Great maybe the Greatest

Woah Woah Woah! Time flies when you are in 4 different countries, flown in over 10 planes and slept in over 20 different beds. Today is the day we have all anticipated/dreaded/waited/been excited for. Its no surprise that we are feeling a lot of different emotions. However, we had a wonderful final week in Roatan and are enjoying our last day together.

Two days ago we dove our final dive (weird sounding phrase, I know), took our written certification test and recieved our certificates. Thats right folks, Carpe Cam group 2010 is open water dive certified!!

Last night we all went out to eat together at Pura Vida and basked in each others tan[ness] and good company. Bittersweet to say the least.

The following are a list of favorites that the group has compiled over the course of the trip. We have gotten to know each other very well especially each others likes and dislikes. So now its time for.... FAVORITES & LEAST FAVORITES.

Alphabetical order, okay, all things go, get ready to chuckle.

Adam: Favorite- Notting Hill, Hacky Sacks

             Least Favorite: Papaya

Brian: Favorite- Being down for everything and eating everyone else's leftovers

            Least Favorite: Vegetables and not being able to do everything

Brooke: Favorite- Parent Trap, Milk, Shadow Puppets, Seatbelts

               Least Favorites- Being in tune with her body (embarrassing? maybe)

Emily: Favorite- Gunpoets, Stretching, Bread

             Least Favorites- Stain glass, lack of bathrooms, and chasing amy

Griffin: Favorite- Kriss, Santi, Judge, Pilar, Pec Man, Bologna

              Least Favorite- Lady GaGa, Buying food

Hannah: Favorite- Nutella

                 Least Favorite- Being in pictures and sunburned nose

Heather: Favorite- Dental Hygiene, Mate, Yoga, and Kush spilling oil

                 Least Favorite- Being cold

Kelly: Favorite- Winning the carpe game, footloose dance

            Least Favorite- Only one taking the spanish final (ouch....)

Lauren F: Favorite- Being more down than Brian, Flowers in her hair

                  Least Favorite- Brushing her hair (es verdad)

Lauren W: Favorite- Singing "El Amor" by Tony Bambino, Bojangles

                    Least Favorite: Bug bites from sand flies, bad headphones

Lexi: Favorite- DAD BOOKS, Chakra dance

         Least Favorite- When there is no coffee

Just for kicks... CARPE SLANG { slang= left, translation=right}

Totes Verdad: woah thats wayyyyy true

Es possible: yes thats highly possible

Es preguntable: QUESTIONABLE

Mas o Menos: more or less

"I mean...": Okay thats true I am embarrassed

What what you didnt know I could do that??: Used when exposing coolness

So what who caaayas??: used when doing something weird to avert attention

I love reggae: sarcastic, usually sung, after listening to excessive amts of reggae

Jovenes!: Look young people at this ant hill!!!

Friends and Fam, thank you for being so supportive and following us along on this journey. We will be back home before you know it. Love you all.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didnt do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

- Mark Twain

See you soon. Love,

Brooke

Deep, maybe the deepest

Hey everyone!
After a relaxing week in Sarapiqui for free travel we flew here to the beautiful island of Roatan, Honduras. It was an easy and early trip, when we got here we spent the day unpacking and hanging out in our awesome hotel. On Thursday morning we walked next door to seagrape plantation diving center to begin our SCUBA course. Our instructors Tony and Reno showed us some informational videos and then took us to get geared up. On our first day we got to dive! It was a shallow dive (of 30 ft) but still incredible. It was strange adjusting to the underwater world but everyone did great.
For the past 2 days weve been doing SCUBA class all day, usually info in the morning and diving in the afternoon. In the evening we get to explore the westend of the island and test out great local eateries. Tomorrow is already our last day of diving and I think well all be able to get our certificates.
Trivia:
- Roatan's population is 65,000
-English is the dominant language here
-On Christopher Columbus's 4th voyage he landed on one of the three bay islands
- The currency of Honduras is the Lempira
-There is over 100 kilometers of Coral Reef around Roatan

Love you all and see you soon! Stay posted for one more blog of our last few days, we've got some great pics coming!

