A thick blanket of clouds settles above rolling valleys of green and high peaks of blue. There is a wildness among the calm, a mystery behind the seen, a danger lurking beneath the beauty. The Northern Andes mountains of Colombia are home to incredibly unique animals and vibrant cultures that have been threatened by civil …

February 11, 2011   Mud walls, cracked and dry, are packed between vertically stacked sticks that reach about head high. I look over the wall to two similarly constructed classrooms. Children are crowded on benches, bare feet on dirt floors. Uniforms neatly tucked in, they sit obediently and wait. The head master enters, smartly dressed …

Across Indonesia and Malaysia, I taught this lesson to hundreds of children during my year in Borneo. Objective:   Summary:  Students will learn how plants and orangutans are connected through an interactive lesson that includes a science experiment, an art project, and a game.   Concepts:  Parts of a seed, parts of a plant, what …

  January 19, 2012   Shades of blue disappear into distant clouds through the layered peaks of the Sierra Madre mountain range in Chiapas, Mexico. Steep hillsides are dotted with the dark green leaves of the coffee plant, and it is upon this land that the Tztotzil Maya have lived for centuries. Coffee has been …

Before I had a blog, I wrote email updates about my travels. For my first Throwback Thursday post, it’s time to get the Borneo section of this blog started.   This was written on December 6, 2014, after my first Nature Explorers class in Borneo. I was lucky enough to return to the same village for …