When I heard we would be visiting a famous shelter for street children on our first day in New Delhi, India, I pictured doing some tranquil arts and crafts projects, or reading a few good books with the kids. What I never expected was what actually occurred: a full-out dance party!
Our teacher group had started the day with an intense walking tour of the Paharganj neighborhood of New Delhi and we were in [...Read More!]
Tomorrow is my 30th birthday!
Want to make me REALLY, REALLY happy with a free gift? Here’s what I most desire:
1. Show some love to my two websites, AroundTheWorldL.com and TeachingTraveling.com by: reading, commenting on, and reposting/sharing/emailing articles, “Liking” the Facebook pages (currently near 1,400 fans!) and using the “suggest to friends” button, “Stumbling” articles (if you’re advanced like that), and generally bringing as many eyes as possible to these 500+ articles I [...Read More!]
Perhaps you’ve heard of snowboarding, and perhaps you’ve heard of surfboarding. Both activities are adrenaline-filled and frequently televised… but neither can match the feeling of sand in your underpants that you gain from a little activity known as SANDboarding.
Several summers ago, I lived in Peru and volunteer-taught with my Boston teacher friend, Gareth, in the fish factory town of Chimbote. We lived with the family that owned the school, and got along [...Read More!]
So you dream of global understanding, connection, and communication. What better way to create this than to have students across the world write letters to one another?
Ahh, the romanticized International Penpal Exchange idea: so beautiful and so grand!
And yet, as those of us who have tried it often soon realize… so full of potential mayhem and chaos!
During the three months I volunteered in Sogakope, Ghana, I helped run the Youth Creating [...Read More!]
The happiness of teaching and traveling…
I have just given birth again!
After the successful first year of this delightful, pudgy baby, AroundTheWorldL.com, passion has once again led to creation: my shiny new second site, TeachingTraveling.com!
Allow me to answer some preemptive Frequently Asked Questions about this birth:
Q: What is the difference between AroundTheWorldL.com and TeachingTraveling.com?
A: AroundtheWorldL.com is about me (and students with whom I work closely), following my journeys around the world [...Read More!]
Article #14 in the ESL Student Life Story Project, by Meaad from Saudi Arabia, age 23.
“Are you OK?” we all asked each other.
“Do you know what happened to our friend’s house? Did it get damaged?”
“Did anyone in my cousin’s family die?”
“I have heard that it’s expected to rain tomorrow again, and I am afraid of what will happen!”
We have discussed where clothes you donate might end up, but what about the BOOKS you toss into the “Donation” bin?
Me, I only had a hazy idea of how my old tomes might be used. Did they find a second life as firewood? Toilet paper? Food storage? Sometimes I worried about my cast-off literature’s fate.
And thus it was with absolute joy, during the three months I volunteered in Ghana, that I [...Read More!]
Yes, that IS a woman passed out in euphoric exhaustion on a four-foot-tall heap of clothing. Want to know why? Read on.
Saving money to do awesome things like travel is often a matter of making small sacrifices (or put more positively, “alterations”) in your budget that add up over the long term.
One such alteration that can save you thousands of dollars a year is this: instead of buying new clothes, hold [...Read More!]
We need your help!
In exactly two months, an amazing group of Ghanaian students and teachers from Youth Creating Change of Ghana is scheduled to leave their county for the first time. For three weeks this August, these hard-working Ghanaians will study and present in the United Kingdom for the return half of a remarkable educational exchange. That is… if we can raise the funds!
“This Cross-Culture exchange is the best programme I [...Read More!]
Thrilling! My interview with Chris Christensen about volunteering in Ghana has just been published on Chris’s world-famous site, Amateur Traveler Podcast!
For the full interview homepage on Amateur Traveler, click here, my dear.
Or, if your finger is a tad lazy, the entire interview can be played right here, by clicking this button:
Amateur Traveler Episode 234 – Travel to Ghana
If this chat whets your appetite, there are over 90 articles on this very [...Read More!]