Hello friends and families!
This is Matt and Rachael, your OEs, writing our final semester blog post from the tropical paradise of Roatan, Honduras.
What a 3 months this has been! The time flew by and sometimes crawled. It feels like we have known each other forever and also like we were meeting in LAX yesterday. It is going to be strange breaking up this little family at the airport… Read More
Written By Rosalie As I’m writing this, we are heading into our final week together as a group after nearly three months of travel. Tomorrow, we leave Costa Rica, and I have to say that our last week here has been one of the most impactful, at least for me. Despite the many giant spiders I encountered and then willfully tried and failed to ignore (they remain seared into the… Read More
Hiya everyone!! Its Sydney Lou Who here, writing with the unsolicited help of Rachael and Hayden. Last week we spent 5 days working at the turtle project in the Nicoya Peninsula with Eduardo and Mancho and a host of others that included a group of German volunteers and Brazilian volunteers, so we took the opportunity to make lots of friends and annoy more people than just Matt and Rachael. We… Read More
After our six week adventure in Guatemala, we were finally able to make it to our first week in Costa Rica. Our first stop in this small Central American country starts in a small city called Turriabla. Smack dot in the middle of Costa Rica, Turrialba offers a whole variety of fun things for the gang to do. For the past few days the group has been obsessed with eating… Read More
Written By Lucia Hello! Lucia here with what we’ve been doing for the past two weeks. First we spent a week in El Paredon where we worked with La Choza Chula, a sustainable development organization dedicated to improving the community of El Paredon. They funded a school and they provide employment to many people in the community by offering tours around different parts of El Paredon. La Choza Chula gave… Read More
Officially one month in! We left Chico Mendez last week for our three day trek to the lake. It was a challenging trip but everyone worked really hard and it was also lots of fun. It was so rewarding to look up at a mountain knowing we had just climbed it that day! On the last day, we got to see an amazing view of the sunrise over the lake.… Read More
Hola everyone,
Hayden here, writing about our time in Quetzaltenango! (If you can’t quite say that you can call it Xela instead) We’ve spent the last week there, in the second-largest city in Guatemala and the home of the biggest parades and parties in the whole country (according to the locals). The focus of the week was practicing Spanish one-on-one with the great teachers at PLQ, but we also had… Read More
Hi everyone! This is Molly and Rachel signing in.
We spent this past week at La Escuela de la Montana, a spanish immersion school in a rural village in the mountains of Guatemala. The group was split into two groups, one with classes from 8am to 12pm and the other with classes from 1pm to 5pm. The classes were one on one and we ate our meals with host families,… Read More
We have all arrived in Guatemala, staying at the beautiful Earth Lodge near Antigua. We have been spending a lot of time getting to know each other, playing games, and learning more about the program. yesterday we went on a short hike and got to see an amazing view of the mountains and volcanos. Some of us got up early to see lava coming out of Fuego, one of the… Read More
After their overnight flight, we’re happy to report that the MAYA group has arrived in Guatemala. They are en route to their hostel where they are looking forward to having breakfast and diving into their orientation. They are enjoying getting to know one another and looking forward to these next three months of exploration, learning, and adventure! Stay tuned, as they will start to post their own updates here in… Read More
Dear Maya family and friends,
We wanted to update you and let you know that the Fall 2019 Central America group has arrived and united at LAX. The group will go through security and then dive into a few introduction and orientation activities led by their Overseas Educators, Rachael and Matt. The group will then embark on their flight to Guatemala and we will update you once they have arrived… Read More
Hola Team Maya!
This is the first post on the blog we will take turns writing for throughout the semester. The blog is a way to let friends and family know about our adventures, share experiences, opinions, and some photos.
This is Rachael and Matt writing from Portland. We are in the midst of training and prepping for our trip. We spent last week camping, doing team building activities with… Read More
That’s it! It’s a wrap. Al final. By now, students have traveled on to their respective places that they call home. Saying goodbye to them was bittersweet, sad to see them go but grateful that we were able to see them grow in many ways over our journey together. In the last three months we have been able to see three different countries and experience three different cultures. We have… Read More
Sarah Spirek here! As our semester comes to a close, I just wanted to write a few closing comments for our trip. We have all learned so much, some of it we won’t even realize until we get home. We have built a little family within our group and have suffered the loss of three of our members. We have spent the last three months learning, growing and experiencing the… Read More
We spent our last week in Costa Rica at KUEMAR, a turtle rescue project. It was hard work, but it paid off with our once in a lifetime experiences! Every night, we took shifts at neighboring beaches where we patrolled. We saw our first adult sea turtles and got closer than we could ever imagine with them. We watched them as they scooted their way out of the water and… Read More
Sailor and Sarah here! Our group spent the last week volunteering at a permaculture farm called CIRENAS. Due to a recent donation, they were able to build a hatchery and start up a turtle conservation project which we had the opportunity to work on. Our roles included exhuming nests that had already hatched, recording data and patrolling the beach. Most of the group took the opportunity to take a shift… Read More
The group had a wonderful week at CIRENAS, learning about sustainability, permaculture, and turtles! A few photos from their adventures, with more updates to come:
Kaylee wrote an article about their time there that was published in the CIRENAS newsletter: Working with baby turtles!… Read More
By Rachel and Sarah First week in Costa Rica! We had a pleasant early morning flight last Sunday and a short bus ride to the city of Turrialba. Meeting our host families created some anxiety as always but has greatly paid off this week. We feel we have made great connections with this group of people! We began our last week of Spanish school on Monday and we feel our… Read More
By Sarah and Madeleine Howdy from your southern belles, Sarah and Madeleine!
We arrived in Flores Wednesday and met our contact Deiter who gave us some introductory information about Flores and the week ahead, then had free time. Some of us swam across the lake while others enjoyed immersing themselves in local culture by eating at Pollo Campero. On Thursday we toured the Yaxha ruins and camped overnight in tents.… Read More
Walking up through the jungle to the site.Climbing one of the steep pyramids.We made it to the top!Learning from our guide Dieter about the history of the site.Taking a closer look at how the temples were built. The Mayans would add one staircase on top of the other to add height to their structures.Watching the sunset from the top of one of the pyramids.The … Read More
