Study abroad students are an audience so near and dear to my heart since just three years ago I boarded a plane to leave my mom, home town and everything familiar for the longest stretch of time to date. I look back on that baby version of myself with compassion often. I loved Florence, I … Continue reading Surviving a Semester Studying Abroad
Italy is a beautiful, sometimes confusing, country. As embarrassing as it is to admit this now, I knew really nothing at all about Italy when I first went. I'm talking about "what's the Ponte Vecchio" and "is this the Duomo" (when passing Santa Croce) nothing. However the things I wish I knew before I first went … Continue reading 10 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I went to Italy for the First Time
To highlight the life and energy of Puglia, Italy amid current environmental devastation, I will be posting photo-essays about southern Italian cities I had the chance to visit in 2015. On-going protests wouldn't stop me from visiting the region again, but to each his own. Travel consciously. Ostuni — a small town near Bari known … Continue reading Rainy Days in Ostuni, Italy
(A Bar for Everyone) (I hope that's what I said....) So you're in Florence, you've seen all the museums and gawked at the Duomo and ate as much pasta as your stomach can handle. So now, let's get down the the real important stuff: drinking. Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, is also a … Continue reading Un Bar Per Tutti Quanti
Last fall I wrote a few posts about Melendugno, a rural town outside of Lecce, Italy. Read this to learn what you can do in the fight between citizens protecting their beautiful seaside town and those profiting by building a natural gas pipeline. Or this, about my experience farming three years ago in this land of … Continue reading Salento’s Changing Landscape: Learn More About #noTAP
I watched Paper Towns, an American film adapted from a book. I've overheard arguments about this book among my friends years ago. Is it worth reading? Are the characters developed? Is it like all other John Greene books? This post is not any of those questions. This is an existential look at tourism and experience. … Continue reading Paper Towns and The Edge of Experience
I keep running list of titles of chapters for my memoir in the Notes section of my phone. However since a memoir seems too premature and too intensive than I'm really prepared to take on right now, they shall become blog posts. Here's the first. I had been thinking about taking a TEFL course for … Continue reading Crying Outside the Visa Office
I wish I could say that studying abroad in Florence was the best semester of my life -- that every moment was a dream and that I was never sad. However, I was in the process of losing my friend group, I was away from my parents for the longest time of my life and … Continue reading Beating the Blues Abroad
