Saleh shares photos and more from the recent Global Getaway adventure.

By Saleh Alwabel, FIUTS Facilitator

On Feb 15th-17th, FIUTS had a trip to Portland to explore the city with 28 international students led by amazing facilitators (Jeremy, Charles and Michel). It was one of the best FIUTS events I ever had because I had the opportunity to meet awesome students from around the world; from Cambodia, China, Taiwan, Morocco, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Korea, Australia and Yemen.

During the trip, we had the chance to visit many places in Portland such as Powell's Books, the famous Portland food carts, Woodburn Premium Outlets, downtown’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, Washington Park, and Portland Japanese Garden.

On Sunday, after a long and crazy shopping day in Woodburn Premium Outlets, we had an international potluck at which a couple of the students had the chance to prepare traditional dishes and share them with the others. It was a great experience for me, fantastic food and awesome friends. That night, the group had an early birthday cake for me and they sang the happy birthday song in English, Chinese, Arabic, French and Korean.

After the dinner, half the group stayed in the hostel to have a games night and share games from their countries. The rest of group decided to join the Hostel Activity: Brew Pub Crawl at which we stopped by many famous breweries in Portland. On the last day, we stopped by the Multnomah Falls and explore the falls and take the last group picture for the trip.

Finally, it was a lot of fun just being with friends and exploring these fun parts of Portland. Thanks for all the group for the birthday wishes and for the best birthday cake ever. Special thanks for Svetlena, Hyun Joon, Lydia Chu, Wendy Tseng, Kristy Tseng, Shihcheng Tsai, Ilham Benttahar and Dominic Langenegger for sharing their pictures. Also for the awesome facilitators (Jeremy, Charles and Michel) the best facilitators I ever worked with! … GO FIUTS.

Here are couple of pictures to sum up the trip: