Blog

Inspiring expansion

In 1992, at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 12 year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki delivered a passionate speech generative of the quality of moment when time seems to stand still, and cannot help but imagine a large booming voice ringing out with a command of, “LISTEN!”.  She spoke on behalf of a small group of children united in the struggle to defend our earth home.  Her message was a… Read More

Final “Official” Post

  Well we’ve come to that point when the students wrap up their trip, they fly home, and the leaders regain a sense of what it’s like to exist without a troupe of amazing friends/students to hang with. ~Sigh~ The trip has ended and we’ve all sat back I’m sure to recall the last leg of the trip: What a fantastic way to end Australia. We flew from Adelaide to… Read More

Farewells and hellos

  In honor of the amazing, unforgettable past three months, I just wanted to share this picture of our beautiful family in our awesome MORP outfits that we got for each other 🙂 We sure are a good-looking group! We finished up our trip with delicious Indian food (per tradition), some good ol’ Essence and Hawk and Prey, and a few awesome reflections on the beach by candlelight. We also… Read More

Out of Africa

3 months of intentional travel and service-learning – check!  All of our students are currently in transit, on the way to their next adventures.  As leaders, it has been an absolute honor to learn with and from this extraordinary group of individuals.  To all of you at home, thank you so much for your support — the love of friends and family is invaluable while on the road.  We also… Read More

Every Adventure Must Come to an End

Hello all blog followers, First off, I would like to thank you for following our blog throughout the trip and for commenting and showing interest in our many adventures.  It has meant a lot to us 🙂 Now, on to the blog: Monday morning we woke up super early and headed out to Fitzroy Island!  We spent Monday diving and snorkeling in the GREAT BARRIER REEF! It was breath takingly… Read More

Final Blog Post EVER

We are all enjoying our last few hours on the beach together so of course no one wants to drag themselves to the computer to write a lot! But rest assured that we have been enjoying Roatan and all it has to offer. We are all now officially scuba certified, so a few of us took advantage by going on a night dive last night and/or a shipwreck dive this… Read More

Machu Picchu

Hello from Cuzco!! We have just arrived back to the Incan Capitol last night after an amazing (and completely exhausting) 5 day trek to Machu Picchu. It all started on Thursday night when our tour guide, the legendary Antonio walked in the door of our hostel to give us an overview for the next couple days and a warning to be ready at 6:00 am the next morning. So there … Read More

Bridge to Restoration

One of the more powerful days I experienced as a Carpe Diem educator was along our trek in Guatemala toward Lake Atitlan.  After a full day of hiking up and down and around gorgeous mountain landscapes and humble communities, we still had yet to arrive at our campsite.  Our group rustled through our packs to don our headlamps, and began a steep descent through lush tropical forest with weary legs… Read More

Scuba

It’s crazy that we are on our last adventure here in Roatan Honduras. The trip has been awesome and we have all learned so much. Now here we are in our final days getting scuba certified. We all love it so much thus far. We’ve already been on three dives and seen so much including three sea turtles! We also saw a green moray eel and many more fish and… Read More

Free Travel!

Every semester towards the end of the trip all the Carpe students have 4 to 5 days of free travel that they themselves plan every aspect of, from accommodation to transportation to the activities. This semester we wanted to step outside the norm and were feeling very inspired by service so we decided to search for a service project that we could embark on instead of seeing a tourist attraction.… Read More

Chenrezig

What up family and friends!! It’s Zackariah here coming at you with this weeks blog update! First off I’d like to apologize for delaying in posting this weeks update, I take ownership for the delay. Now on to business. Last week we finished up our final day on the Groovy Grape Tour of the Outback. On Monday we went on an incredible morning hike threw the Kings Canyon. To start… Read More

The Outback

Hello All, First off, I think the group will agree that Groovy Grape was definitely a memorable experience. Not just by the things we saw but also the people that we were with. Our tour guide, Leith, was quite the interesting character and full of energy! A couple mornings we were able to experience him with coffee… almost frightening how energetic he was. Anyways, we started off our journey in… Read More

Goodbye Turtles, Hello San Jose

Our week at the turtle project is officially over after one turtle sighting and lots of sightings of other critters, including a scorpion in our dorm room last night. Our day in Samara was ideal, allowing all of us to enjoy swimming in some calm ocean water until the high tide chased us off of the sand. After visiting what is now our favorite chain smoothie joint, we headed back… Read More

Turtle Project

Sorry we´ve been off the map for a few days…we have been on a turtle conservation reserve on a relatively remote beach for the past week. Although our conditions have been a bit rustic, we´ve really been enjoying helping out the project. During the day, we do various work around the project- painting fences, tending to the volunteer center and garbage pickup. Then the fun starts at night! Each of… Read More
Hello from Cusco otra vez! We’ve survived the jungle! After returning to our hostel in Puerto Maldonado from Robin’s jungle abode, we all parted ways to drop off our pretty foul-smelling laundry and to find some food. We finally  reunited with Lizzy and Meghan (think  “chariots of fire”), who had prepared everybody some pretty bomb iced lemonade. That night we all went out to one last group dinner with Robin… Read More

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle

We have just returned from an amazing four night stay in the forest. Not just the forest—the Amazon Jungle. It was incredible. Everything is so much richer there: the air, the smells, the soil, the life. It truly was a sensory overload; and not everything we felt, heard and smelt was totally positive: the mosquitoes, bees and flies buzzing incessantly in our ears, the constant need to scratch our legs,… Read More

Bolivia – Land of bloqueos, illness and insanely beautiful landscapes

((para ver mas fotos, scroll down!)) ¡Hola comunidad Carpe Diem! It´s Megan (SAM Fall 2011) blogging from Cochabamba, Bolivia, my home for the past casi dos meses y me voy a quedar para dos meses mas 🙂 I am volunteering through Sustainable Bolivia (http://www.sustainablebolivia.org/) with Centro de Apoyo Integral Carcelario y Comunitario (CAICC). According to SB´s website (http://www.sustainablebolivia.org/CAICC.html)… CAICC serves children and adolescents whose parents are… Read More