travel tips

ExPat Life

Daniel 20 Comments

[This is a guest post from Shawn Wall, my errant climbing partner. Shawn left Colorado to do some travel after graduating university at the end of 2015, and he never came home. He now lives in Budapest, Hungary, with his girlfriend. I spent a month visiting them in October 2016. I asked him to write a little bit on his experiences living as an expat in a foreign country.

You can find his personal travel blog, The WanderinGinger, at http://wanderingingertravels.blogspot.com/]

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February 22, 2017.

Today marks three years since when I first ran away from home to a magical place called New Zealand. I wanted to escape the troubles of day to day life and just be free from everything. So I left. I was running away from death, pain, sadness, confusion and everything that I knew and called home. At least, that is what I thought I was doing. Parts of that may be true, I was running away, but whenever you run away you run towards something else. I was running straight towards a whole new path of life.

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Why you should join the Peace Corps straight out of college

Christina 4 Comments

Last week, you heard Dan’s arguments against becoming a digital nomad straight out of college.

It just doesn’t do to talk someone out of something without providing a suggestion for an alternative, so today I’ll tell you about why joining the Peace Corps straight out of college is a great idea if you have a wandering spirit but you don’t think the digital nomad lifestyle is for you.

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Yovo, yovo, bon soir – Visiting Benin

Christina 5 Comments
Benin gateway to slavery

[ed. note: I’m off exploring Taipei. Our ski town correspondent is skiing pow. In the meantime, here’s a guest post about general travel in Benin, West Africa. The writing’s courtesy of my sister, who served 2.5 years of Peace Corps service there. It’s a fascinating piece—I guarantee you will learn something new!]

I am a geography nerd who loves maps and learning about the world, so I knew about the country called Benin, but I probably would never have visited had the Peace Corps not invited me to serve there. (More on Peace Corps service later!)

Benin was colonized by the French, and there is still a small contingent of French  voluntourists who visit the country, but in the English-speaking world, it is largely unknown. It deserves more recognition.

Benin is a small, key-shaped (or so they say) nation on the coast of West Africa. It is bordered on the east by Nigeria, and on the west by Togo (which is one country over from Ghana, perhaps the best-known West African nation and a poster-child for international development).

Yes, you will need to have some French language skills to get by here. Very few people speak English. Though once you get out of the capital, you’ll find that many of the people you encounter don’t speak French either. They will be thrilled to teach you a few phrases in the local language, though.

Here are some interesting facts about Benin and advice for your travels there.

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