I have met my twin, lost at birth. When I first saw her, sitting in the corner of our Math/English teachers room with the other math teachers, I thought to myself: The other teachers can barely tell us...

When I first begin a different sort of life in a different sort of place, I write in my notebooks, or plane tickets, or coffee receipts Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. Big and bold, the steps...

I write this at my own peril. But, alas, perhaps my end shall come anyways. Perhaps the dawn may never come for me again. But no. I cannot give up hope. I cannot give in to the fear. I must tell my story. You...

I have a notebook and pen beside my bed at all times because some of my most comical moments occur when I wake up and remember that I had written an idea down sometime in the middle of stage 1 or 2 of...

My beautiful neighbor Linda took me with her to central Jakarta this weekend, to pop around admiring dancing fountains and eat local foods and rub our fingers against local tropical flora. We met up with...

Nora is a beautiful tiny butterfly of energy and smiles. She is from a small town in Sumatra and comes from a devout Islamic family. Lim, one of the Chinese-Indonesian English teachers, took her and I...

When you move to another country, especially one with a culture so different from your own, it is easy to be swept away by that which scares you. It is easy to get overwhelmed by how much you feel you...

I often assume a persona when I am gathering myself to go into new situations. I think, today I am going to be Robin Williams in The Dead Poet’s Society, as I enter into the high school classroom...

Indonesia seems, to me, to be very similar to Morocco. Perhaps this is my Western mind not able to discern non-Western cultures individually and simply lumping them all together, so perhaps this is the...

An ultramarathon is 1/5 human vs. nature and the remaining 4/5 human vs. self. When going into a battle such as the 100–which could last anywhere from 20 – 31 hours 38 minutes 20 seconds–it...

I need to tell you how I woke up this morning. I mean, the physicality of the act was not grand. I took a shower before I went to bed last night and when I parachuted out of the covers the hair on the...

The school day ended and I whipped myself back home, taking a quick shower and shoving a pair of wool socks, and extra sweater, my trusty hammock, a sleeping bag, an avocado and a beer in my backpack....