Quito

Archive South America- INTI
Hello family and friends, Well, just to let you guys know we just finished up our first week in Quito, Ecuador. The first night we stayed in a hostal together then the next morning we started our spanish classes. It was kinda an intense first day because we got split up right away and took a test for like an hour. This test would determine who our teacher would be.… Read More

Free Travel

Archive South America- INTI
We just returned from our five days of free travel. What a load of traveling for five days. It all started out leaving the spanish school in arequipa in the afternoon on a wednesday. we all packed into taxi´s and headed to the bus staion. we took a more local bus at 3 in the afetrnoon. so the drive was supposed to take five to five and a half hours,… Read More

Safari Adventures

Archive East Africa- KIFARU
Hey guys its Camille and Aura and we have some great stuff to tell you about. The Serengeti and the Ngorongoro crater were amazing. We started heading to The Serengeti from Mwanza it was a long jeep ride but we got to the front gate and ate lunch. During lunch monkeys came so close to us that we could almost touch them we got loads of pictures and it made… Read More

Breath.

Archive India- SHANTI
Tashidelek. Once Again. We have arrived back at the beloved foothills of the Himalayas in the teeny town of Bir. We’re staying at the Deer Park Institute, which is Buddhist sanctuary after our crazed filled Diwali few days in Amritsar… We had just come off a nice 5 hour train, from Varanasi to Amritsar. The landscape was different up there. There were turbans of every color filling the streets. And,… Read More
Archive India- SHIVA
Hey everybody! We are writing to you as we near our final days in Varanasi after a delightful week. We have all been quite busy here in Varanasi a.k.a. Benares a.k.a. the City of Lights a.k.a. the City of Temples a.k.a. the City of Learning a.k.a. the culture capital of India. Indeed, we have been lucky enough to catch glimpses of the reasoning behind all these highly appropriate nicknames. The… Read More

A delayed Gibbon Experience

Archive Southeast Asia- SABAI
Hello avid and probably confused readers! I would like to apologize for this late entry on our Gibbon Experience as it was almost assuradly not quite as recent as the timing of this blog would indicate! try about 2 weeks or so back in time. In any case we all enjoyed the Gibbon Experience immensely. Trekking through hilly and steamy jungle terrain was not nearly as high in quantity as… Read More
Archive Central America- QUETZAL
Hello everyone,I know it has been a while, we are just so busy, it is hard to make time to wirte on the blog. So let me catch everyone up on our latest travels. After leaving Xela, we spent a few days in the amazing city of Antigua. Im pretty sure everyone found something to love about the city, whether it be the subway(the sub shop), the local markets, or… Read More

From the Golden Temple to India’s holiest city.

Archive India- SHIVA
We continued our internships regularly in Mcleod until the evening of the 21st, when we had a speaker talk to us about the issue of Tibet’s occupation by the communist Chinese government. We learned a great deal and even purchased some of his writings at the end of the presentation. Afterwards we had a brief ceremony in which we presented our thanks to our host mothers along with a traditional… Read More

Resting up in Kampala..

Archive East Africa- KIFARU
Hello! David and Clairen are here this time, writing about our fun and relaxing weekend in Kampala before heading to Tanzania! We spent our last few days in Uganda tucked away in our now very familiar Backpackers Hostel. It was definitely very nice to have down time to sleep, read, and mentally prepare ourselves for the next leg of our amazing journey. Our days were mostly filled with downtown excursions… Read More

THE GREAT OUTDOORS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Archive South Pacific- WALKABOUT
So, we are currently in Lyttleton, which is right outside of Christchurch. We have a nice kitchen and comfortable beds, which is awesome after two insane weeks of intense outdoor activity! To kick off our adventures, we went to the OPC, as was mentioned in the previous blog. The objective of OPC is to give students a chance to explore their leadership abilities and to push themselves outside of their… Read More
Archive India- SHANTI
Namaste from the forest of bliss….. also known as Varanasi or Banaras.We have grown accustomed to our daily routine in Varanasi which includes Hindi class in the morning, followed by a delicious meal cooked by Shantiji (the cook in our hostel), and then a slu of internships and exploration. This morning however, we strayed from our routine and woke up at 5:00 a.m.. We groggily headed down to the Ganges… Read More

Arequipa

Archive South America- INTI
Hello Everyone! Sorry this is late getting up, like all of our blogs have been. Let´s rewind a little bit to our week in Arequipa, which started 2 wednesday´s ago. We were in another language school for a week, this time in a hostal called the Casa de Avila. It was run by a man named Armando, who was on top of it allt he time. He was great at… Read More

Smack through Bodhgaya + into Varanasi

Archive India- SHANTI
Namaste other worlds! We have left Calcutta with precise memories and sincere experience. After our overnight train from the city we entered into the state of Bihar ,home of Bodhgaya and one of the poorest states in India. The state is currently recovering from severe flooding, but the area we were in was fine. Upon being so formally greeted by the packs of taxi drivers and by-standers, we were on… Read More

From the Ashram to the Home of Many Tibetans

Archive India- SHIVA
Namaste everyone! We happily left Delhi long ago to journey to the wonderful land of Rishikesh/Laxman Jhulla, located right on the banks of the mighty Ganga. Our first train experience was quite luxurious, complete with padded individual seats, air conditioning, and food service. Once arriving in Laxman Jhulla, we all dispersed for accommodation hunting. Carrie and Amy found a lovely guesthouse on a side street off of a somewhat busier… Read More

Chicacnab and Xela

Archive Central America- QUETZAL
Hello to friends and family! Apologies for not getting a blog posted sooner, but I will try to catch you up as best I can on the past couple weeks! After leaving San Andres, the group headed for a small city called Coban. We stayed at an awesome hostel called Casa Luna for a night, and got to spend a bit of time exploring the city and checking out the… Read More
Archive South America- INTI
Alright well I know your all dying to hear about our incredible Machu Picchu trek so here it is for ya. We started out early thursday morning and got on a van and headed about 3 hours to Mollepata, ate a nice little breakfast, then headed another 2 hours to hour drop off spot. We all unloaded the van, steri-penned our water and began the journey. We hiked a hot… Read More
Archive South America- INTI
Alright, so, after such a delay, finally I am able to post this blog about our stay in Cusco. We all had such a crazy experience in the jungle, and even though our time seemed short, I think that we were all anxious to get back to some clean clothes, internet, and hot showers. As soon as we arrived in Cusco that night, we immediately set off to find a… Read More

Jungle Excursion!

Archive Southeast Asia- SABAI
Greetings faithful blog minions! For the past week, and a day on either side of the week for rest, our motley crew have been occupied with our group trekking choice of THE NAM HA CHALLENGE. This trek, picked from a website given to us by our trip leaders early in our trip, was a 7 day excursion into the jungles of luang namtha and around the Namtha national park. The… Read More
Archive India- SHANTI
Greetings from Kolkata round two! We are on our final day in Kolkata and it has been quite an excited 10 days here. As soon as we arrived here it was obvious that there was a strong connection to the city with the whole group. Everyone seems to just love it here. Our usual schedule for the day is as follows: we wake up at around six oclock and try… Read More

Soft Power Education….

Archive East Africa- KIFARU
Hey all. Rachel and Jessie here to tell you all about our SECOND week in Jinja. We worked for a NGO based in Britain called (we told you earlier!) Soft Power Education which concentrates in “beautifying” educational facilities and providing extra curricular activites not often available in the Ugandan public education system. As the debriefer/coordinator, Shaz, that led us through it called it…they’re brilliant. We were based in a small… Read More