Greetings! Long time no write! My fingers are primed over this keyboard to tackle Italy and I’m in my comfy pajamas so it’s game time. Our group flew through Dubai again to travel to Rome, and the ride went smoothly save for one student who got food poisoning from the airplane eggs and spent the… Read More Rome, Piedmont & Beyond

My glorious return to the blog scene to write belatedly about my vacation of about a month ago. Is this the life of all travel bloggers?? Constantly playing catch-up? Someone ought to put me on their payroll to force some consistency into me. But don’t fear, dedicated fans (i.e. those related to me), the details of… Read More Vacation in the Snow Abode

Greetings!! As my time in India has progressed and the activities and experiences have piled up, writing a blog post to encompass it all has grown into a formidable task in my mind. I’m breaking this update into two posts, the second covering the vacation I just wrapped up with my dad. The Monday after… Read More India Update: She’s Alive!!

Namaste! I arrived in the land of spices this past Monday more jetlagged than my 21-hour total airtime trans-US, trans-Atlantic journey from San Francisco to Tanzania. The Friday night before our Sunday flight to India ended up being an all-nighter after the group decided to celebrate our last night clubbing. We went to a very… Read More The Land of Spices & Street Cows

I write to you now from Arusha, a city in northern Tanzania about an 8 hour drive from Morogoro, where I was staying last. The 8 hour drive actually took a whopping 13 hours due to traveling via bus weighed down by no less than 21 people, arms and limbs and backpacks stuffed into cramped… Read More Musings of a mzungu

Hello Internet! Mambo from Tanzania! We’ve had two crash courses in Swahili since our arrival last Tuesday, both of which came after a few days in country floundering among the locals as they yelled “Mzungu!” (which we learned means ‘white person’) among a steady stream of Kiswahili punctured by an “Obama” and “Hello” from time… Read More Thousands of miles away feeling like millions

Before I start on our trip to Salinas Valley on Monday, I’d like to give a quick recap of some of the highlights since my last post. Friday, August 26 We spent the morning at the Oakland farmer’s market. We had a lecture the previous day with Miguel Altieri, a professor of agroecology at University… Read More Watt in Watsonville

So far we’ve had two major excursions during class this week. The first was a Berkeley neighborhood walk on Monday. We were given a map and a list of 4 notable murals or monuments holding historical significance and challenged to visit 3. Before our walk began we had a quick discussion group-circle style in People’s… Read More Public Land for Public Good

I write tonight from the YMCA hostel in Berkeley, California. My roommate and classmate, Sara, sits across from me on her matching twin bed. I’ve traveled back in time to dorm life, the one-size-too-small plastic flip flops I picked up at Walgreens a block over are still dripping wet from their first venture as shower shoes.… Read More And I’m off!

I’m reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma right now, and I’m currently in the first section of the book. It’s divided into three parts. The first explores industrial agriculture through corn. The second section is on organic food, two ways– industrial organic food, i.e. the large scale organic operations whose products we see adorning our air-conditioned Trader Joe’s and… Read More Mutiny against King Corn’s Oppressive Dictatorship

It’s been a busy past few weeks and I’m finally getting around to documenting some of my observations and experiences with specific plants I’ve been working with a lot at Bellair. Carrots: Carrots are so much more flavorful when they’re really fresh. Their tops are thin and weakly attached to the meaty root, so I’ve… Read More Vegetable Studies

Yesterday we were all piled into one of the trucks and driving along one of the dirt roads peppering Bellair Estate headed to a vegetable patch to harvest kohlrabi when we saw a juvenile bald eagle. There is one main road that you take to reach the vegetable fields before it splits off into several side… Read More Field Notes