Smoke billowed throughout the tent and left the area a-glow in orange. The flames lapped up from beneath the metal spherical disk. She pounded the dough into a flat pizza like form and simultaneously stoked the fire with more wood with her free hand. The spherical metal ‘griddle’ was just the right temperature…thwak! The flattened [...]

As you know, I’m volunteering in Jordan through GeoVisions Conversation Corps. This is a program in which you converse with/tutor a family in exchange for room and board and a fee. I recently shared my initial volunteering experiences at my Briefcase to Backpack website. You may be interested to find out exactly what Conversation Corps [...]

Piggy Back – Lamjung District Nepal I spent a few weeks volunteering in the remote mountain village of Puma in 2008; an experience that was truly eye opening.    While teaching English in the small village of 40 homes I came to know many of the kids well.  This boy wasn’t old enough for school [...]

Bucket Bath Delhi, India While volunteering in India, I often walked around the slum neighborhoods to see the family culture.  Family homes don’t have bathrooms, and baths are taken outside in front of the house with buckets.  It didn’t seem to phase the kids, as this was a great way to cool down on a [...]

Tiger Balm Tales Vol. 4 Travel Back in Time Itinerary:  Kathmandu to Puma Photos: View Puma Snapshots We said goodbye to the bustling city of Kathmandu and hopped in our time machine which took us back in time about 50 yrs. A time and place where electricity and plumbing were not guaranteed, where harvesting was [...]

Tiger Balm Tales – Vol. 1 Why? Such a simple question, yet it resonated in my head many, many times on my most recent trip to Nepal. Why was I going back to Nepal? Why did I ask my dad to come with me? Why did he decide to actually come with me? At this [...]

I recently recieved a little recognition from one of the volunteer companies I worked with in 2007.  Cross Cultural Solutions chose me as their ‘Alumni In Focus’ for their newsletter.  I was rather stunned, but I think they wrote a very nice article that highlights some of the high points of my volunteering with them.  [...]

Dhal Bhat Days – vol13 9/15/08 While in Nepal I heard from my old students in India; they wished me a happy teacher day via email; it took me completely off guard, and shook me up a bit . It had been a year ago that I was there living in Delhi teaching my wonderful group [...]