I feel the need to clearify a few of the thoughts in a recent post – the one about why you go abroad. I seem to have scared a people with that ‘leave your friends and family’ line. (I meant it.) And what exactly did I mean by saying that traveling wasn’t about “seeing new sights.” (It’s about so much more.)
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I don’t intend to turn this into a book review but let’s discuss Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. If you haven’t read it you really should. I finished it a week or two ago and, just as you would expect when you finish any good book, it’s still churning through the thoughts in my head. Whether you’re a Christian (it provides some of the clearest articulation of the reasons you believe what you believe) or not (it sheds some light on why they can be so crazy) or somewhere in-between (it was actually written for you), I think you will find the book illuminating. (more…)
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I’m going to tell you why you need to go abroad. It’s not to see new sights. It’s not to find new opportunities. It’s definitely not to study in a different environment. It is to feel uncomfortable. Humans are naturally comfort seekers, that is to say we look for that which is familiar. We are also paradoxical in nature. (more…)
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I spent a month living in a cabin on Table Rock Lake, so I figure it deserves some attention in my writing. The lake is closest to Golden, Missouri, which is really isn’t close at all. It’s on the Missouri/Arkansas border and close to nothing. The cabin has a screen door, no air conditioning, certainly no cable and no cell phone service. It lies nestled in the Ozark Mountains and is in every sense of the word rural, even isolated. It sits completely unadulterated from the modern world. Such a place could easily have been among the world’s quietest.
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Coming home has become increasingly less exciting.
I love home. There are few places in this world where I feel more comfortable. This is understandably so, especially to anyone who knows my mother’s habit of keeping the kitchen well stocked.
Leaving changes things. It’s never the same really.
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The value of the dollar dropped yet again today. Fortunately, I have already exchanged my George Washingtons for the low, low price of 1.64 euros – which is about 15 cents better than today’s rate.
I suppose we chose a poor time to go abroad. It’s never been more expensive to buy goods in Europe than it is now. The ideal economist would be selling US goods abroad not buying foreign goods with US dollars while abroad. But then again when else does one take a transformative eye-opening trip than in his transformative years? I’ll share more musings on the importance of that question in a later post. (more…)
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I have a friend who has more to say than I ever believed could be humanly possible. He/she (don’t want to reveal their identity on the whole wide interweb) is naturally talkative and flips open the cell phone at just about every down moment possible. The cell phone is in use whenever walking to and from class, in lieu of studying, sometimes in order to study, even while in the car. Every time and all the time. In fact, I suspect she (okay, it’s a she – let’s be honest you all knew it couldn’t be a guy) will take a drive just to talk on the phone.
Before there were cell phones, no one ever had so much to say.
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Greeks are curious people. Their shops open at 10 and their banks close at noon – at least in Mykonos, which is where I am now. The city of Mykonos, some would say, gives an inaccurate portrayal of Greece the country, this is because Mykonos is like the Cancun of the Mediterranean. With its stunning beauty, the small island attracts all sorts of tourists and revolves around its outrageous nightlife, which caters to tourists, college students and Paris Hilton alike. While this is obviously not indicative of Greece as a whole, it does magnify many of the characteristics that otherwise exist only as subtle nuisances.
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