Follow the Journey

Classrooms for the week! Cooking class! Elliot stirring homemade honey. Cooking class. Annie getting ready to fry up our pastries. The finished product. Grace roasts fresh coffee beans. Talia enjoying the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Ready for the next coffee tasting. How we make “bio” gas! Composting toilet. Vista from the Spanish School.… Read More

By Maddie Cloran Hola! Greetings once again from Escuela de Español Colibrí! It’s been a Spanish-practicing, organic, activity-filled week at school and we have been having so much fun continuing to explore the city of Matagalpa. Here at the school, we’ve been practicing our Spanish skills while immersing ourselves in the Nicaraguan culture. Every day this week after class and a lovely home-cooked lunch, we participated in an activity to… Read More

By Grace Cain-Kellman Hola from a new country!!!! Picking up from the last post midway through our stay in El Paredón, our group squeezed in as much as we could during our last days on the ocean. Each time we were sent off for free time, someone grabbed a surfboard, a boogie board or just a towel to get tossed around by the Guatemalan sea, inevitably swallowing some to take… Read More

By Juliette Clem Hola friends + family of Maya! Greetings from El Paredon, Guatemala. This past week has been packed full of so many fun and interesting activities that I thought the best way to share them would be through a collection of photos. I hope you enjoy! We started our week in Antigua, where we had our first student-directed travel time so we got to choose our activities, which… Read More

By Angelo Accus Our journey to Lake Atítlan began with Talia being a team player and using her Level: 100 finesse skills to talk down our boat driver from 500 quetzales to 280 quetzales. Talia truly raised the bar for the Transporte position. We then glided across the sparkly blue-green Lake Atítlan, which smelled much cleaner than we had anticipated. Many of the Maya group members took photos as the… Read More

By Paige Harris Buenos dias from Xela! We’ve had a very busy week learning Spanish and continuing to immerse ourselves in Guatemalan culture. Prior to our departure from La Escuela de la Montaña, we had the unique opportunity to tour La Florida, a cooperatively owned, self-sustaining permaculture farm. Our guide led us around the plots of land owned by various local families, pointing out bananas, macadamia nuts, cacao, and the… Read More

By Hanna McKee ¡Hola Tod@s! This week kicked off the official start of our three-month journey in Central America! After spending our first few nights in a beautiful hostel in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala, getting to know each other and the itinerary, we loaded ourselves into a minibus, said goodbye to our brief home-away-from-home, and made the trek to our first destination. The car ride was filled with nervous hearts, a… Read More

Walking through Xela, there are so many different and unique smells. From delicious street food to the dry herbs in the market. But not all of the smells here are ones to be sought out. Walking through the streets, the unfortunate odor of garbage and gasoline is extremely prevalent. Luckily enough the hostel we are staying in is usually filled with the aromas of cleaning fluids and basil. But, if… Read More

The sounds in Xela have been both familiar and foreign to us thus far! We have heard things like cars, food cooking at a street food stand, and people conversing with each other. We have heard some new things, like people speaking in Spanish with one another and new music. Some of our favorites have been children laughing, tacos simmering, music we have shared, and the voices of those in… Read More

We have seen so many amazing sights this week! When we were first flying in, those lucky enough to get window seats were treated to a bird’s eye view of Guatemala city. The sights continued as we piled into a minibus and began the long, winding trip up to Xela. We passed acres upon acres of farmland, most of which were barren for the winter. As the bus navigated perilously… Read More

On the first night we ate some delicious Thai salads with a wonderful peanut butter dressing. However, our favorite meal was today when we ate scrumptious tacos filled with chicken and peppers on tortillas with lentils and guacamole on the side. For a drink today we had some fresh papaya juice the after taste was a little odd. The best drink we had so far was this magnificent lime and… Read More

Dear families and friends of the Central America MAYA group, I just heard from Hannah and Julian that the group has landed in Guatemala City. They had an easy flight, are gathering their bags, and getting ready to head to Quetzaltenango (AKA Xela) to settle in, get some rest, and start their orientation. Later this week, they’ll post some updates here about the start of their journey. We wish them… Read More

Dear families and friends of the Spring Central America MAYA group, Everyone has arrived safely to LAX! They are together as a group for the first time and looking forward to the semester ahead They’ve checked in for their flight through security – we wish them safe and easy travels tonight. We’ll post a blog and group photo here tomorrow once we receive word that they’ve arrived safely in Guatemala.… Read More

By Overseas Educators Hannah and Julian ¡Hola desde Portland! We’ve spent the last week in the Oregon woods collaborating and preparing for the semester of a lifetime with our colleagues. We could not be more excited to meet you all in just a few short days! Soon enough, we’ll be comfortably nestled into a Guatemalan bus, sweating and drinking in the humid air as we wind our way through the… Read More

By Hannah and Alex To our monos – Wow! We cannot believe the semester has come to a close. What an incredible journey we have completed and will without a doubt remember for the rest of our lives. As we take a moment to reflect, we are awe-struck and inspired by how much you all have grown and transformed. We feel honored and grateful to have shared the past three… Read More

By Caroline Kessler Alas! We made it to Roatan, Honduras for the final week of our trip. A celebration was definitely in order as we reflected on the past three months. To top it all off, we earned our Lifetime SCUBA Certification, allowing us to explore greater depths all around the world. In many ways, scuba diving embodied our Carpe Diem Adventure. It was something many of us had been… Read More

Greetings families and friends! Since the last blog post our group has spent five days volunteering with the organization Kuemar located in the Guanacaste region on the pacific side of Costa Rica. The project is focused on helping the sea turtles that reside within the ocean water lining the beaches of Playa Nombre de Jesus, Playa Real, and Playa Onda. Thursday afternoon we arrived and settled into some of our… Read More

By Eli Karsh-Lombardo With heavy bellies and full hearts we left the 26-acre permaculture farm that we had called home for the last nine days. We said adios to the giant caldrons of gallo pinto, friendly Bona Fide staff, and stunning volcano views as we began our crazy travel day extravaganza. The day started at 4:20 A.M. with 14 heavy backpacks slowly moving their way down the muddy and dark… Read More

by Kate Cone After a bittersweet goodbye to the all you can eat pancakes at Hostel Oasis and all of Granada’s luxuries like real flush toilets, smoothies at The Garden Cafe, reliable electricity and free internet, we strapped all 14 packs to the van, ready to face a week getting in touch with nature and all it had to offer on the island of Ometepe. With all of our Spanish… Read More

By Tate Scarpaci After our last week of homestays, we began our week of Student Directed Travel (SDT). Everyone was stoked for some more adventure. An eventful ride in a microbus led us to the city of Leon, our first stop of the week. It is a large, slightly touristy city, but a quick bus ride will get you out of the hustle and bustle to a nice little beach… Read More