One of my most anticipated days of the trip, today we visited the Neuschwanstein Castle and I can confidently say it lived up to all the expectations!! I’m not going to lie, the bus ride was rough and I experienced some brutal motion sickness… but I bounced back quickly and was ready to go. We…
Category: Plus3 2025
Bird Watching and Community Organization: Preventing Overtourism
Today we went to Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, a Quaker owned private park, and to The Monteverde Institute, a non-profit edcational organization. At Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, we took the Heart of the Forest trail, looking for birds and monkeys. As we walked, we were asked to consider how restricted this reserve was compared to…
Day 10: Learning History Where It Happened
Today was a super exciting day! We drove to Nuremberg, where we toured MAN Truck & Bus. For safety reasons, we got to wear some super stylish safety vests before walking onto the factory floor. We toured the facility, where they primarily manufacture battery packs and diesel engines for trucks and buses. Similar to what…
Day 9: A Place We Must Never Forget
Today was a somber yet deeply powerful trip to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. Dachau was the first concentration camp established by the Nazi Party and served as a model for many of the camps that followed. While it was primarily a labor camp rather than an extermination camp, more than 41,500 people lost…
AUMOVIO and Regensburg: Tuesday
AUMOVIO as a company is hard to explain, but in short they are an extension of Continental AG and focus on two business units: Safety and Motion, and Architecture and Network Solutions. The sensors in and around your car are probably made by Aumovio. Hearing about the process and then actually seeing it play out…
Day 10: Consulate, Cultural Immersion, and Waterbus Tour
As the last day of real classes and immersion, I was starting to feel the melancholy that comes with knowing that you are about to leave a place that holds so much emotion and memory of a trip that fostered new relationships and connections. I feel like the reason that this trip holds so much…
Day 10: Stepping into the Dark Side
We had an early start this morning to depart for Regensburg to visit Aumovio and explore the Old Town Hall. As soon as we arrived, I noticed how different this city felt compared to other places we had visited. The colorful buildings and riverside made the city feel very historic with a special touch. Walking…
Day 10: Running Out of Time
We had yet another Vietnamese language class to start our day today. We learned the alphabet and how to pronounce the letters, which was so much harder than expected because of the 6 different tones. We also learned a few phrases to use at the market that we would be going to later in the…
Day 10 – Painting, shopping & learning
Today was a fun mix of activities that all connected in some way which I was surprised by. We started with language class, where I learned how to say “hi how much,” followed by “so expensive, please discount,” – Bao nhiêu tiėn? Đắt quá, giảm giá dim – which I felt was all I was…
Áo My Gosh
Day 10: Áo Dài, Vietnamese Language Practice @ Ben Thanh, U.S. Consulate, and Waterbus Tour This morning we learned more Vietnamese language. They still use the English alphabet except for the letters F, J, and W. We were all initially intimidated by the accents, but logically it actually makes more sense that one letter with…
Day 10: Bargain Bargain Bargain
Yesterday we started off the day at UEF doing a Vietnamese language class. Right before class I had a cup of coffee and I really think that was a great start to my day. The class was super fun and energetic trying to learn some bargaining phrases to later be used. After the language class…
Left Stranded
We past Day #9 The past two weeks in Ho Chi Minh City provided a solid introduction to local life, art, and language. We started with a language lesson focused on tone and inflection. Navigating the nuances of Vietnamese vowel sounds is challenging, but the patience of our hosts helped us through the practice. That…
May 20th – Cloudy Cloudy
Today was mine and my classmates (probably) first time in a real-life cloud forest. But I think after visiting the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and hearing from the Monteverde Institute, I think limiting tourism in protected natural areas is a necessary tradeoff rather than something unfair. While it could sometimes feel restrictive to have limited…
May 20th – Limiting tourism is worth it
Today we hiked the Monteverde Cloud Forest and heard from the Monteverde Institute about how the community manages tourism. On the trail, we could only use one of four paths, which could feel limiting given how far we traveled, but I didn’t mind. Doing all four might have actually been too much anyway because it…
Nature 1, Shoes 0 – 05/20
Hoy el bosque me ganó. To start off the day I had an amazing breakfast at the hotel, with pancakes (10/10), a breakfast wrap, and fruit. Today we went on trail in the Monteverde Cloud Forest National Park, where I got extremely muddy. Honestly, I don’t even know how I got THAT much mud on…
Day 10: Rice Hats, Knock-Offs, and Diplomatic Irony
Another fun day for me in the books. From decoding a new alphabet to negotiating in bustling market aisles, today was the ultimate crash course in Vietnamese culture and commerce. We started the morning trying to tackle the Vietnamese alphabet. To be honest, mastering those tonal marks felt completely impossible, but it gave us an…
Day 10: The Beginning of the End
Today was the last day of the regularly scheduled programming of site visits and classes at UEF. Time flies so fast! We first had a language class to practice basic phrases used in a market to prepare for our trip to Banh Thanh market. It was really hard to remember letters and their intonations, I…
Protecting what Tourists Come to See
When visiting the cloud forest and the Monteverde Institute the complex relationship between tourism and conservation was exposed. In the cloud forest we were able to immerse ourselves in nature while following a designated trail through one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world. Nature walks like this are extremely common tourist activities in…
Costa Rica Blog Post 10 – 05/20
Today made me realize that limiting tourism in a place like Monteverde is a necessary tradeoff. While walking through the Sendero Corazón del Bosque, the forest felt protected in a way that was very intentional. Like Hosay mentioned, in the past there was more scope to explore, but with a growing emphasis on sustainability, some…
May 20 – Clouds full of Capuchin
Today we got to hike through the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and later visit the Monteverde Institute, and both experiences made me think more deeply about the balance between tourism and conservation. The cloud forest itself it felt different from some of the rainforests we had explored earlier in the trip (also very muddy!). It…