In January 2014, I joined a 13 member water brigade from my college and traveled to El Ojochal, Honduras for a week. We dug ditches besides the community members, observed how to engineer and install a water distribution system, educated children about hygiene, and learned about the impact of access to clean, safe, potable drinking water. …
Tere tulemast Tallinnisse, Eestist! Welcome to Tallinn, Estonia! Welcome to the Baltics! But wait… Where is Tallinn? Estonia?? The Baltics??? Complete disclosure, I wasn’t quite sure where the Baltic States were before this trip. Eastern Europe? Near the Baltic Sea? (Obviously Taylor.) The Baltic states are the 3 countries that sit along the eastern coast …
In the news at home, I read about Chinese politics, power, and pollution… but very little about the people that make up their country. This trip was special not only because I met the individuals who were a part of my adoption story, but also because it humanized an entire country for me. It created context …
Antarctica was a natural wonder. It was the kind of place where you agree to bend towards the rules of the land if you want to survive. Out of respect for yourself and this special place, you kneel and bow. During our trip, we met a British couple who was on their honeymoon! How lovely, that out …
Mom and I went camping in Kenya! We exchanged stories with Maasai warriors around a blazing campfire, learned how women are providing for their family by collaborating on micro-finance initiatives (yay!), and watched lions drag a flailing buffalo to its death. 15 Thoughts on the Last Day: Nature won’t pose for you – stop asking …
For two weeks in May 2016, 13 students including myself took part in the first ever Engineers Without Borders (EWB) study abroad experience at EARTH University in Costa Rica. The course description painted a broad, but enticing picture to “Act Global, Think Local” in the context of understanding sustainable community development and the food, energy, …
Once Upon a Time, the city of Detroit was considered to be the Paris of the Midwest. Today, a more fitting name – The Forgotten City of America. At Detroit’s peak, there were 2 million residents in the city. Today, there are only 700,000. On this day, 12 NJ college students who were on a service trip during …
Today we visited the ancient Ongi monastery that sits on the East and West side of the Ongi River. In Mongolia, the majority (85%) of the population is Buddhist. However our tour guide, Mr. Oghi, is an athiest. Before the 1930s, it used to have over 1,000 monks. Communists destroyed the majority of the monastery. …