Last fall our Art Teacher, Mrs. Thompson applied for the Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship Grant and won! Below she shares her amazing adventure with us:

I traveled to Nepal this summer as part of a Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship that I applied for last fall.  My trip was an amazing experience and fulfilled a longtime dream of trekking in the Himalayas and photographing the landscape to use in my paintings.  I spent two and a half weeks trekking in the Annapurna region of the Himalayas and exploring Kathmandu’s Buddhist stupas, Hindu temples, and cultural heritage sites.   Immersion into Nepali culture was visually vibrant and at times a  stretch outside my comfort zone.

After two and a half weeks of immersing myself in a vastly different culture, 32 miles up and down mountain passes with a heavy pack, shooting a camera full of amazing photographs, and consuming my fair share of dal bhat, I feel blessed to have accomplished the variety of challenges and experiences I was seeking.  I flew out of Kathmandu a few days later filled with a sense of wonder and gratitude for all I’d seen and experienced.  Thank you Lilly Endowment for giving me this opportunity for personal and creative renewal.  I’m thrilled to be able to share this adventure with my students at Greenbriar!

– Mrs. Thompson, Art