Love, Emily

P.S. Shout out to the Worthy's in NC! We went to Bojangles last night for some good southern cooking...

Me Gusta Tortugas

Hello from Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui we have arrived here for our week of free travel. The last week we were in Gandoca close to the Costa Rican and Panamanian border where we helped with leatherback turtles. We would either have to go out from 8 pm to 12 am or 12 am to 4 am on the beach to patrol. Once on the beach we would be lead by a guide where we would walk in one of two areas and look for turtles who were laying eggs. It was a tough job having to be awake so late into the night and sacrificing our bodies to tons of mosquitoes and sand flies. We learned alot about the turtles and the orginization and how important the turtles are to the local community. We left Gandoca on Thursday and took around a 5 hour bus ride to Sarapiqui where we will just relax and some people may go horseback riding or white water tubing. We are all living in one house with a shared kitchen so everyone is stocking on groceries and cooking their own meals. We are excited for this week and the next week for Scuba in Roatan.

Trivia
Gandoca had a population of 400.
The first time that leatherbacks come onto the beach they can lay up to 150 eggs.
Each turtle lays small eggs that won´t hatch to help keep a good temperature for the rest of the eggs.
The organization we worked with was a women´s organization.

Sarapiqui has a population of 49,327 and is divided into 5 districts.

Our group with Tyler and Chloe of Parque Maderas at our Carpe Prom. Look at how real we look...we dressed up as best we could for the occasion.

All geared up for the longest zip line in Nicaragua...except for the three chicas at the end who were too cool to put their helmets back on for the photo.


Beautiful sunset in San Juan del Sur..

Hannah, Brian, and Heather went Volcano boarding outside Leon...we had such sweet outfits to wear.


Street art in Leon during Easter Week AKA Semana Santa

Zippy maybe the Zippiest

Hola from Costa Rica!
After traveling on bus for most of yesterday we made it. But before we got here we did some awesome things at Parque Mederas. We helped the family to build the kiln for Tyler and even got to try our hands at spinning a pot on the foot powered wheel, its a lot harder than it looks or sounds. Before we left we even got to see the kiln in action as it glowed red and smoked all day firing pots. We also volunteered at Barrio Plantas, an NGO in San Juan del Sur that an american started a few years back. At Barrio Plantas kids come after school to learn English, classes taught entirely in English, paint, glue dream catchers and glitter together and salsa dance with hips that do not lie. We helped out in classes on two afternoons entertaining them during recess and refereeing glue usage in art class, as well as trying our rythm during the dance class. We also headed to an adult education school and each of us took on a student for an hour and worked at teaching the students English. We all have a much deeper appreciation for our Spanish teachers and the ESL teachers around the states, English is hard! Not to mention that we all speak in slang normally anyway and most of our words have two meanings depending on spelling, or at least multiple pronounciations depending on which bit of the states were from. But it was a totally awesome experience that we all enjoyed.
Wednesday we embraced our last day in Nicaragua and headed off zip-lining! It was absolutely fantastic! We strapped into our harnesses, buckled our helmets, pulled on our leather - please slow me down!- gloves and headed to the top of the 17 seperate lines. It was amazing zooming across the wires and being treated to amazing views of the ocean and San Juan del Sur. We even saw a sloth in a tree next to a path near the wires. By the time we got to the last line and finished our foray with almost flying, we all wanted to do it again. Instead of hopping back on the lines though, we had another amazing meal from Tyler and spent the afternoon catching the last waves surfing and sunning on the beach. That night we threw a prom for those missing it at home. It was a great excuse to scrub up in the shower and dig through our bags for clothes smelling faintly better than average and possibly even making us look like our former US selves. Needless to say it was a riot and we even included those awkward prom photos in front of the amazing Parque Mederas sunset. Yesterday we crossed the border, with customs line even more ridiculous than in an airport - if you can believe it- but we finally made it to our awesome hostel in San Jose, Costa Rica. We spent the day shopping and relaxing, working up to another long bus ride tomorrow to our turtle project near the Panama boarder. Were all super excited to walk the beachs and save some eggs!

