Seeking adventure

From El Salvador to Nepal, Janice Haller keeps finding ways to make her adventures meaningful.

Haller, an avid traveler and volunteer through Habitat for Humanity, has spent the last several years building homes and helping others abroad through Habitat’s Global Village program, which sends volunteer groups to countries across the globe for building projects.

“I love contributing to a family who wouldn’t maybe otherwise be able to afford a home,” Haller said. “Home ownership is such a prideful thing.”

Originally from Forks, Washington, Haller moved from place to place in the Pacific Northwest before landing in Portland, Oregon, where she discovered Habitat and her love for volunteering.

Working as a teacher at the time, Haller said she discovered Habitat and its Women Build program, which encourages getting women together to build homes for people in need.

Once she got a hard hat and a set of tools, Haller was hooked.

“I love working with all the people, I love working with the tools. I feel like the houses that we build are better than other houses — the craftsmanship and the work,” she said. “We volunteer, we don’t have any deadlines. We don’t have to rush through it and do a sloppy job.”

After that, building homes has been a big part of Haller’s life.

Since 2011 she’s volunteered on four Global Village projects in El Salvador, Brazil, Portugal and Nepal, spending usually a week volunteering in each place and taking another month or so to travel on her own and explore surrounding countries and destinations.

The demands of each place and community vary, she said.

In Portugal, Haller joined a team of 15 to put the finishing touches on a neighborhood that was already in its 11th week of volunteer work.

In Nepal, on the other hand, Haller joined a team of 11 as part of a workforce that totaled 400 volunteers. Together they built a neighborhood of 36 homes in just a week.

Haller’s love for travel dates back to a Southeast Asia trip with her grandmother in her early 20s.

During that trip, Haller recalled visiting Singapore and experiencing a 7.3 earthquake in the Philippines from the 11th story of their hotel as the biggest highlights.

While the trip wasn’t as spontaneous and improvised as she later learned to prefer, she remembers the adventure as lighting a spark inside her that still has yet to go out.

“I enjoyed those places, but I enjoyed the travel I did after that much more,” she said.

The eye opening trip for her was a backpack journey through Europe at age 40.

Moving about the continent alone for four months, Haller said the best part of the experience was meeting new people and embracing scenery she’d never seen before.

“I travel by myself,” she said. “I like meeting other people, I like looking out the window and seeing the scenery and meeting the people. If you travel with a friend or a partner, then you’re sitting in the seat next to them talking to them, and you miss so much. So I travel on my own.”

“It was fabulous. I really didn’t want to come home,” she added.

After teaching reading and English to second language learners for 15 years in Portland, Haller was able to retire and pursue travel as much as she liked.

For decades Haller worked temporary jobs to save up money for her adventures, stopping in one city to work for several months before quitting to head off to the next destination.

Her connection to Montana started even before the travel bug bit her on that Southeast Asia trip with her grandmother.

At the age of 19, Haller found herself working as a maid at the East Glacier Lodge, setting up a foundational love for Glacier National Park and Montana.

Through the years she and a friend would revisit the Park. One one such occasion, Haller remembers passing through Whitefish and falling in love.

“We drove into town and I said, ‘Oh my gosh. This is the place,’” she said. “I came back three weeks later on the train and bought a little piece of property ... I’ve been here now three years and I’m never leaving — except to travel.”

Since moving to the Valley, Haller has found ways to get involved, volunteering with Habitat for Humanity of Flathead Valley and the Glacier Institute as well as substitute teaching at local elementary schools like Muldown Elementary in Whitefish.

Finding a strong Habitat program in the Valley was a big plus for her, she said.

“When I got here I was so excited that they had a nice Habitat affiliate,” she said.

Right now, Croatia stands out on her travel to-do list, but she’s narrowed down her future adventures to ones that are part of the Global Village program.

While Haller’s trips have taken her all over the world, from Europe to Central America, Africa and New Zealand, she said there’s still plenty of places to visit.

“I don’t go back to places too often,” she said. “There’s still more to see.”