December 21, 2019 Ballads and Boys “Abbie, are you coming or not?” I peeked my head out of my bedroom, peering down the hallway. Izzy, my roommate, stood next to the door with her arms crossed, clutching her cell phone tightly in one hand and her dorm keys in the other. Checking my watch, I widened my eyes.
January 6, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: Blank Slate I’ve always loved travel, and my vacation in Taiwan in the spring of 2016 was a game changer. I can still remember the goosebumps I felt across my skin as we descended into Taoyuan Airport in Taipei. The first country I ever visited in Asia, and definitely not the last. Stepping off the plane, it was one of the only times in my life I felt completely anonymous. Everywhere I turned, Mandarin Chinese covered the signs and people spoke words I didn’t understand. Even today, I don’t understand everything entirely.
January 2, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: The Start It’s a new year, and it’s officially (when you read this, not as I type this) 58 days until I step onto the plane bound for North America. Believe me, I find it hard to believe that my time in Taiwan is coming to an end. It seems that it was only yesterday that I stepped onto the plane to move here, to start working as an English teacher. Honestly, I had no idea of the places and people I would encounter along the way. That is precisely why in honor of my time in Taiwan and all the memories I have collected along the way, this blog post serves as the first in a series I am releasing, titled “Taking on Taiwan”. And there’s no better place to start than right at the beginning, in October of 2015.
December 23, 2018 What Happens After Your Last Game I remember the first time I stepped foot on the ice in hockey skates. At nine years old, I had donned figure skates for six years leading up to that, but nothing could prepare me for the dozens of bruises and bumps I had all over my body as I got used to life without toe picks. But yet, despite every fall and a few stifled laughs from my teammates that summer, I kept on trying. Thirteen years later, I would step on the ice for the last time, wearing my collegiate uniform and equipment way larger than the first set of pads I wore way back when.
December 5, 2018 Tattooed Back in May 2013, I went in for my first tattoo ever. I was terrified, but I spent a lot of my days back then in a constant state of anxiety. So, in an effort to push myself past my comfort zone, I sat under the needle for about an hour. I got my first tattoo, and one that would cause me a lot of controversy for a couple of years: a girl breaking out of chains.
October 10, 2018 The Key to a Proper Diet The year is 2011. I was seventeen going on finally being a legal adult, preparing for university and collegiate division three ice hockey. In the spring of that year, I’d written my first real full length manuscript (which I never ended up publishing) and I was attempting to get noticed on other smaller websites or journals. As far as my future appeared, things were looking up. Until I glanced around at the other aspects of my life. Then the truth became more than apparent to me: my diet was inadequate.
October 3, 2018 That Time We Hid a Kitten In Our Apartment During university, I’ll admit: I did a lot of weird, out of character things. One time, I stole Santa Claus and hid him on campus. I’d go lay out on Chapel Hill and watch the stars when I couldn’t sleep, sometimes till the wee hours of the night. I often tried new things and much to my dismay, liking them was a hit of a miss. And a lot of the time, it didn’t take too long before I realized how much I really disliked something. But the time my roommate and I adopted a kitten and hid it from residence life for a week was definitely not something I regret doing.
September 4, 2018 That Time I Helped Steal Santa Claus College in America tends to have this reputation for being quite scandalous: raging parties, crazy stories, plenty of laughs and ample tears, and the…
June 20, 2018 The Most Valuable Currency *This is an excerpt from a longer story written in 2016, titled Forging a New American Dream, which is a nonfiction account of my personal relationship to money* After three years of trying my best to save up, senior year turned out to be the one year I could afford to have a real spring break: tropical location, good friends, and some delicious drinks. My best friend, Lucy, invited me to visit her parents in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. It worked out nicely for everyone involved: we both got to see her family and get the warm, sunny spring break we imagined we would get at one point in our college years.
