December | 2016 | The Cash Odyssey

“Receptive, we approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting. We irritate locals because we stand in traffic islands and narrow streets and admire what they take to be unremarkable small details. We risk getting run over because we are intrigued by the roof of a government building or an inscription on a wall.” Alain De Botton. The Art of Travel

A couple of years ago, a study emerged claiming there are 2 types of people: those born with a certain “wanderlust” gene, one that would spur its owner on to risk-prone behaviors like boarding aircrafts for hard to pronounce locales, or putting too much wasabi on a particularly pungent piece of sushi, and those born without it. I implicitly distrust these types of studies; how could a piece of my DNA inform my desire to ride on a train for seemingly endless days over seemingly endless swathes of Siberian landscape, punctuated by stops on platforms hawking hard boiled eggs, ice cream on a stick, and those fuzzy-furry Russian hats we all secretly want to wear?

Beach house in Treasure Beach

DNA aside, upon reading the book whose quotation introduced this post, I decided to uncover why it is I joined Peace Corps, beyond the reasons I stated in my application essay. If I figured this out, perhaps a piece of me would begin to unravel like a bit of loose string on an old shirt, and once pulled out, I would understand myself more fully. Continue reading →

“They had fallen into the habit of considering their universe to be boring—and their universe had duly fallen into line with their expectations.” The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton

Upon arrival in Jamaica, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer told us to “take time”, what I would soon treasure as Jamaica’s unofficial motto. For a flighty person like myself, this is both easy and hard- easy to be flexible because life is not a straight line, and hard to stay committed to never ending projects that require constant care. Even unwrapping the concept of taking time has taken time; I had to live through a summer as slow as molasses only to jump into a spring of activity once school (and a flurry of Peace Corps conferences, and the hurricane season) began.

I packed these lessons up in my head, reminding myself not to get too upset after the 20^th phone call to the man who could replace our lightning struck router. “Soon come” in Jamaica might not mean soon in a North American context, but whatever it is will happen at some point. Fittingly, each time I put finger to keyboard to write about time taking, I paused, unsure what to tap out.