Article #4 in the Student Travel Stories Series from our tour of Beijing, China. By Toan, Age 18, 11th Grade in Boston. Born in the U.S. to parents from Vietnam.
Q: During our free hour in Beijing’s Night Market, word is that you sampled some INSANE foods. What exactly happened?
A: Well, first I went around trying to look for the scorpion. That was the first food I wanted to eat.
All the exotic foods in the market were [...Read More!]
Article #3 in the Student Travel Stories Series from our tour of Beijing, China. By Michelle, Age 15, 9th Grade in Boston. Born in the U.S. to parents from China.
Q: What was the craziest thing for you, traveling through China as a Chinese-American student?
A: When we got to China, Xiu Na (another Chinese-American BPS student on the trip) and I had the exact faces of Asian Chinese people who live there. So when the Chinese people [...Read More!]
Article #2 in the Student Travel Stories Series from our tour of Beijing, China. By Julio, Age 16, 9th Grade in Boston. Born in the U.S. to parents from El Salvador.
Q: What was the best part of our week in China for you?
A: Honestly, a highlight of the whole trip was the Silk and Cotton Markets because something very unique to China was the bargaining. Most kids in the U.S. never get to experience bargaining because [...Read More!]
Article #1 in the Student Travel Stories Series from our tour of Beijing, China. By John, Age 17, 11th Grade in Boston. Born in the U.S. to parents from Vietnam.
Q: John, what did climbing the Great Wall make you realize?
A: I pay so much respect to the Great Wall of China because it is over 3,000 miles long. That is as far as the distance between Boston and California! I [...Read More!]
HOORAY! We are all safely back from a phenomenal student tour in China!
I burst into tears of emotion when my fiance picked me up at the airport last night, so happy was I about what we accomplished over the past 8 days.
Here are the facts:
On the morning of Thursday 2/16/12, after a YEAR of planning, fundraising, and meetings, 42 Boston Students and 6 Boston teachers boarded a plane from Boston to [...Read More!]
“Oooh, Miss M.!” squealed my students the day after I got engaged. “Your diamond engagement ring is HUGE!”
Well, folks, it’s time to come clean. I do not have a diamond engagement ring.
What I really have is… a $25 crystal ring. Hah!!!!!
Colin and I bought the fake ring together, laughing uproariously the whole time, from the back of a sketchy store in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. ”The funniest part about this,” I squeaked amid gales of [...Read More!]
“Sell-out!” jeered a cyber-heckler when I posted my article about going on a 3-day Florida-Bahamas Cruise.
So I can only imagine this heckler’s horror when he learned that this “brave solo world traveler” (a.k.a. me) super “sold out” and accepted a free 40-person teacher travel tour to Spain over New Year’s through EF Tours.
Why are many hip travelers so against the idea of large-group travel?
“Ugh– It’s like being in a bubble of [...Read More!]
When many people think of Black-White race relations in Boston, they often think of the violent racial battles in the 1970s over forced desegregation of Boston Public Schools through busing.
Either that, or, if they’re not from Boston, they think of the zillion recent Tough White Gangster Boston movies like “The Departed” and ask, “Wait, there are Black people in Boston?”
Guess what, folks? Boston actually has a LONG, RICH African-American History!
I am [...Read More!]
“Argh!” my friend emailed, “How are you able to juggle all your work and social and fitness obligations??”
“Help me organize my life!”
In the email I wrote back to her, I realized that I have, indeed, honed a set of concrete Life Juggling strategies that have enabled me to get a ton done (click here for examples of uber-productivity) while still staying sane.
Allow me to share these productivity tricks with you now, as you [...Read More!]
Ok, first, don’t worry, I’m not in jail.
That lead photo was from my first night going out in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The party my friend Marleny and I ended up at was “Cowboy and Jail-themed,” hence the fake jail.
You see, from the first day to the last day of our month-long travels through Brazil in 2005, Brazil surprised and delighted us. I simply have to write about it now, in 2012, [...Read More!]