Author: Confessions of a Jetsetter

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Andrea Wien

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“Stepping off the plane in a new city, I inhale, searching already for the closest food stalls or local markets. In the same way people travel to gawk at the Great Pyramids or to climb the tallest mountains, I travel for the cuisine. A city can lie its way into a traveler’s heart, but in back alleys down winding, brick-laid roads, the bubbling curries or crispy delicacies are beacons of pure honesty.   Food teaches me about the mundane, the beautiful, the oppression, the squalor and the extravagance of a place in a way that nothing else can. A people’s history lives on my fork, dances across my taste buds and nourishes my soul as it warms its way through my body.  For me, inspiration comes in the form of turmeric and paprika, galangal and ginger. It weaves a path past city squares, ducks behind bright doorways, moves to the rhythms of a tea kettle and explodes in color over the rice paddies, bringing me back to where it all started, and gathering strength for where it has …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Tracey Friley

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“I started traveling with teen girls in the Spring of 2010. I was SO excited. It had been a dream of mine to expose teen girls to the world, so I started off by taking that first group to St. John in the United States Virgin Islands for what I called CampCaribe with a little money from me and a little money from them. It was a travel experience and an outdoor water camp experience all rolled into one. I had 8 girls and 2 lifeguard staff in tow. And because you don’t need a passport to get into the USVIs, I had a bunch of original birth certificates with me. At the time, I remember thinking about how important it was for the girls to have passports, and I even had a conversation about it with a U.S. Customs Agent. Funny how seeds get planted and how those seeds ultimately bloom. On our way to St. Thomas, a guy on the airplane asked what kind of team we were. “Do you play basketball?” he …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Avi Wisnia

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“Imagine Hell. Now imagine being rescued from hell, and returning… I can’t. I am trying very very hard, and I can’t. I am on a bus about to enter Auschwitz-Birkenau in the south of Poland, watching my grandfather as we slowly drive by the wooden-shelf bunks where he slept as a prisoner in the concentration camp for 3 years of his life, and I can’t even imagine. Can you? We started in Warsaw, where my grandfather grew up. We traveled through the Polish countryside to end up where my grandfather ended up during the Holocaust, in Auschwitz. He often says he has two lives: one before the war, and one after the war. It was immensely intense to witness those two worlds overlapping here.  There is something profound about traveling back to the land where your family comes from and touching its soil. Poland in winter is not a particularly inviting place, but I nevertheless felt the warm pull of the land’s history. It was like there was something still lingering in the air, waiting …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ L. Oseni

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“Flight delays, things beyond control. Have your thoughts to yourself, and get to work in peace within the confines of airport waits. I actually enjoyed the time and being 150% productive business wise with books, financials etc. which is what I would have been sitting at home doing anyway. When it was said and done, it did not feel like over 12 hours between planes and airports. I don’t get why people actively stress and want you to stress because you see no glass…not half full, not half empty, just life to the fullest. How you look at situations and what you do to face them is not a question of work, it’s a choice. When you think about it, if you listen really closely when a lot of people complain about how hard they work and the amount of stress they have, it’s almost like they are bragging. Like they wear it as a badge of honor. Which is why no solution or outlook you suggest will ever fix it. They think in problems, …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ David L. Merin

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“Five years old I sat on a plane wondering aloud “Mom… can we still talk to each other in English when we get there?” The true honesty of a boy torn between a Filipino father and a New Yorker mother, born in Hawaii and now in transit to Nepal, a country unmatched in its ethnic diversity. My childhood was truly fit for a movie… In the many years to follow, my mother would try to comfort my confusion by giving me an identity. “You’re a Third Culture Kid,” she would say, dismissing my doubts, but I couldn’t understand what it meant. I was one of a large number of TCKs growing up overseas who didn’t identify with any one culture. Unable to relate to the country they once called home, TCKs are forced to adapt and survive an international adolescence separating them further from both their family and nationality. Though each of us has an original story, we all share a common experience, which we live every day. As for my friends and I, we …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Kaori Anne Jolliffe

