Happy New Year! Vietnam celebrated its Lunar New Year, otherwise known as Tết, on January 22 2023, and we were lucky enough to be here to experience it. Tết is the most important celebration of the year in Vietnam, and in our first weeks here saw the city come alive in preparation. For Vietnamese people,…Continue Reading Chúc mừng năm mới!
Time has continued to fly past, and I’m becoming ever more aware of our impending departure. With that in mind, it feels like the perfect time to reflect on my time here in South Korea. After two months of being away from home, I’ve realised there are most certainly things I miss and can’t wait…Continue Reading What do I miss?
On today’s episode I’m joined by Alex Johnson and Morgan Koster! We discuss some program highlights (gotta love food) before exploring our views on some of the NGOs we’ve visited and what it means to be selfless vs selfish….Continue Reading NGO stands for Not For Profit Organization – Ep 7. Tea with Tia (ft Alex and Morgan)
Hoki mai whenua, hoki mai moana This trip has so far transformed my understanding of what it means to reclaim land and story. Beyond the legal reclamation of land through demarcation in Brazil, the reclamation of knowledge and knowledge expression practices are something I have leaned into over the past two weeks. In Ubatuba, we visited…Continue Reading LANDBACK
Our fourth and final week in Mexico kicked off with a 9-hour bus ride from León to Monterrey, in the north of the country. Monterrey is in the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range foothills, and the impressive mountains can be seen from almost anywhere in the city. This is our host uni Tecnológico de Monterrey’s…Continue Reading Forever Tec <3
The multitude of experiences, enjoyment, and excitement this trip provided for me was totally worth the 15-hour flight back home (it wasn’t pleasant). Leon and Monterrey were both crazy in entirely different ways – Leon was more of an exciting, adrenaline-inducing experience with fairs and swimming, while Monterrey was more formal with goodbyes, celebrations, and…Continue Reading el fin
We have safely made it back to New Zealand, landing in Auckland just before the International Airport was completely flooded; so very grateful for that! Being back at home has been great, getting to catch up with friends and family and tell them all about the incredible time I had in Taiwan. All of the…Continue Reading A Reflection on my time in Tainan
The topic of this week was poverty and inequality. This week, our classes had a more practical aspect; we developed a definition of poverty and a poverty measurement tool. In these, it was interesting to see the many different perspectives of poverty and how this varied spatially. The most surprising thing we learnt was how…Continue Reading Social inequalities and a visit to Guadalajara
These last two weeks of the trip flew by so, so fast. I am so grateful to have been a part of this experience and definitely want to go back to Mexico in the future. It was bittersweet to say goodbye to all of the friends we made over the course of the past month,…Continue Reading Leon and Monterrey