At the height of my quarterlife crisis, I was living in Shanghai, at a mouse-and-roach infested hostel, next to one of the most fetid wet markets I’ve ever smelled in my life. We’re talking offal and fish guts perennially rotting in the street outside my door. I was broke. Technically…
One of the most memorable gifts of my life was a single strawberry.
Eight years ago, I lived in China. I was renting a bunk in a 6-bed dorm, making micro-“meals” out of carefully-rationed candy, and doing things like charging a single biscotti periodically on a credit card at a…
I always wished I had a multi-lingual inheritance, but we can’t all be so lucky.
I grew up in small-town U.S.A. On my mom’s side, only a handful of isolated phrases from impoverished, 19th-century rural Italian dialects survive. On my dad’s side, the most recently-shed mother tongue, Lithuanian, fell out…
Having good travel chemistry with someone can elevate a trip like nothing else. The flipside? If you aren’t navigating from compatible objectives, it can break your experience. I learned this the hard way: years ago, on a trip to Thailand, my travel buddy abruptly decided to fly home early —…
What happens when you find your twin flame?
At first, perhaps, you don’t even understand that this connection has remade your whole universe.
Twin flame love seeps in so gently — it feels as effortless and natural as the very breath of life that flows ever in and out of…
When I came home from a semester in Ecuador at age 19, I was not the same person who’d gone there — and my transformation was not remotely of the confident, beautiful, smiley, fulfilling sort that all those glossy brochures from the study abroad office had promised.
The new, “improved,”…
Some years ago, I was living in a city I loved, yet I was feeling increasingly disenchanted there. After a hefty dose of soul-searching, I saw the problem: key elements of its culture didn’t align with my values. …
Once upon a time, I was out on a second or third date with a guy we’ll call Leo. I liked his personality. We had some common interests. He seemed courteous, witty, attentive, and cute. …
At age 28, I flew on a one-way ticket to China. I arrived without a job, just booked a few nights at a hostel, and winged it from there. By the end of about two years, I’d experienced some of the most challenging times in my life — but also…
I hadn’t smelled a fart in over a month. Let’s just start this story there. There were other things I also couldn’t smell at all, like baked potatoes or yeast. And any aroma I could smell — some herbs, fruits, flowers — was whisper-subtle in its impact. This was brand…
