Page 21 - UD Magazine Vol. 31 No. 1

PHOTO SUBMITTED BY IZZY DEFRANCESCO, AS21 | NEW ZEALAND
Steve Goodwin’s students held out their arms,
and spider monkeys swooped out of trees to
swing across them. During this trip to the Amazon, one primate took a 20-minute nap in the lap of Goodwin’s wife (cute, until the monkey peed on
her leg). Another cheeky simian stole a student’s notebook. (“Instead of ‘The dog ate my homework’,” Goodwin says, “She could say: ‘The monkey destroyed my journal.’”) But these are only a handful of wildlife encounters the professor has facilitated. In the Rio Negro tributary, Blue Hens swam alongside piranhas (the fish only bite if you’re bleeding).
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I’m filled with gratitude for the life I’ve experienced.
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In Ecuador, they watched blue-footed boobies
divebomb at 100 kilometers/hour. In South Africa,
they safaried within arm’s reach of an elephant.
And, in Australia, they snorkeled the Great Barrier
Reef, seeing up close its “life-changing beauty”—
and the devastation wrought by climate change.
“These experiences increase commitment to the
environment and, ultimately, one another,” Good5win
says. “Without that, nothing will ever be successful.”
Because It Reminds Us Who We Are
Kevin Chang, EG14, recalls a two-story building
filled with skeletons. The monument exists in one
of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, mass graves where a
radical dictatorship disposed of 1 million murdered
bodies in the 1970s. The Blue Hen’s visit felt personal—
this same regime once forced his dad into agricultural
labor, until he fled. Now, Chang says, “I’m filled with gratitude for the life I’ve experienced.”
PHOTO SUBMITTED BY TREVOR NOON, HS21 | SOUTH AFRICA
Because Monkeys Make Great Teachers