Hello there, friends!
So after an intense 8 days at the Deer Park Institute in Bir, the group arrived safe and sound to Amritsar 2 nights ago! Bir is a scenic little town that’s about a 4 hour bus ride from McLeod Ganj, with only one main road. Like McLeod Ganj, it too is occupied by Indians and Tibetans alike. Our days at the Deer Park campus were spent meditating… Read More
Final days in Calcutta/Kolkotta: some saw the museum (charging 150 rupes for foreigners and 15 for locals), some visited Kali temple or Victoria memorial, and some stayed in bed with rumbling tummies and/or fever, regrettably missing out on some of the excitement of the city.
On our “day off” from the Mother home, we scheduled a boat tour at the Sunderban tiger reserve (home to the largest mangrove forest IN… Read More
Hello again! I just want to say right off for everyone back at home that we as a group are high and dry, and completely safe here in northern Thailand. As you may have already heard on the news, parts of Thailand are experiencing some of the worst flooding its seen in decades. Since July, Thailand has been enduring a series of tropical storms. Due to the unusually long and… Read More
Good news: We all made it through the trek alive! Even the crew members of the metaphorical ¨sinking row boat¨ (Mariya, Abbie, Callie…)
On the first day we walked from dawn till dusk, and beyond. Night-hiking through foggy jungles with our headlamps was fun, however crossing over a raging river via two ¨bridges¨ consisting of a few unsteady logs was not. To depict how confident of the bridges we were:… Read More
Hello again from the Carpe Diem crew! It’s hard to believe that we’re already back in Chiang Mai, after our five day long stay at Sam Fan orphanage in Samoeng. The 2 and a 1/2 hour ride north to the orphanage was a long and windy one, but well worth the car sickness. We quickly settled in after the fist day, helping the kids out with many of their daily… Read More
Ozzy and Mike giving a quick update. Well, our time on the farm has come to a close. Over the course of the week we continuted doing odd jobs, such as building fences, more hole digging, and of course feeding and moving calves. Everybody loved the farm expereince, and we will take away so much knowledge. We appreciate the White family for hosting us for this wonderful week. While we… Read More
The last few days have mainly been R&R time outside of Arusha on the Usa River. We have been staying with Mze Pete and Mama Charlotte Oneal, both former members of the black panther party. They have taken us into their UAACC (United American Alliance Community Center) that they established in the 90’s to better the community through education. While here, we were able to watch movies, participate in Yoga,… Read More
Mambo! After our stay at the Maasai village we headed off for a three day safari. We began at Lake Manyara Park for our first taste of African wildlife. Here we saw zebras, elephants and giraffes. The next day after a treacherous three hour drive we reached the Serengeti. In the morning we saw the first human footprints at the Serengeti museum. In the afternoon, during the safari, we saw… Read More
Hello parents, family, friends, and anyone reading this!
The next part of our adventure was a wonderfully cramped train ride to Bodhgaya. We had ten seats reserved for ten people…and all of our bags. We ended up getting six seats for all of us and our things, but only after a dispute with other people about who was supposed to be where. Thank goodness the train ride was only a… Read More
On a train from Bodhgaya to Calcutta, somwhere between consiousness and dream-state, one of the eight students writes:
Fall asleep now
And get your shit
Stolen.
Succumb to gravity + eyelid
And the small
brown man
who is sitting on his
flip flops
next to you
pretending to sleep
will
steal
yourshit
so ifiwereyou
i’d stay
eyewide
staring, as you are
at the
dirty blue wall
P.S.
Guess who!
Love,
… Read More
Everyone has adjusted to farm life amazingly quickly. Everyone has a different job everyday: Milkers are out of the house by 5am and heading down to heard the cows in and then begin the process of milking 300 cows before breakfast. The cows walk onto a giant rotating circular platform and the “Cups On” milker uses suction to attach 4 cups to the cow which milk her as she rotates… Read More
Ozzy and Mike reporting from the farm in Takapau, down towards the eastern shore of the North Island. We headed to the farm between 8 and 9:30 AM on Thursday morning, and most of the group did not even arrive at the farm until 7 PM that night. Luckily, our bus rides down to the farm consisted of amazing scenery, knitting, good sushi for some, and an incredible waterfall in… Read More
Saturday morning shopping started early! Banana pancakes and french toast to begin the day well. By 8 the market was booming. Rows of vendors stretch as far as you can see down the busy streets. It ranged from pure silver jewelry to alpaca sweaters and striped pants. The art was beautiful and everything was colorful. As the day went on it got warmer and busier. The whole SAM group bought… Read More
fun trivia about thailand !
1. the biggest exports of thailand are:
1. Rice 2. Shrimp 3. tin 4. Diamonds
2. Bangkok is the hottest capital city in the world
3. Fathers/Mothers day is celebrated on the king and queens birthday… Read More
Oops! This was meant to be posted before the last update being an account of Fiji… We made it! One country down, two to go. Yesterday we landed here in Auckland, NZ, and were reintroduced to warm water! Fiji was amazing, especially Nananu, the village where we stayed for two of the three weeks in country. they were some of the most welcoming, giving people any of us have ever,… Read More
Hello All!
Let me start off by saying, the trek truly was incredible! This is what happened………..
The first day we left in the early afternoon to meet up with our guide Anil and his team of 5 or so men. With our backpacks full of supplies and lots of water, we made our way up to Triund (2,975 meters. about 9,818 feet), a beautiful place, with a few mountain… Read More
Amigos y Familia!! I miss you all so much, it has been two weeks since we were able to acess the internet so I have a lot to fill you in on!
We just spent the last two weeks in the Western Andes Intag Region of the Cloud Forest in a tiny town of less than 200 people called Pucara. We spent our time there in homestays living with local… Read More
Amigos y Familia!! I miss you all so much, it has been two weeks since we were able to acess the internet so I have a lot to fill you in on!
We just spent the last two weeks in the Western Andes Intag Region of the Cloud Forest in a tiny town of less than 200 people called Pucara. We spent our time there in homestays living with local… Read More
AUCKLAND IS AWESOME. Many of us are already planning an extended period of stay in the future, looking at what apartments we’d living in, etc. It was as if we got off the plane and entered into a different world from the one we had been living in for the past three weeks in Fiji. As we drove to our hotel we were all in awe looking at these surroundings… Read More