Trivia for the week
- the zip line we flew down is one of the longest in Nicaragua, over 2 km
-the people in Costa Rica call themselves Ticos
-Ticos call San Jose, Chepe
- San Jose houses over one third of all Costa Ricans

Wet Maybe the Wetest

Hola from San Juan Del Sur!!! The weeks been going amazing, we arrived after a nice 4 hour bus ride from Leon Monday afternoon and everyone really seems to be enjoying themselves. Were staying at a hostel called Parque Maderas, which is incredible we can see the beutiful beach down the hill and in the and in the afternoons the temperature cools down, which has been a nice change from Leon.
The days have been full of the nicest surfing which everyone has enjoyed, the first day the group took lessons from two local surfers which was great since everyone learned so fast and now were all going out on our own.
The project for the week is to make a kilm for the upcoming art studio at Parque Maderas. A local family of potters are coming to help design and build the kilm, after it is complete it will be used for local art students and anyone staying at Parque Maderas.
This week end we plan to go on a boat trip and are going to try to snorkle in preperation for our upcoming scuba trip.
Besides that all is well and the food has been great!

And heres the trivia of the week...
Parque Maderas is a really cool project that Tyler has been working on for eight years. He originally came down to central america to start a bar with his friends, but he ended up in Nicaragua starting an incredible business. His vision is to have a hostel and restaurant for business purposes but he also has a huge garden for medicinal plants and is building and art stuido where he wants local artists to be able so stay and study. There will also be a small clinic with information about natural healing where locals can come learn and even take many of the plants home to their families. To check out more, you can go to his website http://www.parquemaderas.com/

Photos

All of us in Heather and Adams appartment during our potluck in Xela

The view from the top of the Devils Nose on our third trek day. It was totally worth it to get up at 4 just to see this sunrise over Lake Atitlan.

Do you see that tiny tiny building on the tippy top of the tallest peak in the right hand corner...?Thats where we watched the sunrise from then we hiked down the face on this side to the bottom at Lake Atitlan.

Our Lava Extravaganza. Griffin, Brian and Heather lingering to check everything out before our guide comes with the marshmellows for roasting. Nice and toasty.

Sweaty Definitley the Sweatiest

Greetings from Nicaragua!!!
We arrived in the extremely hot city of Leon Sunday afternoon. The flight was rather short and we were all very excited to arrive in a new country. It was only a short busride from the airport and we learned that this part of Nicaragua is surprisingly less mountain filled than Guatemala. almost all of us are in doubles this week so we settled into our last homestays of the trip and enjoyed a nice day of relaxation and rest before our busy week ahead. We began our last week of launguage monday morning. We quickly learned that the people in Nicaragua have completely differet accents than the guatemalan ones we were used to. This week in Semana Santa so it is pretty crazy in the afternoon. We have seen various religious processions during the days all in preparation for easter. The first day we saw these beautiful murals on the streets that are made out of saw dust in various colors. They are beautiful. They take many hours of preparation and are destroyed in one day. We also went to the large cathedral in town to view some live music. The way the music echoed in the cathedral was incredible. After two days in this crazy heat we took an afternoon to go to the beach. Definitley an amazing treat after three days of spanish school. Today we completed our last day of language school and everyone was definitley excited. As we head into this extrememly religious weekend there will be even more processions in the streets and I definitely think that the temperature has rose even more. This afternoon we are going to some pretty unique festivities and then have an amazing easter to look forward to. The next post will be from the beach to we are all looking forward to that. Until then, adios.

TRIVIA

Leon was relocated to its current location in 1614 due to a volcano erruption

Alfombraas ( translates to ¨carpet¨ in spanish) are the names of the sawdust murals. These murals often depict Christ´s life, his time with his disciples, and the lives of saints.

Our last week in Guatemala!

