With, For, In Love

Upon graduation day you're expected to have your plans, your new job lined up, your new place of residence, and nice hair under a really stupid looking cap. Maybe you do have a job, a new beautiful home, and a trusty car to take you across the country. If you had nice hair the whole day I'm sorry but I just don't trust you as a person. It's a week or a few months later and you're settling in and all seems well. Except one day you stop and take a moment to assess your life and you realize something...you're lonely. Like really lonely. I call it post-graduation loneliness. No one wants to admit they're lonely. No one wants to say I don't fit in. No one wants to say I'm having a hard time making friends I genuinely connect with. Well, I'll happily be the first to raise my hand and say I struggle with all of those things . The thing is, I know I'm not alone. It affects everyone. It's not a symptom of simply moving abroad. It's not

I think I've confused people in the past with my honesty regarding my travels. If I've had a hard day or even a hard week I want to share that. Not because I need to get something off my chest but because I don't want people to feel alone in their feelings regarding traveling. Traveling can be soul filling, joyful, and the greatest adventure of your life but it can also be lonely, sad, and really hard at times. So when I'm honest I'm not saying I hate a certain place like Vietnam or that the whole experience is negative but these are my real feelings that I refuse to sugar coat so you too don't feel alone or falsely believe my life is some fairytale. So here are my feelings. This past weekend I went on a visa run to Bangkok, Thailand. Cue all of the thoughts about Hangover 2, One Night In Bangkok, and the Asian equivalent of Vegas. Well, that wasn't even remotely close to my experience. And trust me, it wasn't for a lack of trying. I tried so hard but

 Last week I was standing in the hallway at a parent teacher conference of my 3rd graders waiting for the homeroom teacher to be done presenting. I was nervous because this class is extremely misbehaved but the parents are highly demanding and expect excellence for their students who won't even pay attention. I was anxious to go in to talk and just agitated that I was there in the first place. I looked down the hallway and saw one of my 1st graders walking down with his sister and a puppy. He saw me and had a huge grin on his face. He pulled up his shoulders in excitement and said "Hello!" when he walked by. I smiled wide and waved and asked how he was. "I'm fine!" He walked past two or three more times and each time he raised his shoulders in pure excitement and grinned at me. I suddenly was no longer very nervous about those parents. Because truthfully I'm not there for them, I'm there for that little boy. When I was interviewing for jobs one of

"There will be days that Vietnam just grinds on you."- my boss I stomped around my kitchen/living room yelling about all the things that were bothering me and that had been building up over the past two months. I pointed at things, slammed cabinet doors, and almost cried. Why? Because sometimes Vietnam just grinds on you. I find it hard to talk about how you truly feel when you are traveling/living abroad. People expect it to be perfect or they read a blog or two and assume they know how you feel. But most of the time I don't even know how I feel. I can go days without truly processing what's going on around me. Which isn't good because it can come out in explosions like the one I had after visiting a museum. I really do like Vietnam. Some days I get soaked on the motorbike on the way home and I smile because it's so ridiculous and perfect and Vietnamese. But I'm going to be honest, there are some things that just piss me off.  I'm tir

My favorite classes in school have always been literature. My two favorite teachers of all time were literature teachers that greatly shaped the person I am today. They taught me how to learn about the world through fiction. My last literature class in college was about Latin America but specifically the US-Mexico border. The class came at the perfect moment in our world today, and especially in my world. I submitted this piece as a scholarly precise for my final project. However, my professor didn't accept it because it was not from a previously written scholarly work. This piece is my own "scholarly work" on just how dangerous consumerism is in the United States. Reading the texts mentioned (which you should absolutely look into) opened my ideas to horrors unknown to me. I hope it opens your eyes too.  *Latin@(s) is a way to indicate gender neutrality in the term Latinos        Consumerism in the United States affects more than people’s wallets. It actually

One misstep and it shatters the entire fragile aesthetic we have worked so long and hard to create.  Over Christmas in 2016 my family took a trip to Seattle and Portland. There was amazing vegan food, cool museums, and lots of interesting places to visit. I often smile at those memories and cherish that time. However, one memory continues to scratch against all the others and create this jarring and painful thought. It's the homeless population in Seattle. I've visited New York City and other large cities before so I was no stranger to the concept of homelessness, especially in a city. But these homeless people were different. They seemed scary. I didn't feel safe. It seemed as though I needed to be very careful and I was very afraid to talk to them. That made me feel even worse. The trip was wonderful. Except this one memory. It continues to poke a hole in my perfect vision of Seattle. I came to Vietnam with a hazy vision of their culture, their food, and their way o

"Are you okay? I mean really okay? "I don't know." If there's one thing I can rely on it's a list. I make lists for school, work, my life, the grocery store, and for my days off. It brings me comfort. Of course I made a list for Vietnam as well. On multiple pieces of paper and on several occasions. So when I arrived to Vietnam, I started following my list because it made me feel comfortable in a foreign environment. And I completed everything on there (except for getting a job). We found an apartment. We bought dishes, a fan, and a water jug. We found a gym. We found a market and a place to buy other goods. I moved all of my 50 pound suitcases into the apartment. I started class for my certificate. And James rented a motorbike. I checked it all off. But as the days went on I didn't seem to be very happy. It didn't occur to me that in completing my list and ensuring that within 7 days I did everything I needed to that I'd actually be

My last year of college was filled with one awful question, "What are you doing after graduation?" I find myself asking my friends the same question. As though their careers are the most important part of who they are and what they are "doing" with their lives is only constituted by their jobs. But it did make conversation easy so I fell into the trap as well. For the first semester of senior year this question was a major source of anxiety not only when others asked me but when I asked myself.  What did I want to do? What could I do? Was I even good at anything?  I now have an answer to that awful question that I can breezily say because it sounds so adventurous and yet just like me (however, I am not the most adventurous at heart). On June 14th I'm taking 4 planes that will move me and my 100 pounds of luggage to Vietnam. In case you don't know it's the country that touches Laos, Cambodia, and China. I'll be living in Hanoi, the capital. I know