I only live about a half hour from Boston and a half hour from Providence, really the perfect distance to pick and choose where and when I want to go into the city to do something. But 30 minutes is relatively far away. First I have to drive to either the Commuter Rail station in town, or to the...

It's hard to believe, but this month marks the 4th anniversary since I really started to travel. I'd been on a bunch of family vacations before and throughout my childhood, but it wasn't until I backpacked through Europe with my sister that I really started to get the travel bug.

My sister and I were...

On Saturday I went to my friend Paul's graduation party in Leicester, which is next to Worcester. For whatever reason, Massachusetts seems to be split into different communities and areas, almost like mini-states. Separately, they could be their own little states, but they all come together to...

Sitting in class one day, we suddenly heard loud noise coming from outside. Banging on garbage cans, screaming, and air horns disrupted the entire university. The teachers had expected this, and my Spanish professor, Penelope, told us it was "una huelga." After trying to figure out what she was talking...

Today I was reading Laura Kammermeier's article on Matador about surviving your first press trip, and I couldn't help but think of my own first (and only, so far) press trip. It's a smart and interesting article that really examines the kind of emotions and challenges you have to face on a press trip....

We were sitting in some small, off-the-beaten path coffee shop in the back alleys of this city that didn't care much for the morning after. The place smelled like over-cooked sausages and greasy egg Mcmuffins, but who were we to complain? After all, we smelled like last night, the night before...

Last semester I tutored/peer assisted with a new grad student to UMass. The student, Yiming Li, had just arrived from China and didn't have very strong conversational English skills. Since I was already thinking about teaching English abroad, I thought this would be a great experience. The experience...

At the risk of shamelessly plugging my own article, I wanted to share a couple of paragraphs from the article I recently had published for GoNOMAD. Let me know what you think, because I'm really much more interested in improving the writing than getting a few hits on the article.

We all waited...

Well the trip is over now. I got back into JFK International Airport at 5:30 am and was back in Amherst by 11 am. Uruguay was awesome. I've never participated in a trip like this before. Usually my traveling is done in a selfish and vain sort of way. I go to the places that I've always heard about...

Here I am in my hotel room in Montevideo, Uruguay, with a rare few spare moments to get some thoughts down on paper (well, electronic paper of sorts). I came into Uruguay on Monday morning after a ten hour flight from which I got almost no sleep. I took a sleeping pill, and as a result, was a...

I suppose this is a sort of obituary for my iPod. Last week my iPod was stolen, and needless to say, I feel a loss that can best be described in the first few primal responses that come to mind. Shock, anger, frustration, sadness, and numbness are the emotions that came to me after I realized my...

Traveling in groups can be a great way to see a new place. Not only do you have the security of being with guides and other people your age, but you can have people to eat and drink with, as well as pass the time with. If you're traveling with one or two other people, you tend to rely on those...

For young travelers backpacking throughout the world, often the cheapest place to stay is in a Youth Hostel. A hostel is kind of like a hotel, except it's filled with other young backpackers, you share rooms and sleep in uncomfortable bunk beds, and they can offer you a range of activities to...

One of the coolest and craziest things I've ever done was skydiving in Interlaken, Switzerland last May. This decision to jump out of an airplane didn't come overnight. It was the result of a gradual increase, through baby steps, in becoming more adventurous and daring. The truth is, I don't even...

One of my favorite bands, Radiohead, has an old song that really speaks volumes to those of us who love to travel. I'm talking about "The Tourist," off of OK Computer. The song, which comes off as a slow melodic tune, has a much deeper meaning than the lyrics might offer. Thom Yorke sings about tourists...

The nice thing about music is that sometimes it can bring up memories you didn't even know you had. Things you'd either long ago forgotten or just haven't had time in your busy life to think about can suddenly spring into your head, fresh as day, the second you turn on your iPod. Maybe those...

Being a history major and huge World War II buff, when I visited France, the first thing I had to do was go to Normandy for the day. I was going to spend 7 days in Paris, and it was the end of my experience of living in Europe. I was saving the best for last. I met up with a guy named Brooks from...

Cheap flights--they'll be the death of me. I suppose I have to thank Ryanair. They really know how to reel in the students. Our spring break was coming to an end, and we needed a way back to Sevilla from Vienna. Most flights were so expensive it wasn't even worth thinking about it. Taking trains would...

My friends and I were on the beginning leg of our spring break, backpacking through eastern europe. Already, we were sleep deprived and delerious, and we were only four days in. Living by cheap flights, we found a cheap German airline to take us from Amsterdam to Berlin. The catch--it left Amsterdam...

I just came back from 9 days in Israel with Taglit Birthright. Taglit is an organization that sends young Jews between 18-25 to Israel for free for 9-11 days, touring up and down the country. The days are hard, usually around 17 hours long, as you try to cram as much as you can into the trip as possible....