International Travels

In March/April I spent a month traveling from Amsterdam to Prague to Vienna to Budapest, to Athens to Brussels/Ghent/Bruges and back to Amsterdam. I explored during the mornings and worked remotely in the afternoon and evenings from each Airbnb, which was my client's working hours. I still wonder if that lifestyle could be sustainable. I'd like to try.

At the end of our EMBA trip to India, some of us from the cohort tacked on a couple of extra days and spent them in Dubai. We explored the city and spent some time on the pristine beaches. The entire city is immaculate. Just wow.

As part of my EMBA program we took a trip to India as part of our international business project. We started in New Delhi and toured around much of the city, took a day trip to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal (I still have no adequate words; quite literally breathtaking), then flew to Chennai for a few days, then a small flight inland to Coimbatore where we delivered our project. I think I captured most of the experiences of the trip in the Facebook archive in October 2017.

I drove to southern Texas to visit my dad, who lives down there about half time, and we spent a lot of time just over the border in Progreso.

After visiting Beijing, I flew to Cambodia to spend a month exploring the country. I did a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat in the middle of the stay. No talking for about 11+ days. Life changing. I started in Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat, then to Battambang (homestay and bat caves) where the retreat was held, then to Phnom Penh with a little day trip to a nearby island to relax in a hammock and read and meet a wonderful older couple from Siberia who shared their shrimp-in-a-bag and rum-in-a-mouthwash-bottle with me and invited me to stay with them anytime I'm in Siberia.

While on summer break from teaching in Hainan, China, I took the very slow train to Beijing to visit a friend who had been living there awhile. I wrote about the train experience here. Besides spending time with my friend and his family, the highlight of the trip was walking a long section of the Great Wall. I also clearly remember visiting this huge indoor/outdoor art gallery and seeing some of the most inspiring art.

I found a job in Hainan, China teaching English at a kindergarten. I lived in Hainan for the entire school year, and had the opportunity to teach students of all ages at various schools and universities.

On Christmas day 2011 I flew from Madrid to Kathmandu, Nepal to enroll in a month-long TEFL course. I figured if I was going to travel indefinitely, I needed a way to make money, so teaching English seemed like the best way. I spent all of January 2012 in Kathmandu. The TEFL course allowed us to travel throughout the surrounding countryside teaching at village schools, and even volunteering at an orphanage.

While living and working in Denver, Colorado, I dropped everything, packed a backpack and flew to Barcelona, Spain with the intention of traveling indefinitely. I rented a car and drove from Barcelona to Madrid, spent a night, then drove to Córdoba, which turned out to be my favorite place so I made that my home for the week. I then took day trips to Seville and Málaga before heading back to Madrid to catch a flight.

I traveled with my Scottish boyfriend to visit his father and his birthplace in the Highlands. On the way home we spent new year's eve in a hotel in Glasgow.

I traveled with my Scottish boyfriend to attend his friend's wedding.

I visited a friend for about a week who was living in this small seaside village in Guatemala, just south of Belize. The village is so remote that I had to take planes, trains, buses and boats just to get there and back.

We traveled to run a marathon in Edinburgh, Scotland, so we added on a few days at the beginning of the trip in London, and took the super fast train to Paris, France for a day trip. Then we took the super slow train from London to Edinburgh. The landscape between the two cities/countries is so beautiful, unforgettable.

In Paris we did a whirlwind tourist trip so that we could pack as much into that one day as possible, like seeing the most famous art at the Louvre, including the Mona Lisa, and having lunch in the Eiffel Tower. One day is most definitely not enough time.

After moving to California, we drove down to spend a few days in Ensenada, Mexico. I remember staying near the ocean and eating albondigas soup. I think we made a few trips down there over the course of my first years in California.

My first trip outside of the United States was on a high school band trip to Toronto to play in a parade for their Winter Festival.