Last Saturday we went on a 40 kilometer hike from Xela to San Marcos. It took 2 and a half days. We carried our big packs with us and it was extremely challenging for all of us. The first night we slept at a campsite in tents. The next night we slept in an empty house that the trekking company supplied for us. The third morning we woke up at five o´clock to hike up to an overlook to watch the sunrise over Lake Atitlan. It was one of the most beautiful things we have ever seen. We hiked down and arrive in San Pedro around 11 AM. From San Pedro we took a boat over to San Marcos. All of us were exhausted by the time we got there but were so surprised by San Marcos. San Marcos is a little hippie town with barely any cars. It was filled with tourists and lots and lots of yoga. All of us spent our days choosing our own activities for the day. We did yoga, laughing yoga, stained glass art, jewlery making, modern dance, meditation and at night some of us used the sauna at our hotel. Our hotel was called La Paz which means peace in spanish. The name explains our entire stay in San Marcos. We also spent days lounging on the beach and swimming in Lake Atilla. It was absolutely gorgeous every day that we were there. Our week in San Marcos went by way too fast and we were all sad to leave. We left this Saturday morning at 5 AM and took a bus to Antigua. Once we arrived we traveled to an active volcano and roasted marshmellows over the lava! It was incredible. We are staying in Antigua for one night and we leave for Nicaragua tomorrow morning at 5 Am. Our time in Guatemala has gone by so fast and we can´t wait to see what Nicaragua has in store for us.

Here is some trivia
Hotel Acculax in San Marcos is made mostly of stained glass. Some students used the same method with paper mache.
There are over 300 volcanos in Central America, but only 3 are active. One of them is the one we went to today called Pacaya. Once the airport in Guatemala City was closed for 3 days because the volcano erupted and there was ash everywhere.

To Brian, from the Family:

Happy 19th Birthday Brian. Here's wishing you a great year and many happy adventures to follow!

Love, Dad, Pam, Carlie, and McKenzie

Chi Chi maybe the Chi Chiest

HOla from Xela! Today was our last day at Casa Xelaju. Tomorrow we are headed to San Marcos for a week of yoga and meditation. Before we get ahead of ourselves, we must talk about the past week in Xela We enjoyed a nice day of shopping in Chichistenango. As you can see in the picture below, we took a chicken bus for transportation. We shopped for a while on Sunday and dont worry bloggers, I am sure you will recieve gifts from Chi Chi. The market was large and overwhelming but after a bit of bargaining everyone ended up with some great items.After returning from our weekend, we had a long week packed with school and activities. Half of the group volunteered at the afterschool program on Monday and we had hot chocolate making on Tuesday. After school on Wednesday, we watched a movie about the history of the Mayan people. La Hija de Puma was an interesting film that showed much of the culture of the Mayan people. Following the movie, we had a relaxing yoga class that should have helped us prepare for the next week. I know everyone will agree that Thursday was fun and filling. We had a potluck where we all made a dish with our host family and brought it to Heather and Adam´s apartment. We enjoyed an assortment of foods from pasta, salsa, fruit salad to the traditional tortillas with eggs and queso. Fortunately we topped it off with ice cream and pie! We are stuffed and ready for a week in San Marcos!

Trivia:

Xela is said to have been a city 300 years before the Spanish found it

Xela was the site of the defeat of Tecun Uman

Xela is home to the foremost Railroad Museum in all of Guatemala

Xela is home to Xelaju MC the most succesful soccer team in Guatemala outside of the capital.

our wonderful leaders!
lexi, lauren f, brian, heather, hannah, and kelly in the hot springs!
lauren w and griffin in barrio ixobel (old picture but griffins smiling!)

all of us on emily and lauren fs bed at a hostel in chichi!
adam, kelly, brooke, emily, and brian after volunteering at la pedrera. a nice view of xela!

Mas fotos...

A few more photos for all you wonderful blog followers....


The cloud forest was so beautiful... the little house is where we stayed.



The Chicken Bus ride back from chichi....so many people on the bus!!







The Dude Shack in the cloud forest...Brian, Griffin, and Adam




The group at Tikal on top of one of the temples! From L to R: Lexi, Griffin, Hannah, Brian, Brooke,Emily, Lauren W, Kelly, Adam, Lauren F.

