Dear friends and family, After a wonderful 3 months traveling up the great Mekong River, our semester has parted ways at the international airport in Kunming. Students flying on the group flight to Los Angeles will be arriving in California late in......Read More
As we prepare to wrap up our three month of traveling up the Mekong, we wrote some reflection pieces. Here are our answers to the two prompts: In Asia, I… I found my closest friends, explored beautiful caves, ate the best food, and made......Read More
Abuah was our trekking guide for our three days of trekking in the Lijang mountains. He is from the Lisu people, an ethnic minority group in China. In Lisu culture, there is fire pit culture, telling stories around a fire. They do not have......Read More
Dear families and friends, We have arrived in Kunming, and are currently on the way to our Transference site, where we will conclude the last few days of our journey! Also, Maia’s birthday is tomorrow! Yay! Sending love, The Mekong Team...Read More
Dear Spring 2019 Mekong Semester Families, It is hard to believe that 3 months have passed since your student embarked on this incredible adventure! It won’t be long until students will be boarding their planes back home. We are sure you are......Read More
Dear families and friends, The day before we left our homestay village, Nanyao Cun, we visited a very special person. We were told by a Naxi host, Lilly, that this gentleman is one of the only few people who practice Dongba, a religion that used......Read More
Dear family and friends, We have safely arrived in Kunming and will soon begin our transference. We just want to quickly let you all know that we had a wonderful time hiking in Liming and are still healthy and strong. Till our next post, The Mekong......Read More
On April 21st nine students from the group went on a hike to Wenhai with Tomasito’s host mom, a native of that village. Four students stayed in Nanyao, our homestay village, spending time with their host families, and some even made......Read More
We have arrived in Liming from our Nanyao homestay! This afternoon, a few of us hiked Thousand Turtles mountain (see photo) and tomorrow we will begin a 3-day trek with our local guide, Abo. Then we will take the night train back to Kunming. We will......Read More
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Best of times meaning rooftop chats with Fernanda, dancing at Cambodian weddings, searching for peanut butter and jelly in Koh K’sach Tonlea with Solange, getting awful massages in Siem Reap......Read More
On a more serious note, tonight we were faced with a new challenge – translating a traditional Naxi tale. Since coming to the Nanyao homestay, we have had difficulty understanding the local accent, but as the few students who know some......Read More
As two of the more advanced Chinese students on the program, many of our friends turned to us for translation help as soon as we arrived in China. We first taught the group “survival Chinese” like numbers, “toilet paper,” and......Read More
As soon as we stepped off the overnight train in Lijiang, I could sense the change in scenery. The temperature had dropped significantly and gone were the skyscrapers of Jinghong, replaced instead with mountains in nearly every direction. As the sun......Read More
Before this semester, I did not know anything about ethnic minority groups in China. I did not even know that ethnic tourism existed. During our time in Jinghong, however, we dedicated a full day to studying ethnic tourism, and we even got to visit......Read More
During our stay in the mountainous Akha tea village our group sat down on the upstairs balcony of the house we were staying in to listen to our host grandfather share a traditional Akha myth. We had to translate first from the grandfather’s......Read More
Please also enjoy these pictures 🙂...Read More
