Braving New Heights
Family trips can be an adventure you never quite expect. When you fill a house and a guest house with seven siblings and their immediate families, you lose privacy and silence;...
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The Streets of History
Thumbs up or thumbs down? I stood inside the Colosseum. It was so great, yet so terrible. It was a house of death where the combatants saw their last moments. As I walked through...
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Goodbye Chicago! Hello Europe!
When we boarded the plane in Chicago, my peers and I knew there was no turning back. No more hiding in the comforts of our hometown. No more kisses from mom and dad. No more communication...
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A Home Across the Ocean
Family is the solid pillar in one's life, no matter how far away siblings and relatives might be. As an immigrant who has lived in America for the past twelve years of my life, I have met many...
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Moroccan Immersion
In January, I visited Morocco with my grandmother. It was the first time I'd ever visited a country and seen how most people really live there: I met with Moroccans in the town...
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A Trip to the Motherland
“Guys, guess what? We are going to Israel! Yes, you heard it right, Israel!” Those were my mother’s first words at the beginning of February of 2011, and she would not stop repeating...
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Becoming Something More
I’ve always considered myself to be African American. Never did I question the surveys or questionnaires that had that single bubble classifying a whole society into one large culture. I guess this...
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Jazz? Jubilee? Old Sacramento? Oh my!
"You have reached your destination." said the GPS. I looked excitedly out the window. "Ahh, Sacramento." You know, Downtown, in the middle of no where with Farms surrounding...
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Names and Faces
I reach to my collarbone and touch the small gold coin hanging on a worn leather strap. I look at the crested crane and the words “Bank of Uganda” and memories flood my mind. I hear their voices...
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Turning the Page of life (An Escape)
In the words of St.Augustine, "The world is a book and those who do not travel only read one page." This statement is one that symbolically expresses traveling quite well. This...
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Changing Locations, Changing Perspective
Seven days -- not enough time to leave an impression on anyone, or I supposed. Lost in translation. I guess the phrase wouldn’t be an adequate way of describing it because I still speak the language....
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A Life Changing Vacation
It’s about 34 degrees Celsius, the bitter cold is numbing against my nose, ears and extremities. I gaze to the north; thousands of square miles of mountains that have slept so...
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A-Da-Ne-Di: My Trip to the Cherokee Nation
As I stepped into the van, my heart was racing, and I was about to overflow with excitement. People laughed and talked all around me, and I could sense that they too felt the...
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We Adopted My Sister
We adopted my sister, Maya, from India when she was one year old. As she grew up she asked questions about where she was from and what it was like there. My parents promised to take her to India when...
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Emotionally Changed
Traveling doesn’t necessarily mean going thousands of miles away from home; it can be as little as five minutes. Traveling to an adoption home about a half hour away was one...
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Exceeding Expectations in Spain
"It will be about $3,000, but we'll do some fundraising please do not be discouraged by the price." announced my spanish teacher Profe Fonken. Instantly my ears perked at the sound...
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Spending Two Weeks With Mother Nature
Never before have I been in a town with less than five-hundred people: two gas stations, two bars, and a Subway; accompanied by a mom and pop store and a hunting surplus which...
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Language Barriers
As a child, I never acknowledged my mom’s lack of developed English. In fact, I treated the anomaly as a game for my young self to decipher and put together, like pieces of a puzzle. It wasn’t...
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Taking a Shower
We were warned. Miss Wood, the teacher who led the U.S. and Ghana Exchange Program, had spent months hammering Ghanaian culture into our heads. We watched documentaries, looked...
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From One Home to Another
I've loved traveling since I was little and my mom and aunt took me to Colorado. My favorite road trip, however, is the one we take most summers from the panhandle of Florida, where we currently live,...
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Trash Talk
Tiptoeing quietly out of the thatched dwelling, I slowly navigated the winding dirt path in the dim light. Past the tropical fronds and under the curving trunks of the palms I walked. Noises of the Vietnamese...
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The Land Of The Passionate People
Growing up with Nigerian parents and listening to them talk about their "home" all the time, I always wondered what it was like in Nigeria. Was is really that hot? Was it like America? Does my dad really...
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Walking the Sahara Desert and Holding My New Brother
I don’t know if any trip will be as important as the one I took last November. My parents decided to adopt a baby from Eithopia and accepted a 8 month old boy from a tribal village. My sister...
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Tehran, Iran: My Story
Iran isn’t the kind of place that one might visit over summer vacation, but for my family, it was an ideal destination. My dad is Iranian and most of his family still lives in Iran. I had been to...
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Ayoba Time
Africa: not a Serengeti wonderland of lions and elephants, but a barren landscape of high grass and termite hills. Sawdust careened into my face, guided by petulant gusts of filthy air. Women walked down...
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Ruby Beach, Washington
Last July, the summer of 2009, my family took advantage of four free airline tickets and planned an impromptu vacation to the Pacific Northwest. We went gallivanting off to the...
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To Turkey and Back
It was April 10, 2010, and my family and I were off to Turkey to enjoy our spring break. We left from the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, early Saturday morning to arrive in Istanbul later that day. We...
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My trip to Mexico and How It Impacted Me
During the summer of 2008, I took a vacation with my family to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was my first trip outside...
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The Three C’s of Mount Kilimanjaro: Clear, Copious, and Constant
The most essential item for a woman climbing 19,340 ft Mount Kilimanjaro is the Sani-Fem Freshette Feminine Urinary Director sold for $22.95 on www.REI.com....
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