Navigating the Dark in the City of Light
Travel is the insane desire to become lost. Lost in a culture, a language, lost in ourselves. And when I decided to study abroad for a year, I was completely unaware of how my world would change, of how...
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Storming Castles and Hunting Dwarves in Poland
As a kid with an incredibly active imagination, I loved acting out the stories that my Mom read to me or what I saw in movies. I taped flashlights to my arms to shoot lasers like Buzz Lightyear, and built...
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A Grand Design
No one had to tell me to feel the way I did. I felt it all on my own. With depths as bottomless as the ocean, and craters so vast they seemed to spread across the world forever, the view was like nothing...
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Rediscovering My Roots
400 years of my family’s heritage lies rooted south of the American border, in Guadalajara, a blossoming city located in the heart of Mexico. An economic recession drove my immediate family out of the...
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Too Close for Comfort
As I looked out the car window, we passed a short concrete hut-like building. And then we passed another, and in the next village, another one. I asked my mom what these strange buildings were. I had never...
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Seoul-searching
Over the past few years, I've chastised my friend for being obsessed with Korean culture without understanding what Korean culture really is. I was angry because I thought her interaction with Korea, one...
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China’s Treasure
I’m here. Ancient stones are only steps away from my touch. I see a high point in the glorious distance and make it my goal to at least make it there. I take my first step and just admire the wall itself....
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Joy Amidst Devastation
If someone had asked me a year ago, "Where will you find utter devastation alongside genuine joy?" I'd have tapped out and asked for a new riddle. And I know for a fact that the last place that would've...
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