Dominican Republic Living

So I’ve been in the DR for a little over a month now and it has been amazing. Ive been able to do so much in my short time here. Ive tutored students, coached basketball, surfed, snorkled, danced(in the loosest definition of the word), had conversations in spanish, and even took a short slightly illegal trip to Cuba(lets all just agree not to say anything,ok?). This has… Read More

Free Travel and Ohana Amani’s

Attention ladies and gentlemen: This will be a LONG blog post. Consider yourself warned.   Our first week in Tanzania, we were handed a map and a budget and told to plan six days ofour trip. With little guidelines other than nothing illegal and no leaving the country (though we pushed the latter), we dove in, eventually arriving on a pretty awesome plan, if I do say so myself.    The day… Read More

Saludos de Honduras!

Hello one and all, greetings from Honduras Child Alliance of El Porvenir,  sandwiched between the beautiful Caribbean and rolling mountain ranges. I live beachfront on the last stretch of main road, the only paved piece in Honduras.There are many different sections of El Porvenir that expand from there, and HCA trys to reach into these different parts of the community with multiple programs, and teaching locations. I’ve been here just… Read More

Two Different Worlds

Hello everyone! Easten (aka Esteban) here blogging from Guatemala City. A complete 180 from where we all were just a week ago, sitting in Pasac, home to just 1500 people , we are now residing in a capital city home to 3 million people. We spent the rest of our time in Pasac playing in a local futbol match, which we won thanks to great passing by Jordan and clinical… Read More

waterfall canyoning

Canyoning was a mindblowing and wet, adrenaline-filled adventure, and none of us will ever forget it. It could be described as white water rafting without the raft, or pure insanity. On the way to the waterfalls, we met our canyoning guide; Tang. A wonderfully crazy guy who would provide training, and comic relief throughout the day.  When we arrived, we were stylishly outfitted in harnesses, helmets, gloves and bright orangelifejackets,… Read More

and the Adventure continues!

Hola, buen dia!(: Namaste! Hello, family and friends of SAM 2014! I apologize for the delay/procrastination on this blog post. These last couple of weeks has been quite a turn of events. Amazon week turned into student directed travel week and and student directed travel week turned into a volunteering week in Pisac and Cusco. It´s been quite hectic for the leaders and Carpe Diem but everyone´s been pretty mellow… Read More

Kampot, Cambodia

Imagine a river. a tropical river where the sun is so very hot but in mere seconds the water can cool your body by at least 10 degrees. it is a coastal river, rising and falling with the tides of the Gulf of Thailand. there are palm mangroves reaching 30 or so feet into the damblue sky speckled with pieces of floating cotton candy. the air was sweet and filled… Read More

student directed travel!!

HELLO!! it’s Brook here, and I’m going to write to you about this amazing first week of student directed travel… We started our journey in Ha Tien, where we crossed the border from Cambodia into Vietnam, officially acknowledging Topher and Julia as our new students, and Paige and Karenna as our new leaders. The ride itself to the border was uneventful, aside from the lovely rain shower that cooled us… Read More

Our week with CVA!

Hello friends, family, and random readers! Well, we’re back in Adelaide! We just recently finished doing conservation work with the Conservation Volunteers of Australia. I think I speak for all of us when I say it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience. The week started out with us being divided into two groups. Me, Liz, Conor, Hannah, and Matt with Gwen as our leader in one… Read More

Free Travel Week? In Puno….

This is Kelsey, your blogger for last week! I am sorry this blog is so late. I got sick but I am feeling much better now! Last week we were unfortunately unable to start our adventure to the amazon due to riots on the road there. So we started free travel and headed out to Puno! We got on the bus and arrived later than we had thought but with… Read More

RUAHA

After a few nice free days in Iringa filled with shopping and fast internet we were ready to begin our safari. We were all stoked to be going to Ruaha National Park, the second largest National Park in Africa! Our journey began hopping in a sick Land Rover Safari Station Wagon and a three hour drive to Ruaha. We all fell in love with Iringa yogurt so we bought a… Read More

BACK from their projects…

Hongi group is back in town after volunteering with Conservation Volunteers of Australia in two different locations.   More to come, but the group wanted to share a couple group pictures of them receiving their volunteer certificates from CVA. They will be updating the blog over the next couple of days.  Great job Team Hongi!… Read More

One Big Family

Buenos tardes amigos y familia, I sit underneath the Aola on Mystical Yoga Farm in, Lake Atitlan, bundled up in a hammock looking out across the sun slowly setting. Thanks to Easten, I am joined by the company of the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man, for the past hour, and although I have only finished the preface, )Which I was later told you are not actually supposed to read)… Read More

Mystical Yoga Farm in Guatemala!

I have only been at the Mystical Yoga Farm for a month now but I can already say with some confidence that I will remember my time here as one of the the formative experiences of my young life. I came here with the intention of seeing and experiencing my life in a new way and I have already done that more than I ever expected. There is so much… Read More

A Week to Remember

Habari to everyone back home and all over this beautiful world! This is Mackenzie, typing here in Africa, or, to be more specific, in Iringa cafe in Iringa, Tanzania! We have traveled back from a long week of hard and intense work. It has been the hardest week (physically) for everyone by far. We were located in Mufindi, where we had the opportunity to work with Fox NGO and see… Read More

Our time at NHCC

Hi everyone back home, it’s Emma here, and I just wanted to share a little about our experience at NHCC in Cambodia, so you all can hear about our experience. During our time in Cambodia, we spent 7 days at New Hope for Cambodian Children, an orphanage for children that are HIV positive. NHCC is an incredible organization that was started by a couple from Texas, and our week there… Read More

Creative writing about Thailand

Hello everybody! This is Karenna! As a CDL we learnedpracticed about creative writing and we all made a piece about our time in Thailand. Here is my piece about the trek we took in our first couple weeks if our journey so long ago: The very familiar weight of my pack hugs and caresses my shoulders and hips as we begin our accent into unfamiliar yet homelike nature. As my… Read More

Zorbing, Conserving and Kiwi birds

New Zealand has been amazing! We finished up our student led travel week was spent in a town called Rotorua. While there, we were lucky enough to see the legendary Kiwi birds! They are very funny looking but also strangely cute! They are pretty interesting animals- they’re nocturnal so when you see them you have to look at them in the dark! We even got to see a baby kiwi… Read More