Student Blogger
Treaty rights and food forests – first impressions of New Zealand.
On our second day, we went down the gravel road to Wairarapa Forest School. This is an outdoor classroom created for children, integrating children back into the outdoors. Its focus is to let children be children--to teach them about bugs, soil, gardening, trees--things that children no longer truly learn about in today's society. We were welcomed in a traditional Māori way. Māori words were exchanged and we entered the circle and sang a Māori song. This classroom was so welcoming, I too felt like I reentered my childhood. While barefoot, we climbed trees, looked for bugs, and drank from the fresh spring with the children. Afterwards we explored the land. Read More »
indigenous rights, maori, new zealand, permaculture, Study Abroad, study story
A Fancier French Fry – More from Italy blogger Cat
I remember in sharp clarity the person I was three and a half months ago, and I’ll be honest; she’s not that different from the person I am today, even now that I’ve nearly finished studied abroad. Read More »
Phone free in France – Italy student blogger Cat Braza
The first day of our fall break—which marked the halfway point in our semester abroad—a millennial’s worst nightmare happened: I left my phone on the bus. Read More »
Beach cleanups for credit – more from Thomas, New Zealand blogger
I always saw New Zealand as being in better shape environmentally compared to the United States. I was shocked to find bags upon bags of trash in just a few months of participating in the cleanups. Read More »
Introducing Italy student blogger – Cat Braza
Indeed, one of the things I love most about Montespertoli, the little town where I study, is its Piazza del Popolo and how integral it is to life here. When the golden evening sunlight spills in, kids are chasing each other on little bikes and fighting each other with plastic swords and speaking in high-pitched Italian. Read More »
XTreme Zero Waste! – More from student blogger Thomas Stephenson
I’ve been in New Zealand two weeks, and I’ve already experienced so much it was tough to limit myself to one topic! After our group’s tour of the Xtreme Zero Waste recycling and reuse plant in the small surf community of Raglan, however, I knew that this was experience I wanted to share. Read More »
Introducing Norway student blogger: Ella Budzinski
The woods around Sognsvann are nothing short of magical and we found berry patches deep in the woods that were bursting with blueberries. We could have picked all night, but settled for filling up our bags. Read More »
St. Patrick’s Day in Northern Ireland – More from student blogger Pelle
St. Paddy’s day is very different here – and that difference was a frequent topic of conversation between us and locals we encountered in various settings. While it is a holiday here (we got the day off from our internships and attended a parade) the festivities were much less extravagant then those in Boston or New York. Read More »
More from Ecuador Blogger Erin McIntosh
Three short days ago I was sitting in a teal canoe surrounded by my classmates observing the tallest mangroves in the world. We were learning that the composition of these marine forests absorb 8 times more carbon dioxide than a comparable plot of your average land forest. Read More »
A letter to my white friend – Marc’s story
For my Art for Social Change class, we read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and we were asked to write a response to it. I wanted to invite my white friends to read the book so they can educate themselves and read about a perspective different than their own. Read More »