Rocking that *International* Paradise

The silver ring on the middle finger of my right hand is dented, scratched, and scuffed from ten years of constant wear.  If you look carefully, the word “Recuerdo” is still clearly etched into one side, though the way light reflects off the ring makes the word difficult to see.  People rarely notice it.  In fact, people rarely comment on my ring at all.  But there’s a story behind my ring, and I'd like to share it in full. Xalapa, Mexico, 2007 We met them on Valentine’s Day.  It was perhaps 11:30 at night, a Wednesday, and the three of us had stopped along the quiet street in Mexico, waiting for a taxi to drive by and take Rebecca to her host parents’ home.  We’d just come from a party with some local friends, students and teachers from our school for foreign students, and we were ready to return to our host families and get some sleep before classes the next day.   Our return home was delayed, however, when they--3 teenage...

I struggled a bit with whether to continue this blog, now that I’m living back in Wisconsin.  I’m no longer “rocking” a tropical paradise, nor an international one.  Now I’m just rocking my own paradise.  Because the truth is, paradise is what you make it.  And thankfully, while I no longer hear Spanish spoken on a daily basis, and my employer no longer pays for one summer flight home per year, and I no longer live in the land of “eternal spring,” I’m still in paradise. And that merits at the very least, one final blog post.   Cheesy, I know.   This is my third attempt at writing this blog post.  The first I wrote right after the first day of school.  I was pumped up and excited and the post was overly positive, and I thought to myself, “best wait and see if this excitement lasts.”  The second I wrote after a particularly draining couple of days at work, and the post was rather full of complaints and self pity, and I thought to my...

I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive t...

When we found out G-Money wouldn't be able to come with us to Taroko Gorge in Taiwan, I decided to follow up on a contact.  My friend Christy remembered a couch surfing host who takes people into the national park, and so I asked for his name and sent him a message to see if he would want to meet up with us.  He said yes, so at 9:30am, we stood waiting at the park entrance for a stranger to walk up and greet us with a huge smile.  Dylan had arrived. We got into Dylan's blissfully cool, air conditioned car, and he took us to our first stop: the Shakadang Trail.  For about an hour, we walked at a brisk pace along a smooth, flat path with a rock outcrop cut out above our heads from the rock.  It was our first excursion into the gorge, and it was magnificent.  The trail ended at the river, and while Dylan let us go ahead and explore, he was busy buying us a small gift. When we returned to the path, he presented each of us with a hand-woven aboriginal brac...