Xela maybe the Xelajuest!

Hey everyone!
Hope you liked the pictures, there are more to come.
Uploading is easy this week because we are staying in the second largest city in Guatemala, Xela. There is a gorgeous central park and tons of things to do everyday. Everyone is living in a homestay again, some farther then others, but all the families are great.
Daily life in Xela goes a little something like this:
school starts at 8:00 at Casa Xela Ju. The school is great, during the summer they have over 50 students so they know what they´re doing. Each student has their own teacher and the day usually starts off with grammer in individual classrooms, or in the sun on the roof. Around 9:30 is cafe time, always hot and great. Then, at 10:30 is a break where we can eat bread and make sure our heads don´t explode from spanish. After the break, a lot of the teachers like to take the students to different areas in the city. We´ve gone to the incredibly big and beautiful cemetary, where the tombstones are colorful and above ground. Also, we´ve taken trips to the market, the various bread shops and parks where we have had to use spanish to converse with different vendors. The teachers don´t speak english so everyday is constant spanish anyone, tough but very helpful with the learning process. School gets out at one, which is when we all return home for lunch. After lunch, our group has tons tons of different activities - a salsa class, celebration for lauren w´s birthday, a yoga class, volenteering with local kids through the school, and yesterday we went to the Fuentes Georginas, or natural hot springs. They were incredible, hot and beautiful and a very nice afternoon after a long, exciting week.

Today we leave for a night in chi chi but i´ll let the next blogger tell you about that!
We love and miss you all

Photos!

Ariel view from samuc champay, where we went last weekend for the day
Hiking to the Cloud Forest (from left to right griffin, brian, kelly, emily, lauren f)
Climbing to the top of one of the temples at Tikal!
Sitting inside one of the Mayan ruins at Tikal (lexi, lauren f, emily, and brooke)
Our whole group in a cave at barrio ixobel! ( top left to right: brian, heather, kelly, brooke, emily, griffin, lauren w, adam. on the bottom our guide, lauren f, ours guides daughter, lexi, and hannah)
Our group on a hill in barrio. (on top from left to right kelly, lauren w, brooke, griffin, hannah, heather, brian, lexi, adam, emily, lauren f)

Outside the school in barrio (hannah, lexi, lauren f, lauren w, and kelly)

Cloudy, Maybe the Cloudiest.

Dear mothers, lovers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors and beloved pets,

Greetings from Coban! We are staying in a Hostal tonight and taking a lengthy bus ride to Xela tomorrow morning, but, lets not get too ahead of ourselves here. You must know about last week first!

We left San Andres for Coban last Sunday. We stayed in the same Hostal we are staying in now, it is very clean and the people are nice and it has been a great place to recoup.

Monday morning we packed our bags and left for the Cloud Forrest. Our journey began with renting boots and taking a fifteen minute bus ride to another station. We arrived to discover a crammed cattle truck , little did we know it was just the beginning of the crazy adventures we were about to have.

We hugged one another all too tightly and squished together all too closely for the entire two our cattle truck ride. In the end though we conquered our naseau and claustrophobia and began our hike into the Cloud Forrest. It took about an hour to get to the village, Chicacnab, where we were greeted with dinner and accomodations. Our group all bunked in the same house which was one room split into two different sections dubbed the ¨dude shack¨and ¨the GIRLS ROOM.¨

We volunteered for three days in the cloud forrest. The first two days we created an assembly line where we took bags of sand and rocks from the top of a huge hill to the bottom. The sand and rocks will be used to make cement for the floor of a church.

The third day we spent clearing mud and rocks to make level ground where a kitchen will be built next to the house we were staying in. Both work jobs were difficult but we bonded and handled them with the endurance and strength of a carpe group (yeah yeah!!!)

The weather in the cloud forrest was warm most days and cold in the evenings and nights. We woke up to what looked like a thick layer of fog. We were livin in the clouds yo! Pretty tight if you ask me.

The last night we were in the Cloud Forrest we danced after dinner to the wonderful music of the Marumba which was played by three men. Its funny actually, every group we have interacted with so far in Guatemala loves to make us dance. They like to watch us, don´t ask me why.

