• One-Year Amsterdam Anniversary!

    I’ve tried to write this post a few times, a bit unsure of where to start or even where to go. How do you sum up a year of living in a new city, country, and continent in one post? Especially when that year was also a year of a global pandemic that virtually shut

    Continue Reading
  • An Amsterdam Update

    I’ve now been living in Amsterdam for just about two months. It was a strange thing to move to a new country just before a global pandemic was announced and everything shut down. I had one whole day to see/do what I could before prior to the distancing measures put in place. And I’m also

    Continue Reading
  • Awkward Spa Moments Abroad

    One of my favorite parts of traveling to cheaper countries is the option of spa services at a much lower rate than you’d find in most of the Westernized world. In the United States, you’ll pay at least $50 for a simple one-hour massage. In Indonesia, that same $50 buys you several treatments over the

    Continue Reading
  • A Love Lost; A Love Gained

    When I first thought about writing this story, I envisioned it’d be the kind with the happy ending. You know the one I’m talking about: where the guy and girl end up together happily ever after. But, life happens. Picture it: Austin, 2013. I was six months out of a four-year relationship and heartbroken that

    Continue Reading
  • Teaching India’s Children

    When I traveled to India recently, the magnitude of the poverty I witnessed was both astonishing and overwhelming. I was constantly slapped in the face with it and left there feeling heartbroken and helpless. I wanted nothing more than to rescue all those children and bring them home with me to nourish their lives in

    Continue Reading
  • On Travel and the Possibility for Love

    I just finished reading Lost Girls, a tale of three women who quit their jobs to set off on a round-the-world trip for a year, and much like What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding, parts of it struck so close to home that I felt that I had written them myself. In one

    Continue Reading
  • Riding in Moroccan Trains with Old Men

      “There is nothing like a train journey for reflection, and the passage from Casablanca to Marrakech is one of the most inspiring I know. Movement has a magical effect on the mind. It stimulates the eyes, distracts them, allowing real thought to take hold. I stared out the window at a landscape changing by

    Continue Reading
  • Building in Some Downtime

    Probably my biggest regret in past travels was never giving myself some time to relax. Nobody really tells you how exhausting long-term and fast travel can be–you think you can keep going on this adrenaline rush, and maybe you can for a little while, but then you just sort of bottom out. And it’s miserable.

    Continue Reading