Travel

One year ago, I was an English teacher in South Korea. My days were spent preparing PowerPoint-supplemented lesson plans and playing English games with groups of hyper-energetic elementary school children. In August of 2014, my teaching contract ended, and thus began an eight-month period of jobless drifting that took me throughout Asia—from South Korea to [...]

I’ve been traveling in the Philippines and Indonesia for about twenty-five days, but it feels like much longer than that. As per usual, time curiously expands when familiarity and routine are exchanged for novelty and daily choose-your-own-adventure games. The distinction between weekdays and weekends, one week and the next week, ceases to exist, and in [...]

I arrive in the dimly lit entryway of Daejeo-Jungang Elementary School and immediately remove my dress shoes, trading them for a pair of slide sandals, my indoor footwear. I take a small step upwards from the entryway onto the old, stained wood panel floor that flows throughout the school. As I do this, I unconsciously [...]

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” ― Jack Kerouac “Travel abroad!” seems to be a nearly omnipresent meme [...]

Recently, I read an extraordinary collection of letters written by Rainer Maria Rilke, the renowned Bohemian-Austrian poet who passed away in 1926. Between 1903 and 1908, Rilke penned a series of responses to a would-be writer, offering advice on poetry and on being a sensitive individual in an often cruel and unforgiving world. These letters, [...]

Find a way to travel abroad. This is one of the most basic pieces of advice I could give to anyone wanting to expand their view of life, themselves, and the world. I’ve written previously about why traveling abroad will be the best decision of your life and the empowering realizations you can’t afford to miss. Still, I know [...]

Studying abroad was the greatest experience of my life. Last summer, I hopped on a plane and flew to Europe, where I lived with a host family for a month and studied at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo, Spain. I was nervous about leaving my beloved American comfort zone, but I was also [...]

I broke my neck in a skiing accident last week, and it was both an awful and profound experience. I was in beautiful Crested Butte, CO, spending a few days on the slopes, coasting about without a care in the world. It was delightful while it lasted. Unbeknownst to me, a near-death experience was waiting [...]