The second we returned to Coban our achy muscles were all of a sudden fully restored, perhaps it had something to do with the McDonalds we were dying to hit up, thats just a guess though ha ha.

We slept like babies last night and left this morning to go swim in the pools at Semuc Champey. It wasn´t very sunny but still so beautiful and a fun place to relax. The water was pretty and we saw a lot of tourists there from all over the world.

And that brings us to where we are now! Currently the group is scattered throughout Coban, checking email, grabbing a bite to eat or catchin some zzzzzs. Tomorrow we´ve got a seven hour bus ride and honestly we are pumped. We love bus rides, it has become one of our favorite past times.

Now here is a lil triv from Brian-

The Cloud Forrest has about 175 people, a total of 30 or so families.

The Chicacnab was established thirty years ago.

¨Oos¨ means ¨good¨in Mayan.

I think I can speak on the behalf of the group when I say that it was a pretty tough week. The nights in Chicacnab were very cold, the water tasted like it was hickory smoked,we were all dirtier than we had been in our ENTIRE lives and most people we interacted with didn´t speak English or Spanish. I also know though that we created so many fun memories and inside jokes. I think we are also a lot more appreciative of little things, like toilets, and by the way they are TOTALLY a luxury for all of you who might not realize it. We also understand the importance of water and hydration, even if it doesn´t taste like we want it too.

Thats all for now folks. We love you lots and miss you. Know that we are growing, giving, loving and experiencing some really incredible things.

Love, Brooke

Old, maybe the Oldest.

Hola everyone!
We just finished our first week of spanish school and we all learned a lot! Most of us had our own teacher, and all of them were great. We spent 4 hrs each morning at the school and spent the afternoons swimming in the lake, or doing various activities. We took a boat trip into Flores to shop on thurs. and stopped at a small museum on the way, where we learned all about mayan artifacts. Yesterday afternoon we went went fishing...well we tried but only caught one. It was fun just being on the water though.
Today we woke up extra early and went to the famous mayan ruins in Tikal, only a couple hours away from here. We all loved it! It was so cool to see and learn about the ancient city. Tonight is our last night in San Andres, tomorrow we leave for Coban and start our week in the Cloud Forest. It should be a great time!
Here is some trivia from Kelly...
The national bird of Guatemala, the quetzal, is actually only found in the cold parts of the country. The quetzal is also the name of the currency.
We learned at Tikal that the Mayans used ball games to work out conflict, instead of going to war. However the loser would be killed...
Cush, the boat driver and kelly and lexis homestay dad is apparently more famous then bush...but can not swim. We learned this from the locals.

Okay that is all for now! Well be posting again soon, and well try to upload some pictures when we have a better connection.
Sending lots of love,
Emily

Calor, maybe the Caloriest.

Grettings from San Andres, Guatemala.

We arrived in the very hot town of San Andres yesterday after a week full of Guatemalan traditions, holidays, parades, pageants, and costume contests. The week started with carnivale where we were all covered in flour and confetti thrown on us by the local children. The next day was a mardi gras parade where we were once again attacked by the children. On friday it was the day of the Guatemalan national hero Tecun Uman. A child from every grade in the school dressed up as the leader of the Mayan resistance against the conquistadors. The day also celebrated the marimba which is the national instrument of Guatemala, it is very similar to a xylophone. We are now begining our spanish school and hope to be able to better communicate in the local language. More posts should follow this week during our time in San Andres.

Hope all is well in the states.

¡HAY USTEDES!

Hello everyone,

We have had a very eventful last few days here in beautiful Guatemala. On saturday we took a 2 hour hike into the hills, mountains, jungles, and every other imaginable terrian and arrived at a cave. On the hike to the cave we were attacked by a chacha bird and it felt like it was a scene straight out of Jurassic Park and the chacha was a Velociraptor. We survived the attack and kept treking and made it to the cave. The cave was massive and wet and cold and awesome. It took over an hour to reach it to the end of the cave and we were guided by candlelight. At the end of the cave everyone got up the courage to jump from a high ledge and into the water. After a long 2 hour hike back we enjoyed dinner and slept soundly.

