Welkom to EcoNomad!! This debut blog starts off in the Ancient city of Rome!

Hi guys, welkom to EcoNomad! I am Tate Sijbrandij, 18 years old and on gap-year. I have a deep-rooted interest in environmental protection and this year I will be exploring how different cultures go about this. My first gap-year trip was to Rome, 5 days to see all the history this city holds is definitely too little, but I did my best. What makes Rome so interesting is that you are quite literally walking through an open air museum. You can feel and imagine how the city looked roughly two thousand years ago in the peak of the Roman Empire.

Something that stuck with me since my visit is learning about the fully developed aquaduct system supplying the population of around (in the peak) 1 million people with water. It being one of the great engineering marvels of Ancient Rome - a combined network of more than 500 km, supplying 500 to 1000 million Liters of water a day - entirely powered by gravity. The slope shows gradients of 0.15-0.3%, vering less than 0.05% over long distances. This is incredible precision for a slope constructed by hand tools, with the aquaduct only dropping to 1 to 3 meter per kilometer. An ancient civilization supplying an entire city with water through gravity. No mass environmental damage or global warming caused, just living off what the land has to offer. We could learn a lot from their way of building infrastructure.

I am super exited to be sharing more about how different cultures treat their environment this year. On the 20th of October I will head to South-Africa for volunteer work, teaching at risk children from townships in the Cape Town area mathematics, English and providing fun surf lessons! But also to teach them about the environmental protection and self-care. After this I am heading to Japan to travel the country, learn about their culture and become a ski instructor for kids at the Niseko Village Snow School. I will be integrating podcast episodes every few weeks, talking about different subjects concerning environmental protection.

Feel free to follow along for the journey, and let's create a better, greener world together! Have a fantastic day - EcoNomad.