Follow the Journey

Written By Vanessa & Belle Greetings from Vanessa and Belle When we arrived at our new placement (a local organic farm), Katie gasped at the site of a refrigerator. Evan, our host, graciously prepared a covered kitchen and living area. We spent our first day getting aquatinted with the land through a short tour and setup of our camp site in the fruit forest. In the afternoon, we had the… Read More

Written by Ty & Katie Aloha from Ty and Katie, We started off our week by working with Kia’i, continuing our work on the stream pulling weeds. Nicco helped organize us when we pulled large weeds using a rope. Ben then heroically worked during lunch to machete the remaining weeds in the stream. That afternoon we hung out at camp and Gus and Cooper built a huge fire. On Wednesday,… Read More

Written By Ben & Nicco Apologies for the delay on the blog we have been very busy and without wifi for the last two weeks. When we left off we were close to finishing up with our local hosts and were starting to learn to surf! On the 28th of October we had a beautiful closing ceremony with Ekolu, Ua, Lizzie, Jackson, Makayla, Duane, Karin, and Joy the dog to… Read More

  Written By Aleia & Loden Aloha from Aleia and Loden! Following our week of orientation, we jumped into week two on Maui ready to work hard and play even harder. In connecting with our first local partner organization, we began with morning protocol, a practice which asks permission of a space to work and grow within it. Ua, our instructor, would blow his conch shell in four directions and… Read More

Written By Loden and Nicco Driving along the coastal Honoapiilani highway on our way to the campsite, we sat jetlagged and charged with anticipation around our makeshift lantern crafted from Nathan’s headlight and our value-size jug of dish soap. Our tents and makeshift kitchen cast shadows in the bright light of the moon. Over pizza we heard each other’s voices, which we were able to match to faces and names… Read More

Dear Carpe Diem Fall 21 Aloha friends and families: The Aloha group arrived safely in Maui and spent their first night at Camp Olowalu. They will begin orientation this morning, getting to know one another, setting goals/intentions, and exploring the beauty of the island. We wish them well in their upcoming journey and are excited for future updates/photos/blog posts! All the best, Carpe Diem HQ… Read More

Aloha to our Carpe Diem students joining us this Fall 2021 in Hawai’i! This is Rachel and Nathan, your Overseas Educators, and we are so excited to be joining you on the beautiful islands of Maui and the Big Island for the next few months. We are currently in Portland, Oregon, home base of Carpe Diem Education, where we have been training for our upcoming program. We’ve taken a deep… Read More

Dear team Aloha, What a journey these two months have been with you all! It hasn’t taken us long to start missing you all. We are packing up at Olowalu, right where everything began and ended on our wild ride, reminiscing on some of our favorite memories from our time together. It was only a few days prior to your departure that a few of you finally figured out your… Read More

Written By Mackenzie & Clare Continuing from where we left off last week, we’ll start with last Sunday! The group hit the beach for a dip and played around in some super fun waves! On Monday, we worked in the greenhouse and garden before our tour of the bamboo farm by Rich, one of our hosts. After lunch we learned about how they had managed to turn the initially empty… Read More

Written By Lachlan & Gemma Aloha, Its Lachlan and Gemma from the aloha group! This week was one of introspection and self discovery. We went to the Sacred Garden to do our meditation retreat where Danielle, who we spent time with previously at the organic farm, led the retreat. Deep meditation and yoga starting at 7 am, then six hours of reflection, finished off by another meditation at 6:30. It… Read More

Written By Ally and Sarah Aloha! We left off last week’s blog with one more free day before our last work week at the refuge. We took the opportunity to finally see Iao Valley, which is a popular site. It was a very short “hike” to see the “Iao Needle.” A brave few, Sarah, Dani, Chloe, Doug, and Anya, jumped into the frigid river. With time to spare, we went… Read More

Written By Dani Aloha everyone! This week we transitioned from Camp Olowalu to Waihe’e Refuge for some conservation work. We got all set up with the help of Kia’i our guide and facilitator for our time here. His name also happens to mean “guardian” which is very fitting, considering he lives on this land and takes care of it. We started on our first project which was installing rolls of… Read More

Written by Chloe and Justin Despite the rainy weather on Maui, this week was flooded with new learning opportunities and experiences for our group even if we needed to keep our rain jackets with us. On Sunday our group vans, Ronnie and Mabel climbed to the top of Poli Poli recreation area in Kula. we wound our way through eucalyptus and redwoods forests. In the second half of the hike… Read More

Written by Alexa & Clare This week began with a rainy campsite so we decided to take a day trip to the sunny Southside of Maui for a hike. We spent all day walking across volcanic rock along “King’s Highway” with gorgeous views of the ocean coast, even stopping a few times to take a dip in an oasis. On Monday, we learned about keeping bees and even got to… Read More

Written By Ashley and Gemma Aloha! Our first week began on an unsuspecting note of arrival dates due to the weather in Dallas. After officially gathering as a full group on Camp Olowalu, we dove right into orientation with lots of swimming, learning, beach time, camp exploration, and fun! One morning we went sea-kayaking from shore and snorkeled in the neighboring reefs. Two highlights from that morning were sightings of… Read More

Today we spent time in the town of Lahaina on a scavenger hunt…here are a few blog posts we’d like to share! Aloha! It’s been a great first week in Hawaii at Camp Olowalu! We’ve been living on the beach in tents and the weather‘s been absolutely perfect, except for some strong gusts of wind. Today we went snorkeling off of kayaks and saw some turtles up close. Last night… Read More

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