Category: travel
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Summer Travel: Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Hong Kong
Summer is drawing to a close, the night air no longer drenches me in sweat and rainy days and a blanket of haze have again settled in masking the blue skies (today is a sunny exception). The fall semester is a month on, and now September has past. It’s time to catch up on posting. […]
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Taipei, Idul Fitri, and the Indonesian Migrant Community
I was lost in a sea of people. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence after one year in China and two past years in Indonesia–but this time was different. This time my physical body was in Taipei Main Station–a sprawling transportation hub connected by passageways to an underground mall–but my eyes tricked me into thinking I […]
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Hiking Up the Mountain
Last month I went with a group of students to a nearby mountain. Mianyang is in a basin, but there are many mountains in the Sichuan province. The students arranged for early transportation for the hour and a half ride to Jiuhuang Mountain (九皇山). No one had told me the scale of this mountain before […]
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Winter Vacation
The dreary gray and smoggy days here in Mianyang persist into March, as the new semester continues. Forthcoming posts about recent activities in the works, however in this post I take a fond look back at the warm winter vacation I spent with two of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers in three sun-filled countries: Thailand, […]
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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 […]
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Night Train to Colombo
Our three-wheeler pulls into the dusty lot used as a bus station. Several mini-buses and big red buses similar to school buses idle around, engines humming and doors open, all waiting to depart to various cities in eastern Sri Lanka. I grab my bags and step onto a patch of caked dirt. My friend Apriliza […]
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A is for Alaska: On the move in the Last Frontier
I’m going to start collecting stories and photos from places I’ve been in a series. Each post in the series will feature photos and stories from a different part of the world that I’ve been following the alphabet as names of places, cities, or countries. This isn’t tips or practical information, rather it’s just me […]
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Hildegard’s Abbey
Charity abounds in all things, from the depths to high above the highest stars, and is most loving to all things; for to the high king it has given the kiss of peace. — Hildegard of Bingen, “caritas abundat” On the vineyard-covered hills above Rüdesheim am Rhein, Germany, sits the Abbey of St. Hildegard of […]
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Life in Indonesia
Here is a image gallery of photos that show a little of what life was like in Indonesia. Most are from Balige and Siantar, the two cities in the province of North Sumatra where I spent most of my time. In 2 of the photos, you’ll notice a pig’s head. Although most Indonesians are Muslim, […]
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Elections and Hope in Sri Lanka
“In my country there will be an election,” declared Oskar my taxi driver, as he drove me through the center of Colombo. An hour earlier, my flight had landed at Bandaranaike International Airport, 35km north of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s largest city and capital. It was Sunday, January 4, 2015, four days ahead of the awaited […]
Megs the Wanderer 