How to Couchsurf Without A Couch

  2 Comments

TRAVEL ABROAD TIPS:  From camping trips to city tours, piss ups to opera outings, language exchanges to sex toy parties: someone somewhere is planning it.  More »

Metric Map: Which Countries Don't Belong With The Others?

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LIVING ABROAD:  An outmoded system of measurement means Americans are often at a loss abroad.   More »

Pies, Puddings, And Pints: A Foodie Guide To London

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TRAVEL ABROAD TIPS:  London for foodies.  More »

ATTN: India Travelers - Learn Hindi!

  5 Comments

LANGUAGES:  Hindi will lead you beyond tourist traps into a real place with real people, whose lives and histories are diverse, complicated, and riveting.   More »

Extreme Weather Shuts Down Machu Picchu

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TRAVEL SAFETY:  Landslides trapped as many as 2,500 people in the town of Aguas Calientes, the base for trips to Machu Picchu.   More »

Curses! Kikokushijo Foiled Again by Jun-Japanese Women

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LIVING ABROAD:  Apparently, it's not easy for a Japanese woman-of-the-world to pair up with even the most progressive Japanese man.  More »

Beginner’s Guide to Nigerian Pidgin English

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LANGUAGES:  Try these phrases on your Nigerian friends to gain quicker access into their world.  More »

10 Reasons to Study Abroad in the Islamic World

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STUDY ABROAD:  The greatest travel opportunity for this generation of students is to study abroad in the Islamic world.  More »

Traveling As A Mixed-Race Couple In Asia: No, Sir, I Did Not Buy My Wife

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CULTURE:  There is a lot of subtext crammed into the nine-word question “Where in the Orient did you meet your wife?”  More »

15 Signs You Might Have Been In Oman Too Long

  7 Comments

TEACHING:  You accept one word answers like ‘haram,’ ‘Muscat’ or ‘change’ as legitimate responses to the question of ‘why?’  More »

Why NOT To Study Abroad In Western Europe

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STUDY ABROAD:  In comparison to the enormous blow to my ego and worldview that was one day in Beijing, that year in Western Europe was an afternoon drinking wine in the park.   More »

Call for Submissions: Tales From The Frontier of Expat Life

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LIVING ABROAD:  I'm looking for stories about expats exploring the complicated terrain of cultural differences, attempting to come into some sort of a mutual understanding.   More »

A Mexican Road Trip: Reading Sugar Cane Landscapes

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TRAVEL ABROAD:  Sometimes, I thought, all you really need to do is see; sometimes the political and social and economic realities are there laid out in everyday life and landscape and you can read them simply by being present.  More »

Luxury Cruise Ships Still Stopping At Haiti's Private Beaches

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TRAVEL ABROAD:  Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines continues to dock luxury cruise liners at private beach resorts in Haiti, where tourists jet ski while the earthquake disaster effort ensues.   More »

Expat Artists: How Living Abroad Facilitates The Creative Life

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LIVING ABROAD:  There's the sense of creative abandon abroad, the liberation from whatever aesthetic, social, cultural norms might reign in the artist in at home. To put it very simply: you've just got to pay more attention living overseas. And that's what artists do - pay close attention to the world, and then remake it.   More »

India, Poverty, And The Fear Of Traveling To Poor Places

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TRAVEL ABROAD:  Whether you go and actually see the poverty of India up close, it will be there nonetheless. Every night as you fall asleep in your warm, comfortable and safe bed in North America, thousands, even millions, of people are waking up on the sidewalks of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Whether you go or not will not prevent this from happening.  More »

A Day In The Life of An Expat In Thailand

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LIVING ABROAD:  A day in the life of an English teacher in Thailand.  More »

Gringos In Mexico And That Elusive Quest for Authenticity

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CULTURE:  We got out of the bus in Mitla, blinking, stumbling, little swirls of dust rising around our feet, plunk, plunk, plunk, one gringo after another plunking out of the bus like penguins wandering dazed out of a cave under the watchful eyes of zoo-goers. The sun was high and hot at 10 a.m. and we were standing on the side of the road in a dusty pueblo.   More »

A Day in the Life of an Expat in Osaka, Japan

  8 Comments

TEACHING:  A day in the life of an English teacher in Osaka, Japan.  More »

The Foreigner Nod

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LIVING ABROAD:  Every day I get called out as a foreigner, and as a result, I'm no stranger to The Nod.   More »
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From the Editor

Call for Submissions: Tales From The Frontier of Expat Life

I’m looking for stories about expats exploring the complicated terrain of cultural differences, attempting to come into some sort of a mutual understanding.

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"Hmmm, I've done a lot of couchsurfing, but I've never met any of those people. It kind of sounds more like what people 'expect' to find while couchsur"

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