Category: story
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Bright Future
Voices, squeals, and laughter echo in the afternoon air as raindrops start to patter on the metal roof above. Girls and boys are scattered around the basketball court. A pack chases each other, dribbling a basketball. A lanky girl with hair pulled back in a ponytail squares up and shoots with great form, the ball…
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A Holy Cacophony
The sanctuary—lit by hundreds of candles set upon tables and on the floor that stretch the length of the open space—smells of incense, candles, sweat and the grass and pine that cover the floor. Large portraits and figures of the pantheon of Catholic saints line the walls, as people move freely around, praying or offering…
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The Call of the Quetzal
Veiled in morning fog, the pyramid emerges, revealing a mystical structure more than 1,000 years old. Situated in a large grassy square surrounded by smaller structures and jungle, the pyramid’s grandeur towers above the gawking tourists below. Sweat drips from my forehead as the fog fades. With the sounds of birds around, few tourists have…
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You Are Not Alone: A Story of Friendship and Hope
This building haunts me. Its imposing architecture and location rend it as the focal point across the sparse college campus at Mianyang Teachers’ College. Long gray buildings no more than 10 years old with paint already cracked span the wide roads. Small trees still growing line the road leading toward it from the main gate.…
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Semester of Storytelling
In the Spring Semester of 2018 at 绵阳师范学院 (Mianyang Teachers’ College), I explored storytelling with my Sophomore classes. I guided them each week through the basics of the hero’s journey, genre, and sequencing toward a final group project. The project was to form a story, write the dialogue, and finally film themselves performing their story.…
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What Gives Me Life
For those of you who know me and have followed my journey for awhile know my personal struggle with the genetic disease called Neurofibromatosis. To those new to my journey, it is apparent when looking at a photo of me that something is different. This post is about living with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), and…
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Indonesia: Going Home
When I finally set foot on Indonesian soil again this past August, after nearly three years, I knew I was home again. This post describes my short 10 days in Indonesia during the latter part of August, returning to the North Sumatran province. My first destination was Bukit Lawang, a mountain village next to the…
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When Writing Gets Creative, a Reflection on the Peace Corps Write On! Competition
Aliens. Robots. Environmental destruction. Pollution loving aliens. Secret agents. Witches. Killer friends. Dystopian futures. Birds engulfed in shadow. These are a few topics students at my college wrote about during the creative writing competition last month. I was honored to host Write On!, an international creative writing competition facilitated by Peace Corps Volunteers around the…
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The Dubbing Competition and Just Rolling with It
So sometimes life in China as a university English teacher is a bit odd. We have to navigate a different culture, a different university system, and the sometimes awkward use of our own native language. My students seem well aware that spoken English in this country is often not correct, as they make jokes about…
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An invitation to the journey
I remember it well—the day I became a student of Eberhard-Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany. Paperwork with official stamps finally in hand, I bounced through the cobble-stoned streets of the Altstadt toward the bridge that hangs across the Neckar River. Looking out over the old buildings of this once-walled city neatly reflected in the Neckar’s…
Megs the Wanderer 