Overlooking Salem, Oregon

This summer I had planned on taking a tour of the Northern states, beginning in New York and eventually making my way out to the land of all things cheese, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, state pay cuts left my wallet a bit lacking and forced me to hold off on the vacation. Instead, I spent much of this summer looking into new jobs in new states, knowing that I would need to save my vacation money for relocation expenses when the opportunity arose.

As the job prospects started to look less forthcoming, I decided to heck with it, a vacation would do me some good. I planned to take a week off to visit my boyfriend Frank in San Diego, visiting beaches and drinking up all the good coffee that I could find.

The same week I was finalizing my vacation plans, I had a phone interview with the State Hospital in Salem, Oregon. They called me a few hours after our phone interview to ask me when I could come to visit. Seeing as I was already taking a week off of work to bum around Southern California, I figured it would be safe to arrange my Oregon trip during that time. Continue Reading →

The Atlantic Coast in Puerto Viejo
This summer I had an opportunity to study abroad for a month in Costa Rica. Even though I was in a classroom five hours a day for five days a week, I still managed to make time to be a vagabond on the weekends and explore wherever possible. This entry is about my first weekend in Costa Rica visiting Puerto Viejo on the Atlantic coast. To most, this will simply be an informative article about another country, but for others I hope to provide an insatiable itch to travel that can only be satisfied by seeing and experiencing it all for yourself. Continue Reading →

Our hotel in Venice {otherwise known as the only reservation I was allowed to make… 3 hours in advance}
Like any twenty-something with wanderlust, I love to travel. I also love to have a basic game plan of where I’m heading with a place reserved for me to sleep at night.

I was forced to buck this habit in July during a three week road tour of Western Europe. I say forced to because my favorite travel buddy, Meindert, is completely anti-plans. Every trip we’ve ever taken, I’ve mapped out ahead of time. This time I was allowed only to print out the Tour de France itinerary so we wouldn’t run into it. Continue Reading →

This summer, I traveled to the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska with my partner, Justin, to work on our friends’ farm. While he would be off planting trees, I would find myself elbow deep in weeds attending to an assortment of delicious vegetables, as well as feeding five goats, eight pigs, ten meat chickens, three rabbits, twenty-one sled dogs and about as many egg-laying chickens, plus milking two of the five goats. Not to mention spending time with my dog, Sadie, and my friend Allison and her three kids. Continue Reading →

{Hi, how are you? On 21^st and Guadalupe St.}
I am absolutely in love with Austin. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other cities I would gladly live in, but no other city’s spirit quite parallels that of the ATX. One of the beautiful things about Austin is that you can genuinely be yourself. That’s an easy statement to throw around, but what exactly does it mean? Simply put, Austin has something to offer for every lifestyle. It is a juxtaposition of a city, one in which a variety of people all happily coexist.

So, in staying true to the Austin spirit {and to my own} I am going to write about things I personally love to do around the city. Now, if you are Continue Reading →