Tag: photography

Travel & Scotland & Grad School — Oh My!

4 Comments

Goodness! Where has the time gone? For those of you who have been following this blog from the beginning… hello again, old friends! For those of you who may be new, welcome to the adventure.

It’s been a year since I last posted, and oh so much has happened since! I’ve traveled to more far-flung places than ever before (Myanmar, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Albania and Oman to name a few), found myself a handsome and wonderful boyfriend and then moved across the Atlantic to return to school.

After working four years in the travel industry as an Adventure Guide with Adventures by Disney and on the Expedition Staff for trips around the world by private jet with TCS World Travel and National Geographic, I decided to take a one-year break from travel to pursue a Masters degree. Never one to follow the status quo, I ended up choosing a program on the other side of the world (naturally) and have been living in beautiful Scotland for the last four months attending the University of Edinburgh for a postgraduate degree (MSc) in Entrepreneurship and Innovation! Fitting a Masters program into one year has kept me unbelievably busy to say the least. But as I’ve had a chance to rest during my holiday break, I figured it was time to catch you all up on my life. 

Continue reading →

Story Feature: Refugee Life Through A Boy’s Eyes

Leave a comment

Meet Ali, an Iraqi boy who radiates kindness and intelligence, but whose situation as a refugee is quickly turning from bad to worse.

IMG_3390
When our team arrived at the Šid refugee camp in Serbia, we met Ali and quickly became friends through broken English, a few words in Serbian, and a lot of pantomiming as he explained what was happening in the camp. Here’s the cliff-notes version: two days before we arrived, hundreds of people started to fill the camp as borders to the EU (primarily in Slovenia and Croatia) began refusing entry to large numbers of refugees, including nationalities that had previously been allowed through as asylum-seekers.

Try to picture it all: an overflowing refugee camp (built with large white tents in the shadow of an old butcher/meat factory) with people who are upset and confused — and in the midst of it all, this sweet boy (probably between the age of 14 or 15) who eagerly engages us with the little English and Serbian he knows.

After talking for a few minutes and watching yet another busload of refugees enter the camp, Ali noticed the camera slung over my shoulder and so I gestured for him to come closer. I put the strap around his neck, gave him a 2-minute photography lesson, and then watched as he became my “photography assistant” for the day. The following photos are what he took while we walked around the camp.

Continue reading →

Project: Seek the Good

2 Comments

In the past few weeks I have been asking myself a lot of big questions…

“What does it mean to be a ‘successful’ 20-something just out of university?”

“What is up with all of my friends suddenly getting engaged and married?”

“Does Ryan Seacrest even age?” (Okay, not totally relevant, but just as perplexing.)

But most importantly, I’ve been asking two central questions: If I was doing what I feel I was made for (no limitations), what would that be? And how do I best use my skills and passions in this season of life to give back? Truth be told, I think we often answer questions like these rashly or we give some “canned” answer that sounds great without intending to follow through. I’ve done both, but I wanted to dig deeper. For some reason I felt like these answers should be so easy to find, yet I quickly learned that finding definitive answers to these questions was more like walking through wet cement than a walk in the park.

However, as I’ve slowly waded through these questions one idea has consistently popped up–an idea for telling stories–specifically stories of people working to impact communities on the margins of society.

Considering how much of the media focuses on the darkness and danger in the world, I started asking myself what it would look like to spread the opposite–hope. So much of my life has been built upon the desire to see the good in others and to find hope in a hopeless situation. From the slums in Kenya to the streets of Seattle, I believe there are stories of joy and hope all over the place. The question is not, “do they exist?,” but, “how do we find them?”

Continue reading →