2016–2024 Adventure Roundup

Nine years of writing through travels and tribulations

I first started writing my adventures in a series of emails when I was fourteen, on a month-long trip to Mexico’s southernmost state.

It wasn’t quite a solo trip — I was in the company of the twenty-year-old daughter of a friend of my dad’s. But I met her for the first time during the LAX transfer on the way there, and she spent most of her time interning at the local hospital.

Consequently, I had a lot of time on my own: learning recipes from the grandmother at our home stay, taking baile foclórico classes at the town community center, befriending children by juggling on street corners — and writing.

In writing these letters home (to an ever-growing email list of family and friends), I discovered the addictive rhythm of the craft: taking mental notes of moments, word choices, smells. I wrote out recipes and cultural notes, and found I treasured the experiences the more for sharing them.

Across the intervening years, I wrote as I always have: intermittently, but prolifically when the mood strikes. I wrote letters when I was twenty, backpacking and hitchhiking the length of Chile with my dad, and processed them into short stories for an independent study. I wrote articles and interviews for my college…