I’m grateful to have a job. Not everyone is so lucky. It pays well enough to allow me to live in California, eat well, entertain my friends, and pay off some credit card debt. I try to remind myself of this when impermanent circumstances make me consider quitting. It’s not that my boss is...
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In some respects, being back in the US is no different than another experience abroad. I have to learn how to speak to the locals, how to get around, and how to deal with making a living and finding the happy. It has everything I want when it comes to travel, but for some...
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I’ve been absorbing quite a bit of material over the last month, but haven’t really felt inspired to produce anything of my own. This should tell me that travel is conducive to my writing, but I’d like to believe that I can write about anything anywhere if only I would learn to find inspiration...
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Although I remain blissfully free of practically all the physical limitations some people in their 30s experience – lack of energy, back or neck pain, to name a few – I’m not completely immune to feeling the effects of growing older. I’m sure I’m in better health than many people in their 20s (and...
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My apologies to readers expecting stories from the Philippines. Although I’m having an excellent time, inspiration for blogs has not been striking. In general, life here, on the surface at least, reminds me a great deal of Thailand. Similar climate, the same plethora of fruit, and beautiful sandy beaches. However, what really makes my...
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Travel takes its toll on your health. As much as we’d like to believe that a vacation is a necessary mental health break for some in stressful jobs (and it can be), I’m amazed at how naive some people can be thinking a five or even seven-day international trip to somewhere exotic can be...
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It’s not always inevitable that Dokdo will come up as a foreign English teacher in Korea. Unless you’re assigning your students newspaper articles to read and they happen to choose one regarding relations between Korea and Japan, or they happen to have particularly right-wing parents who want to use their children to promote Dokdo...
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In keeping up with the media feeding frenzy on racially charged stories, and if nothing else, to get a few things off my chest, I want to share some stories with the Internet. Whether this reaches a larger audience than my usual readers and ignites a storm of hate-filled comments and alienation from acquaintances,...
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Whether it’s a bus or an airplane, I’m always relieved when few people show up, leaving me free to stretch my legs across the aisle. This weekend was my first time returning to Seoul since my arrival after New Year’s. In addition to soaking up a little culture at the Sejong Center with Aida,...
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As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to change my definition of success more times than I could count. If you had asked me what that word meant at fifteen, I probably would have said a mansion in LA, an acting career, and a supermodel on my arm. In college, I would have settled for...
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