I started travel writing during a yearlong student exchange to southern Italy. A classic realist, I ditched my stuffy language studies and hit the hills, strolling in olive groves up and down the Adriatic coast, getting to know the earthy locals on their own turf. Since then, I have ceaselessly traveled, perpetually seeking an authentic, unlabored sense of cultural connection and immersion.

Over the years, I've volunteered in Italy with Chernobyl child victims from Belarus, translating Russian to the Italians, and Italian to the other volunteers. Soon after, I volunteered in Switzerland with child refugees from Africa & Montenegro, organizing cross-cultural activities. Most recently, I ventured out to the cold and distant waters of Scotland, volunteering my hard labor planting organic crops of trees and vegetables and helping to build solar water heaters for remote islanders.

My formal education is in modern foreign languages and I am a student in the Feature Writing Program at the University of California in San Diego.