We now have all moved into our first homestay houses in Barrio Ixobel and are working on understanding our families converstaions and learning about their culture. Barrio Ixobel is a small tightknight community that is hardly seen in the states anymore. It is really cool to see the whole community work together and know everyone around them as if they were the cast of Cheers. Later today we will be treated to some sort of beauty paegant that seems to involve some music by Lady Gaga. We are all having a great time and looking forward to whatever comes next.



Hope all is well with everyone back home in the states,

Griffin

Scavenger Hunt in Poptun

Hi everyone!
Its Emily, Lauren, and Hannah. We are in the village of poptun in guatemala doing a scavenger hunt (like the others below said) It took us a while to get to here but we made it! Even though were all sweaty and not very clean were excited to be here. We´ll post again as soon as we can
hasta luego

So thats a Basura!?

Hello everyone this is Brian, Lexi and Kelly. We are on a scavenger hunt in Poptun, Guatemala. The place where we are staying is amazing and wonderful. We are all looking forward to a lovely lagoon swim later after a very long trek today. In case you did not know a basura is not just a garbage it is also a landfill...we were able to find this in the mountains on our walk. We were all together on the walk and bonded over the lovely experience. Everything is amazing and we will let you know more about our adventures along the way.

Adios for now!

NUMERO UNO!

Hola amigos y familia!
Lauren F, Brooke, and Griffin here! we are currently on a scavenger hunt in a local town. we have had a wonderful time sofar at finca ixobel, relaxing, bonding, and preparing for our trip. the walk here was supposed to be 40 minutes but due to directional difficulties we went on quite the adventure through the town basura, aka the dump- the elephant graveyard... well not elephants but horses, with vultures. it was quite the experience, especially for griffin who was very afraid of the birds. the walk took almost three hours and made lunch taste so much better! we will take a tuk tuk back, which is a motorized rickshaw with room for three. later we will be swimming in the local lagoon, and tomorrow we are hiking to a river cave.
we love you all and miss you!
hope everyone is well, look for more posts soon
Griffin, Lauren, Brooke

Arrival in Finca Ixobel

I just received an email from Heather and Adam that the group's officially touched ground at Finca Ixobel, the site of their orientation and also the group's first real solid ground since taking off in SF! In Heather's words the leaders are typing from "the Flinstone's original computer" so don't expect any contact from the students until tomorrow at the earliest :-)

Yours,

Ethan

Let the journey begin!

I just got off the phone with our fearless leaders and everyone has safely arrived into SFO and are with their group! ... that's right, everyone! Despite snow on the East Coast, several frazzled flight rearrangements and one delay, the group is successfully united!

Stay tuned as another blog gets posted from Finca Ixobel during their first stop for orientation.

Yours in spirit,

Ethan Knight

Executive Director

Airport meeting information

Hola otra vez! 5 Days until we meet in SFO...

We will be meeting in front of the TACA airlines counter in the international terminal at 8:30pm on Wednesday, Feb 10th. We know many of you have flights that get you in well before 8:30pm, but just in case you are running late or can't find us, please call 1-877-285-1808. This is a Carpe Diem office number that will be answered all evening the night of our departure, and they will help you find us or let us know where you're at if you're behind schedule.

"True morality consists not in following the well beaten track ,
but in finding the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it."
Mahatma Gandhi

Look forward to meeting you all soon!
Adam and Heather

Hola CAM Spring 2010!

Hola and greetings from Carpe Diem HQ in Portland, OR. We are both very excited for our upcoming adventure - with less than a week to go before we meet in SFO, we have been working hard with final preparations and packing, as we imagine many of you are doing as well.
We will be calling you all in the next few days before we leave, to chat a bit and answer any questions you might have, as well as to pass along some last pieces of information.
Feel free to pass along this link to your friends and family, as we will all be taking turns updating it throughout the semester.
Enjoy your last weekend at home and we look forward to meeting you all muy pronto!
All the best,
Heather and Adam