Menu: http://alsdeli.co.nz/menu/ Today I went on a search to find a good spot for lunch under 16 NZD. I headed down to queen street from my apartment. On my way there, I passed by several places that looked good and had good deals as well, such as P…Read More

In 1988, wearing a High School letterman jacket one size too large and braces minus the wire that I habitually removed, I entered Lewis and Clark College. Carl Sagan's Cosmos yet ruled the universe and Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth was the preferred stocking stuffer for many a Lewis and Clark freshman. Two of the most potent myths that Campbell propagated were: 1) there really is such a thing...Read More

Crossing boundaries in their disparate forms is the single greatest purveyor of wisdom in travel abroad. With each boundary crossed comes a deeper awareness of place. And, sense of place is what separates the traveler from the tourist. In 2003 I led twelve U.C. Santa Barbara students on a six-week field course to Fiji. As a cultural anthropologist, I was eager to kick off the village stay component. Well-off twenty-something’s...Read More

My last border crossing into a communist country was ten years ago: a horseshoe up through Norway and down into the iron belly of the Russian rust belt. Entering Vietnam airspace, I felt the same angst/excitement that I knew on that midnight crossing into the Red World. Our approach mirrored the same flight path used by B52 bombers to obliterate the city that would soon be my host. I pressed...Read More

I have never been the type of person to spend my free time at my place I work. This changed my first week at the Wellington Botanical Gardens. On my first full day in New Zealand, I decided to visit the gardens that I would be intern at for the next three months. I found myself wonderfully entranced by them almost immediately. The gardens drew me away from everyday life:...Read More