Welcome to our second edition of the monthly Reach To Teach Blog Carnival. Below we have compiled several amazing bloggers and their work. This month, the topic is:
Love Letters.
February is the month of Valentine’s Day. A month filled with hearts, pinks and reds, expensive dinners, relationships, and…LOVE LETTERS! Normally, though, those love letters would be directed towards a person. Not here, though. Here we direct them to our favorite country, city, or place in the world. These are letters professing love in different, amazing ways. Love letters that bare the hearts of those who write them. Love letters worth reading if only for the fact that love is something universal, and it makes you think of the place you love the most. So, read on and feel the love!
via entretodasascoisas.com.br
Dean Barnes - An Open Love Letter To My Home Country, England.
My name is Dean, I have been traveling for around 2 and a half years now with a small stint back in my home country. I’m from the UK and I began my teaching career on the island of Bali. I then made the move to Taiwan where I currently reside. Here I have the joy to fulfill my passion for writing by providing ESL/travel related articles to the Reach To Teach website.
This month we have gotten into the spirit of valentines day and written a love letter to a country of our choice. Read my entry to find out all of the latest scandals; which country does my heart belong to? which country am I having an affair with? and all of the latest gossip surrounding my travel love life.
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Jeff Woodcroft – A Letter To My One True Love
Like most nomadic expats, Jeff has an unhealthy thirst for travel. When he realized big changes were necessary in his over-comfortable life in Canada, he called on this thirst and uprooted to Taipei, where he continues to tackle the most foreign obstacle yet: teaching children. Years ago Jeff realized that traveling inspires him to write, a fact for which he is continually apologetic to his friends and family.
Traveling has a way of dividing ones loyalties, as I’ve found myself leaving a piece of my heart with each new place where I create experiences. Some may call it philandering; I’d just say I have a lot of love to give. I just hope all my One True Loves don’t find out about each other.
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Heather Richards – My Love Letter to Australia
Heather is the 20-something traveler behind Traveling Vanilla Bean, a blog about slow, authentic travel. She blogs about everything from culture shock to language learning, from perceptions of beauty to hidden gems and must skips, taking it all in slowly and (more) beautifully! Heather is a travel addict, explorer, travel writer, teacher, wannabe photographer, and wannabe yogi always on the search for warmth and untrodden paths. Slow Travel. Authentic Travel. Real Experiences. She is currently based in Prague and is getting her feet wet learning the Czech language and exploring Europe first hand while teaching in a successful international school.
Dear Australia,.I know I’m writing this letter almost fiver years after our passionate time together but here goes…As I sat I suddenly felt so ‘there’ and in that moment. I watched flocks of strange birds fly over the pond, landing in the water and making their cries. The water was so still. It was as if I was the only person who knew about this place…The sound of others had grown distant. I sat there on that rock in my college softball hoodie and I felt alone for the first time. Not alone like a panicky loneliness. Alone like the world was just for me…There was no turning back after that…...Stephanie Boedecker – It’s time to say goodbye.Stephanie Boedecker is a 25 year old travel, yoga, running and food lover who is currently playing teacher in South Korea. Born and raised in Wisconsin she got her first taste of life abroad after spending a semester studying in Sydney Australia at the age of 20. After working in a cube (prison) for a year she decided to quit, pack her bags and start a new life abroad. In her heart she’ll always be a Mid-west girl but hopes to have the opportunity to call many corners of the world home..Love can be a tricky thing, sometimes it comes at first site while other relationships may takes months, even years to blossom. I was lucky, in that I fell in love with my new home in South Korea pretty darn quickly. That love continued to grow over the past two years, and now, as I’m preparing to move on I can sense it’s going to be a difficult break up. Read on to hear more about just how I fell in love with a small country town in the center of South Korea....Jenni and Chris – Professing Love.Chris and I, Jenni, are seven months into our teaching abroad experience. We have five more months left in South Korea before returning to our New Jersey and Pennsylvania homes and families. .We have recently visited Phuket, Thailand which inspired our blog entry to profess our love of the beach and the memories of growing up and visiting the beach with family....Sarah Steinmetz – Home sweet home..I am a New Hampshire native and a proud graduate of the University of New Hampshire. After teaching at a high school in New Hampshire for a year, I decided to leave my life behind and move to South Korea. I am currently teaching at a High School in Jeomchon, South Korea with amazing co-workers and students alike. I am currently enjoying the challenges, surprises, and lessons that come with living abroad, and I couldn’t be happier about my decision to move to Korea!.What is the place I love the most? This was a difficult question for me to answer. I’ve been fortunate to see so many beautiful places in this world, and there are SO many places have left an impression on me. However, when it comes down to it, I decided there’s no place like home. In this blog post, I wrote about my hometown of Manchester, NH. Although from an outsider’s perspective there’s nothing extraordinary about this place, it’s given me everything I’ve ever needed to be where I am today, and for that I will always have a deep sense of gratitude....Jamie Phillips – Dead Outlaws, Capricious Buses, and Giant Insects: A Bolivian Love Story.A couple of years ago, I packed up, sold, redistributed all of my non-essential belongings, crammed my life into a backpack and wandered aimlessly into the world. So far, I have gone swimming with alligators in the Amazon, hitch hiked the Carretera Austral highway in Chile, rode camels in the Australian outback, and spent the weekend in a Buddhist nunnery in Taiwan. Every day I am grateful to be able to experience the world in all of its chaotic/perfect beauty..Bolivia still tops my list of favorite countries. South America was my first big trip, and it’s true that your first journey is like your first love: intense and indelible. It was there that I grew to love being surrounded in a language not mine, and my identity as an outsider burgeoned. On the tail of a shattering relationship, it was there, learning how to travel, that I put myself back together again. Bolivia taught me that whether your bus is on time, five hours late, or doesn’t come at all, the best course of action is to sit in the chaos and eat chocolate with a friend....Liane Nichols – Dear Georgia, You Gloriously Awful Place.Liane is an American high school social studies teacher, travel writer, and former foreign English teacher. She graduated from Texas State University in 2010 with a B.A in International Relations. During college, Liane interned with the U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, and volunteered as President of the International Studies Club and Sigma Iota Rho Honors Fraternity. Since then, she has been fulfilling her dream of traveling the world by teaching English in Thailand, Georgia, and the Czech Republic. Follow her experiences by visiting her blog at Nicholsaway.blogspot.com..This is my love letter to Georgia – a country I used to hate. It was a rough road (literally) through my time living in Georgia, but now that it’s over, I only look back upon it with fond memories. The journey was well worth the pain and for that, I love it... ________________________________ If you’d like to write a love letter to your favorite place in the world, email us at [email protected] and we’ll add you to our romantic series of the Reach To Teach Blog Carnival. . Comments are always welcomed below:
