My name is Rachel; I’m 24 and this is my blog. I’m a 2008 alumna of Susquehanna University in Pa. During my time in school, I studied abroad in both Costa Rica and Senegal. This blog is a collection of random thoughts, attempts to relay my experiences with past and current travel to family and friends, and share lots and lots of pictures.
Though the site is currently under construction, I hope to eventually have posted pictures and some entries about all of my international travels during and after college. I’m currently back at home in Pa., but I have been accepted to teach English through the assistantship in France (TAPIF) next year in Amiens, in the Northern region of France. I am also working on a Fulbright application for research and travel after the assistantship. I speak Spanish conversationally, and at the moment, am rather mediocre in French. These two languages have opened my mind and my life to unimaginable opportunities, and I am forever in awe.
After my time living in Costa Rica during the year after college, I found myself increasingly politicized. My current passion is anti-poverty work and anti-capitalist politics, and engaging in constant deconstruction of my surroundings through a race, class, gender lens. I’m very interested in the humanity that is so often overlooked in our globalized world, so I hope to relay some of the eye opening conversations I’ve had with interesting, amazing, and inspiring people.
I believe that massive cultural change is necessary to change the existing system, and I’m hoping that I can make some contribution to that through my writing. My focus in this blog will primarily be about culture and cross-cultural experiences and engagement, media that encourages that, and the challenges that that confrontation entails.
If you have any questions or comments PLEASE POST. I adore seeing feedback to what I write. PLEASE RATE MY POSTS! There is a 0-5 star rating that appears at the bottom of each entry (you have to go to the individual post page to see it). My apologies for my notorious inconsistency.
I love you!!
Hi Rachel !
So glad I found you, I seem to have lost your email. Firstly, it was so nice to get you know you, secondly, my apologies for my mopy mood that last night (I can get terrifically nostalgic), and thirdly, send me your email so we can keep in touch and so I can forward you the contact info for the work x-change in limon.
Some culture/heart shock being back in Argentina but im feeling much better, looking forward to my remaining time here and of course coming back! Pura Vida.!! Give my best to Sebastian
Hi there! I think you’re really awesome and we are doing a lot of the same things in a way–I’m working on modern social problems on a global level with an emphasis in Environmental ethics and women’s issues. I’ve studied abroad in India and in Thailand and am also trying to get my writing nose on that grindstone with my blog lol…so far I’m not doing a great job at it, but am also in a holding pattern where I’m not doing much interesting. so…now that I’ve overshared, I mean to say: I like your blog!!
Hey thanks! I’m going back through entries that are three years old (while updating, reorganizing, and consolidating blogs) and discovering how much of a head case some of my entries have been, so I really appreciate the vote of confidence!! I’m kind of in the zone right now, but when I get to a stopping place, I’ll check out what you’ve written. Do you have any all-star suggestions for a starting place?