Lord of the Rings Style-Tongariro Crossing!

What an incredible thing for two leaders to see: our entire group rallying together and completely planning out four wonderful student directed travel days! After only knowing each other for a week, each student stepped fully into their chosen leadership roles; booking accommodation, transportation, planning and cooking meals, and facilitating group meetings. Our adventure began in the remote Waipatiki beach. We welcomed our newest member, Taylor, and celebrated with delicious… Read More

Life at the Farm

Just finished up with a hard, but satisfying week on the farm. Shout out to the Hart family for their beautiful place and warm hospitality. Most of our days were spent in the woods, chopping up bush and creating paths for the Harts and whomever else. We’re proud of what we accomplished this past week, which includes a long and beautiful mountain bike trail that we made from scratch. In… Read More

Orientation Week

Hello everybody 🙂 It has been an awesome past week since arriving. Safe to say no one has been disappointed with New Zealand. And wow, what a squad that has been assembled for this journey. It’s hard to believe that this is actually happening. Everything has been going great so far and there is so much more to come. On our first day in New Zealand, we were let loose… Read More

Photos…and a blog soon to come~

I got word from the group that they are doing GREAT! After an amazing 3 days of orientation in a small beach town outside of Wellington, they headed to the Family Farm to begin their week WWOOFing. They are diving into all things farm-life now and will be sending a more detailed blog soon (they had some troubles getting the blog to upload). For now I’ll leave you with these… Read More

Gettin’ Stoked for the South Pacific!

Avi and Lauren here, welcome to our first blog post! We are hoping that everything is going well for you with packing, preparing, and feeling mentally and physically ready for our semester. We are here in Portland preparing for our amazing upcoming adventure. All of the folks at Carpe have been eagerly preparing our lessons, plans, games, and all the other fun amazing things that we are looking forward to… Read More

Final Walkabout

The past 36 hours have probably been the biggest rollercoaster of emotions in my life. Starting the morning on the 9th off in the park for our final group activities. Kalie put together little gifts for everyone of things that reminder her of each person which was one of the sweetest things. Alana lead a closing meditation where we took the time to reflect and appreciate each person on the… Read More

Beauty in Sadness

As we began our outback tour on December 3rd, the final full week of our trip commenced. As per usual, it was a week full of laughter, endless fun, and great memories. We spent the whole week doing group activities so we were able to really appreciate each individual member of the Walkabout family and close the trip with beautiful memories of being together as one. Ryan and Cheridyn, our… Read More

SCUBA

After four long educational days, most of the students are now SCUBA certified! The first two days we had classwork and practice in a pool, then for the third day we headed over to Fitzroy Island and did couple of beach dives. We stayed at the resort on Fitzroy for one night and got to enjoy the luxury of a real hotel. For dinner we all put on our nice… Read More

Thanksgiving

On November 25, Walkabout celebrated Thanksgiving. It started out with some intense debate; we quickly found out that everyone’s Thanksgiving traditions are wildly different. Some people have the classic turkey, some make lamb or tofu. Some people need gravy or there’s no point in celebrating, others feel the same about rice. Some of us start our “dinner” at 2PM, some people eat as late as 7PM. Of all things, all… Read More

Conservation Volunteering

This week our family got seperated in half an we each went to different areas to do conservation volunteer work with the CVA (Conservation Volunteers of Australia). I think we were all in agreement that it was weird not being together with a huge group of 12 all the time. Just from the excitement and smiles and hugs when we finally reunited, it was clear how much we missed each… Read More

kickin’ back in Noosa

After our four hard days of work at the conservation project the fam reunited to spend 3 amazing days in beautiful Noosa. It felt so good to be back with the rest of the group. Time has been flying by and we cant believe theres only 2 weeks left. After being seperated from half the group for four days we all realized how much we are going to miss eachother… Read More

Mode, G’day, and Namaste! Onto the Final Leg!

For starters, mode pronounced like (mo-day) is goodbye in Fijian and that is what we said to our Fijian getaway resort, and Fiji entirely. And with that mode to Fiji we said G’day to Australia and began the final leg of our journey. We arrived in Brisbane and had a little time to explore this city before we departed for Chenrezig Buddhist Institute. Here is where we say Namaste. We… Read More

Odds Are…

Odds are Jay wears a bra at dinner at the Murai Odds are Ben wades through a murky pond at Sheila’s farm Odds are I wear a tiger hat around Auckland Odds are Rebecca wakes up Ryan and Cheridyn in the middle of the night to say she had a nightmare Odds are Morgan sprays all the perfumes in the duty free store on herself in the Fijian airport on… Read More

Balance

This past week was our second week living in the rural Fijian village of Nasolo. After completing our community service project of revamping their community hall, we had four days where we were able to learn more about the activities and jobs that make up their every day life and build strong connections with members of the village. This week included activities like prawn fishing, weaving, going to their private… Read More

Bloggin with Coconuts

Exerpts from my journal while in the village! “You know how you never actually use all the ink in a pen. You either lose, replace, or break it before hand. Well, I have succeeded in finishing the ink in, not 1, not 2, but 4 pens. I only brought 4 pens with me. Thank goodness I still have the pen that Cheridynn gave out as a scavenger hunt prize back… Read More

One Day in a Fijian Village

The sun has been shining for hours by the time you wake up. It’s 7:00 am. “Yadra Nana and Tata!” (good morning host mom and dad.) Tie up the mosquito net, grab some toilet paper and head outside to the bathroom. Check for frogs and other mellow creatures making shelter in the concrete cubicle before getting down to business. Afterwards wash your hands with antibacterial soap in a sink or… Read More

Walkabout Village Time

ut After a few bus rides, a hostel stay, and a four hour ferry ride, we have arrived to our village, Nasolo! We rolled up driving through their grass and sat around in their community hall for the welcome ceremony all wearing our new fancy sulus. None of us were accustomed to any Fijian words or traditions yet but we all sat around fascinated of what I think was a… Read More