Moments of rain, moments of waiting, moments of peace, moments of happiness …. Hope these drawings and water colours become our shared memories of that land, which we embraced wholeheartedly....Read More

Written on: July 15, 2019 Rural Homestay Reflection After singing a thank you song to our homestay families and leaving the rural village of Nanyao, I asked my classmates to answer one of the following three questions: What was the most eye opening......Read More

Notes to Families Written on July 10th and 11th. Nina: Hi Family! I tried to call yesterday, but the connection was bad, so it wouldn’t go through. I will be sure to send post cards and emails once we arrive in Kunming. Today is our last day......Read More

Happy birthday Sebastian! This is our third birthday on course so far. While we have included birthday photos in previous Yaks, we would just like to shout out happy birthday again to Sean and Dora! We are all so happy to have so many reasons to......Read More

Written on: July 12, 2019 The clouds hung over the hills and it rained every day during our stay in Nanyao. The rain came and it went throughout each day, giving us enough time to harness each dry moment and use it to hike, play games, walk around......Read More

Written on: July 11, 2019 During our Chinese lessons, we often stay in our “classrooms” for the whole lesson time. But today, we got to go to the village market and complete our Chinese class assignments. It was interesting to compare......Read More

Written on: July 7, 2019 大家好, Today after our language classes our entire group went on a hike through the mountains behind our homestay village. On the way there we stopped at some sort of shrine made out of parts of the mountain (rocks and......Read More

Witten on: July 6, 2019 大家好！Today, After our usual morning language classes we drove up to a Tibetan-Buddhist temple to understand and see another part of Chinese culture up close. our instructors taught us about six important Buddhist......Read More

Written on: July 6, 2019 大家好！ Oh no! I’m trying to study for my Mandarin test tomorrow but I would also like to write a post to share something with all of you reading our Yak board. I have decided to share some images of my notes that......Read More

Written on: July 4, 2019 Ned And Tucker’s homestay adventures… Ned: Yesterday, we left the orientation center and went and traveled by train from Kunming to Lijiang. After arriving in Lijiang, we went to a small village called Nanyao and......Read More

Walnuts Written on: July 4, 2019 My homestay mother sits me down in a chair next to a small wooden table that features an orange colander filled with walnuts and a iron mallet next to it. As we approach the table, a cat jumps off of the chair and......Read More

Written on Tuesday, July 2, 2019 你好！ It is our last night at the eco lodge and we are preparing to go to Nanyao, where we will begin our rural homestay tomorrow. Today we talked more about leadership roles within the group and worked on......Read More

Calligraphy practice kicked off! For our first practice, it was amazing to see how interested everybody was in the whole process, I was impressed by how patient this group of young people were during the 40 minutes of practice. Pedro wrote......Read More

On our second day, we continued with our orientation and learned about leadership, the red rules, and expectations of each other. We took a short hike up a small mountain/hill and went to an apple orchard and picked tiny apples with our host (YeYe)......Read More

Buddha once said, “it’s better to travel well than to arrive.” There were many hours of transit, security lines, layover, delays, and all the other logistics that come with traveling across the world with a group. Still, we......Read More