Dear friends and family, After a wonderful 3 months in South America, our semester has parted ways at the international airport in Cusco. Students will be arriving in the States early in the morning on May 1st to transition to domestic travel. If......Read More
My host grandpa in Qreros is so well-buried in blankets that when I walk ito the kitchen I don’t even know he’s there. As I help peel potatoes, my host dad explains that the frozen tierra made his father sick. The family asks me for......Read More
From our students, to those who they love dearly: some thoughts on departing from our space here in Bolivia and re-integrating into an environment that may now seem foreign. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In South America, I… In South......Read More
This is just a short note to let you know that the group has returned from the Amazon. We are in the final two days of student expedition, which they have elected to spend in Urubamba, in the Sacred Valley. We will be hearing from some local......Read More
Dear Spring 2018 Andes & Amazon Group A Semester Families, It is hard to believe that 3 months have passed since your student embarked on this incredible adventure! It won’t be long until students will be boarding their planes back home. We......Read More
Friends and family, Greetings from the Amazon! We are here in the thick of adventure, traveling through a topical landscape of huge, expansive sunsets, thick dark green undergrowth in the jungles, and birds of every size and color. We were......Read More
Pre Incan cave paintings. On the last day of our ToroToro trek closer to the end Don Mario showed use a wall of the paintings. Befor this I thought art from the reneasance was the most beautiful art in the world. My Tikipaya homestay mother Rosa.......Read More
What directly preceded our entrance sparks an interesting conversation in itself. We saw the event taking place inside a building and of course I wanted to go in and see what it was about, but two of us four insisted we shouldn´t out of respect.......Read More
Yonathan is laughing with his mom, Berta, on plank board they use as a bed. She is braiding seeds into a string as jewelry to sell to the growing tourism project in the Amazonian pueblo of 120 people; Huacaria. The kids, 3 & 5 years old, make......Read More
On many occasions during our trip, we’ve helped perform a ceremony that is known in Andean cosmovision as a coa. A coa is an offering to the Pachamama, or Mother Earth, made up of coca leaves, seeds, and many other decorations, each one......Read More
As a kid eating dinner, my close friends and family always guilted me into (trying to make me) eat all of the food on my plate. They talk about kids that do not have food to eat, and how lucky you are to have that extra food on your plate. But, it......Read More
Dear friends and family, A quick update from the community of Huacaria, in the Manu area of Southern Peru! A few days ago, we had our most rigorous travel day: 2 hours walking out of Nacion Q´eros, finishing at around 15,000 feet in elevation. We......Read More
Our friend and guide Siwar Qente Dear friends and family, We have been receiving regular updates from the instructors via Satellite communication, and the Q’eros expedition is wrapping up well! The students have been hiking between 2......Read More
Our homestay time in Tiquipaya and just recently in Santiago de Okola has exposed to me how we North Americans are so seperated from the basics of life. We clutter our lives with whatever society comes up with for us and we place importance on......Read More
The last 3 weeks have been pretty crazy. We have been travelling a ton and doing so much. To summarize, we went from our homestays to Sucre to Potosi to El Alto, where we said goodbye to one of our instructors, Ana, to the Cordillera, where we......Read More
Queridas familias y queridos amigos, We are here in Cusco, Peru after our first leg of remote travels in the high Bolivian Andes and around Lago Titicaca. What an adventure! On the trek, we began low in the cloud forest, quickly climbing into the......Read More