read More
sorry for this late blog post but for some reason it didn’t get posted and we lost it 2 weeks ago
Sa wat dii kha!
We are now back in Chiang Mai about to leave for Pun Pun to volunteer on an organic farm for a week. The past week has been amazing! We’ve been living with the hill tribe people in the Jafu-Jaka village. We made a 15 mile… Read More
