Blog

Final Post from Fiji

Hello faithful blog followers! This is Jamo from Michigan here, updating you all on our final week in Rabulu and last few days in Fiji. We spent our 2nd week in Rabulu continuing to work on the cement pathway which we unfortunately did not finish due to the rainy conditions.  On the morning of the 4th we were given a tour of the Fiji water plant which is only a… Read More

Broken Vans & 5 Star Resorts

Hey yall. It´s been a trying journey to Antigua but we finally made it.  We were in the car from San Andres for about 16 hours yesterday.  First 2 bridges had construction and we couldn´t pass, so we detoured a few hours, which brought us back to Coban for lunch, after which our van´s radiator overheated. After fixing it using our drinking water we traveled onward until the condition of… Read More

Tikal/San Andres

Hey everybody! Our first day in San Andres we traveled to the Mayan ruins of Tikal.  They were extremely impressive and massive.  We saw a lot of unique animals and plants during our hike there. This was also the site of where they filmed Star Wars (the ewok settlement.)  The best part was climbing the highest temple in Tikal.  From the top we could see the expanse of the jungle… Read More

What’s up from Thailand!

Hey all you carpe diem students and/or followers, This is Chris here with all the details on the SE Asia trip so far. So we have now been in SE Asia (Thailand to be exact) for 2 weeks exacly. Crazy right?!?! It’s funny because it feels like it’s been atleast a month because of all the wicked awesome things we have been doing so far. Some examples of our adventures… Read More

Ali Chishi!

For the last ten days we have been living in Achupallas. Achuapallas is a rural village located about 40 minutes from Otavallo. Many of the people there speak Keshwa, the indigenious language, but much of the younger generations now speak spanish. The people who live there are mostly subsistance farmers, and much of our diet while there consisted of potatoe and rice soup. We spent our days doing work in… Read More

Douces McLeod

Hello all! Lily here writing from an Internet Cafe in McLeod Ganj. We have had a wonderful introduction to typical India hodgepodge of power outages and holidays and I think are all learning to REALLY be gumby. Almost immediately after we returned from our trek we were picked up by our home stay families to begin our wonderful cultural exchange. We have been placed in such different home stay experiences!… Read More

Enjoying Fiji Time

  Hi, everyone! Lucy here (from an internet cafe in Tavua) to update you on our latest adventures!   We arrived in Rabulu (the location of our two week home-stay) last Monday after three bus rides that totaled about five hours of travel.  Luckily, once we arrived in the village, we were greeted with music and warmth, as well as a special “cava ceremony” where we got introduced to the… Read More

Currently in Flores

We arrived in the Isla de Flores, Guatemala yesterday in the afternoon. We found a hostile looking into the lake and happen to see multiple rainbows that evening. Around 6:30pm, the group grabbed dinner and for dessert, went for ice cream afterwards. This morning, a few of us did yoga and got breakfast at 8am. We had a few hours of free time afterwards before heading to San Andres for… Read More

Headed to the orphanage

About to be out of touch until around the 9th or 10th, hard to say for sure! Kiswahili lessons were so great and so helpful, we had some really amazing teachers. but we wrapped all that up on friday and will be heading to the orphanage tomorrow morning. Another long day of travels, but were all really looking forward to be getting out there!… Read More

Sarah’s Turn to Blog Here in Sikkim!

Hey this is Sarah! This week we had the amazing opportunity to spend time at Pangthang Junior High! We spent time with the students teaching them some of our western games such as Bob the Weasel, Ninja and Red Light/Green Light. The students got a chance to practice their English to interact with our group members. The students were awesome and caught on really quickly to the rules. They were… Read More

The First 8 Days!!!

Hello everyone! Sorry we haven´t been able to blog as we have had an eventful start to our trip. We started orientation in Coban, Guatemala where we got the chance to get to know each other as well as immerse ourselves into the central american culture. We stayed at an excellent hostel that should be famous for their pancakes and coffee. Our stay there was a wonderful way to begin… Read More

Updates from the Himalayan Foothills

Namste from Sikkim, Thanks to all that are following the blog and posting comments.  We will continue to leave the storytelling to our fearless crew of Alice, Ellen, Sarah, Tully, Kaila, and Sterling.  However, we did want to chime in with a couple of quick updates. First, word of landslides and road closures in Sikkim may or may not have made the news in the States.  In any case, we… Read More

Trekking in the Himalayas

With gear loaded into our packs, we headed up the mountain from McLeod Ganj, following our leader Aneil-ji. Over the course of 4 hours, we walked about 9km, at a seemingly brisk pace, though Aneilji’s wife and family soundly beat us to camp. Our time may have been lengthened by several stops for passing cows and the rain-turned-hail storm that caught several of us huddled under a tree, as well… Read More

Jambo!

Hi Everyone! We’ve been here just over a week now, so hard to believe. Feels like we’ve been here so much longer then that already, we’ve done so much moving around. We landed late in Dar es Salaam after a long delay in Amsterdam. The next day we drove to Morogoro to start orientation. We started with a scavenger hunt in the city, where we actually tried to do our… Read More

Screaming kids and burning bodies

Hello all! Alice here with a super duper awesome update. We left Delhi for Sikkim on Sunday. After a long travel day first on a plane then a Jeep, we arrived at our home-stay just in time for some delicious tea and a hot meal. The next day was a designated rest day, but we did very little of that (who needs rest?). We headed into the nearby town called… Read More

Arriving in Fiji!

Hongi group arrived in Nadi, Fiji early Saturday morning. We traveled by bus to Tubakula Beach Bungalow. We immediately dropped our things off and decided we wanted food so we needed to go grocery shopping in town. We headed off to the nearest town, Sigatoka, got our groceries and then were paired into two’s and started a scavenger hunt. Certain tasks on the scavenger hunt included; visiting the Hindu temple,… Read More

The MAYANS have arrived!!

Hello everyone, Just wanted to take a moment, and a quick breather, to say hello to all of our followers out there.  It´s been a busy first week that started off with a few bumps and potholes.  We had a misplaced passport before getting on our first flight from PDX to SFO, a student whose flight was so horribly delayed they couldn´t meet the group to fly down to Central… Read More

Team Africa is in Iringa!

Mambo Vipi (Whats up?) Friends and Family, This is Drew Edwards over at HQ writing to let you all know that the group arrived safely in Iringa yesterday and are just starting their Kiswahili language classes. I heard from Lauren and Adam yesterday and they told me the group was doing AMAZING! Though they all attempted to post some blogs while on their scavenger hunt, for some reason the blog… Read More