La Finca

Archive South America- INTI
Hola from Baños! Last week we stayed at a plaintain farm (finca) on the coast of Ecuador. The finca is owned by Juan Carlos, a very nice man with a great personality, and his family. Our mornings were spent learning Spanish from the entire family, split into various groups to study at various places (mostly outside!) at the farm. In the afternoons we did various activities, including visiting a beautiful… Read More

Goodbye Pasac, Hello Xela!

Archive Central America- MAYA
Hello friends and family of the fabulous maya group, since we last updated the blog we have had many adventures. Thursday we explored the beautiful Ixtacapa river, which is about an hours hike from Pasac. After our swim we flew kites that our wonderful guides made for us. We were surprised when they let the kites go, and learned that this is a Mayan tradition symbolizing the release of a… Read More

Bula!!

Archive South Pacific- HONGI
Bula bula everyone! We’ve been in Fiji for a little over a week and we are loving it! During the first four days we stayed in pure paradise. The Mango Bay Resort was the perfect place for orientation and to get to know everyone. We left the resort and was a little nervous, but definitely excited about our home stay families. We were very humbled when we saw the homes… Read More

Hongi Group Week One!!!!!

Archive South Pacific- HONGI
Bula Bula from Rowasa village! Day 10 here in Fiji and we are loving every minute of it. Our group project is coming along great! We have finished on walkway already and are in the process of completing our second. Everyone in the village is super excited and impressed on how fast we completed the first walkway. Not only are we having a great time with everyone in the village,… Read More

Soft Power Education

Archive East Africa- NKULA
Jambo everyone back home! Fred here with the weekly update (: The past week has been an incredible learning experience interacting with everyone at the Kalungami Primary School outside of Jinja Town. We worked very closely with Soft Power Education, a British organization with several programs ranging from school constructions to school refurbishment programs. We worked on the school refurbishment program and helped to paint an entire school building inside… Read More

Rice, Beans, and New Friends

Archive Central America- QUETZAL
Hola, Anna Rodis here, your Bilbo Bloggins for this week. SFO –>Nicaragua We knew we were in Nicaragua when our plane landed and water vapor spewed out of the ceiling vents. Stepping off the plane, we felt the hot stickiness in the air outside. Josh, the redhead, Spanish-speaking Texan, greeted us at the airport and took us to our temporary home—Casa Nica in Masaya. We all piled into a van… Read More

Hopi Days

Archive Indigenous America
Here we are, already one week into our stay on Hopi land, and already it seems we have been here for a lot longer. Since arriving here a week ago we have been getting are hands dirty, or rather muddy, working on a natural building project at the Hopi Tutskwa permaculture. Lilian and Jacobo, the founders and caretakers of this project,  are building a new house on their land and… Read More

Swahili lessons, Southern Highlands and Good times!

Archive East Africa- KIFARU
Mambo friends and family! After a busy three days in the city of Morogoro, we traveled into the Southern Highlands to the River Valley campsite. As our bus drove through Nikumi National Park, we had our first glimpses of African wildlife, including elephants, giraffes, monkeys, and zebras. As the bus ride continued, we wove our way through beautiful mountains until we reached our campsite. This past week, we spent our… Read More

The Thai Experience

Archive Southeast Asia- SABAI
Hello to everyone back home, this is Blake from the SE Asia group. At this point we’ve been in Thailand for almost 2 weeks now.The first week we were traveling through Chiang Mai, adventuring through the city. While we were there we saw some amazing wats (temples where the monks study) went to incredible night markets and even munched on some fried crickets and worms! Yum!        … Read More

Bringing home the trophy

Archive South Pacific- HONGI
We’ve now been in our Fijian village for 4 days and everyone is doing really well so far.  Yesterday we traveled with the village rugby team into town and cheered them on as they won the league championship. Go Green Go!  The group will be heading back into town on Thursday for a visit to the sugarcane mill – stay tuned for an update on Thursday. Much love to all… Read More

Finally Here

Archive East Africa- KIFARU
Three full days us traveling got us all from Portland to JFK to Johannesburg to Dar es Salaam and finally to Morogoro where we had our first chance to rest and take in the beauty of Africa. We learned a lot in Morogoro, and most of that came from our leaders, but on our last day, they paired us up and sent us off into the city to explore. It… Read More

Seize The Day?

Archive South Pacific- WALKABOUT
Hey all you beautiful people reading this, It’s emily, coming to you from Raki Raki Fiji. Not so sure as to where we left off our even started, but this week has been something! We arrived to our village (Vatusekiyasawa) on Monday and all moved in with our homestay families. The village is smaller and has about 317 people in the whole thing. We spend a lot of our days… Read More

Trekking in the Himalayas!

Archive India- SHIVA
Hello all! We are all showered and cleaned up as we just returned home to McLeod Ganj after five days spent trekking in the beautiful Himalayas. We started out from our guest house in town, met up with our guide Anil and began the ascent right from town! The first night was spent at Triund where we were all taken away by the incredible views, delicious food, and steaming chai,… Read More

Party in Pasac

Archive Central America- MAYA
Hi friends and family! Shane and Maya here, we were assigned the role ¨Bilbo Bloggins¨ for this week, which means that we are responsible for the official group blog! We were all assigned roles, some are in the big leagues, and involve figuring out lodging and transportation for the group, and there are other jobs, like ours, that aren’t quite so serious! These will switch weekly though, so expect to… Read More

There Are No Words

Archive Central America- MAYA
If asked to describe these past days, this one in particular, I am not sure I would be able to respond. Today, we woke up, again, to the sounds a rooster makes at the crack of dawn. We gathered as a group for breakfast, telling stories of our nights and dreams. After our bellies were full, we started walking to a nearby village. There, we explored an open air market… Read More

Nkula’s first volunteer project

Archive East Africa- NKULA
We’ve celebrated the completion of our 4-day in-country orientation and set out to travel overland through Uganda. Becky, our first team captain, and Mia, our transportation coordinator, blew our minds as they casually bargained for the best Matatu (taxi-bus) rates. They pretty much got us from doorstep to doorstep without even breaking a sweat….a HUGE accomplishment for two people who’ve only been in the country for 5 days! It’s hard… Read More

Local town!

Archive South Pacific- HONGI
Bula!Today Gracie and I are exploring the local Fijian City. All the old buildings are run down and smelly but the people are beautiful and would offer us their lives. Every now and than we get pressured into buying jewelry that we dont want, but in the end we love. We got very dope looking sulus that matches the outfits we have packed and we are super excited to explore… Read More