Jill Woodhouse goes to Nepal for adventure

It’s not uncommon for a high schooler to waste away their summer days hanging out at home, avoiding the sun that they’ll so dearly wish for in a few short months. This was not the case for Jill Woodhouse ‘17. Woodhouse spent five weeks in Nepal throughout this summer. She went hiking, spent time in the local villages, and learned about the everyday life of the people of Nepal.

Woodhouse went to Nepal this summer for a five week trip through a program called Global Routes. “I chose to do this because I wanted to travel and see more of the world and all of the different cultures,” Woodhouse said.

16 days of the trip were spent living with a local family in a small village just outside of the Kathmandu Valley. Nine days of the trip Woodhouse spent hiking up to Annapurna Base Camp, one of the most popular treks in all of Nepal.

Woodhouse lived with her friend Tanya, their host parents, their two year old daughter, Samridhi, and the grandma and grandpa. “At the homestay we were also working on building the local school, so we would wake up and go to the school, and then work until 4:30. After we would leave and spend the rest of the night with our family,” Woodhouse said. “On the weekends we would spend the entire day doing back-breaking work in the rice fields, playing with my two ½ year-old little sister, cooking with the family, and feeding the yaks.”

After observing the different lifestyle of people outside of “the bubble”, Woodhouse concluded in saying, “the most important thing I took away from this whole experience is that life doesn’t need to be complicated with material objects.”