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“I did a trip around Andalusia with my boyfriend at the beginning of this year. I have so many amazing memories from taking a nap on the beach in Málaga when we first arrived, to cracking up and crying from laughter at the blue pedestrian crossing signs because they looked like the Beyoncé “Single Ladies” dance, to biking around the Albaicín in Granada. On my to-do list for Andalusia was, of course, Gibraltar. It was so bizarre to see a little bubble of British culture so far away from the UK. After arriving, we decided to climb all the way up the Rock of Gibraltar to avoid the hefty taxi fee. One beer later at the pub by Michael’s Cave, we climbed up to the battery, which was being renovated. There was a ladder up the huge cannon so we snuck up there and shared the most delicious donut ever in the British enclave with Spain behind us whilst staring out at North Africa…I’ve never felt so small!” – Kaori Anne Jolliffe // @kaoriannej   069/100 of …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Jenné Claiborne

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“I traveled to Thailand for 6 weeks a few years ago. I didn’t know anyone there, nor did I know the language. Still, I’m always down for an adventure, especially in a beautiful place…  A few days after arriving in Bangkok at the start of the trip, I was hooked up with a friend of a NYC friend who’s been living in the city for a decade. She invited me to stay with her in her beautiful home, and I couldn’t believe my luck. The place was spacious, cool (great AC), and in a quiet and slightly secluded part of the city. The son of one of her American friends was also in town, so he and I went out for some late-night bar hopping. He had been there for months already, and sort of spoke the language and knew his way around, so I felt comfortable letting him be my guide for a few hours on this solo-trip. The night was a lot of fun, but as we got into the wee hours of …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Sophie Sarkar

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“As a mixed-race American with international roots, my travels have often been about reconnecting with my heritage and exploring my intertwined cultural identities. Traveling to India, and especially Kolkata, has helped me understand so many things about my relationships, quirks, anxieties, styles, and propensities. It has also been the source of inspiration for most of my creative projects… In India, my senses are overwhelmed by highly saturated colors, smells, and sounds. When I stay at my family’s house in northern Kolkata, I wake up every morning to the sounds of water being pumped up to the roof of the house; birds cawing salutations to one another; unidentifiable bells; street vendors selling sugar cane juice, sweets, and plastic buckets; Bengali bickering; various conch shells calling the Gods into the houses; my aunties gossiping with each other through the windows; the extremely loud and incredibly close neighbors; the donkey-like screech of rickshaw horns; the barking of territorial street dogs; and the call of the garbage man going around on his bike-pulled carriage screaming, in a somewhat melodic …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Diana Lee Santamaria

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“I’m the children’s book author of DLee’s World preschool learning books, which are based on my childhood and experiences as an educator. Throughout my life, there have been a few things that inspired me to write my book series. Most importantly was the fact that I struggled with literacy until about the age of nine. My father noticed I had an issue with reading and comprehension and sat me down night after night with the determination for me not to follow in his footsteps of educational hardships. As early as I could remember, I showed a disinterest in books, always saying, “Books are boring!” However shortly after learning how to read, I found books to be an enjoyable learning tool and past time. With that in mind, once I became a teacher and noticed that I did not always have the books I needed or wanted to teach a particular objective, I decided to write my own… Every night I analyzed my classroom experiences and my own childhood for inspiration on how to make DLee …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Liv AKA Unbelievably Human

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“My apartment had always felt sacred to me, cleansed with sage, and my sanctuary of safety, it accepted me, it mirrored me, and whenever the world knocked me down, I knew it greeted me with a big hug. I guarded the door of that place not letting just anyone in. So, handing my sublet my keys to my fully furnished apartment knowing she would be treating it like her own for the next 6 months felt super personal to me…But I did it.  The former months had been in a word, tumultuous. I felt loss to myself. I’d been out of work and felt directionless and almost relentlessly I looked for answers outside myself, in the opinion and experiences of others. I was looking for something that I couldn’t seem to find. I desperately needed/wanted community and support but was experiencing mine dissipate. I felt lost and afraid, surrounded by people socially but all alone intimately.  Feeling unsure of myself, and having a heightened fear of making a “wrong” life decision that would “ruin” my …