The following took place around Christmas, 1990. I was 8 years old. The Bells After struggling to fall asleep on Christmas Eve, eager to discover Santa’s bounty, I was woken by an unmistakable sound. It took a while to convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming, but the sound seemed to be coming from above me [...]
El toro bravo chasing banderilleros I stumbled on the bullfight by accident. I was at the start of an 18 day trip to the Iberian peninsula and I was traveling by myself, hoping to do something my later trip partners might find repugnant. My research told me that the first week of April was early [...]
The following was used as my law school personal statement, and is based on my post about climbing Gokyo-Ri We had hiked for a week through the Nepalese Himalayas to climb a mountain named Gokyo Ri. Less than two hours from the summit and the possibility of watching the sun rise behind Mt. Everest, I [...]
San Miguel volcano looking out over Santa Clara During the first full week of January I was able to participate in an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) trip to El Salvador. The Santa Clara Potable Water Project was started years ago and has extensive community support, but securing funding proved a problem. Many of the original [...]
Three years ago I wrote a chapter about my perspective on the previous year. I compared myself with the blurb about me in my families Christmas letter, and concluded that both the year and the blurb included “not enough stories and no girl in the Christmas card”. By those standards, 2009 has been fantastic. I [...]