Culture Shocks

During my junior year of high school, I was an exchange student in Sendai, Japan. There's nothing like the experience of being thrown into a new place, new culture, and new language. Since then, I've become a believer in the the sink-or-swim experience of living abroad. During college, I lived and studied in Paris for two years (which I highly recommend). Even though I'm from the Pacific Northwest, Sendai will always be my first city, Paris my second, Seattle my third. (Sorry, Providence, RI, you simply don't measure up). I will always measure a place in the currency of culture shocks.

Peace Corps, Senegal

My wife and I served in the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa from 2003-2005. We lived in a small rural village near the Gambian border where we regularly made use of Pulaar (in our village), Wolof (the lingua franca of the rest of the region), and French (the colonial language). I was an Agro-forestry and Community Development Volunteer and spent most of my time working on cashew intercropping, live-fences and windbreaks. Senegal was the biggest culture shock of my life (so far, at least)...and for that reason I will always want to go back for more.

Sri Lanka

In 2006, my wife was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Sri Lanka. Despite a raging civil war and a stagnant economy, we loved living in Kandy. We hired a former Peace Corps language trainer to teach us Singhala (bohoma stuti Herath!) and - over the course of a year - travelled the length and breadth of the serendipitous island.

Yachting is Fun

My wife and I are the proud owners of a 1962 ChrisCraft Cavalier Custom Motor Yacht. The boat is made almost entirely of African Mahogany - ironic, considering how hard I worked in Senegal to bring these beautiful trees back from the brink. She's a gorgeous boat, but her wooden hull and dual V8 engines keep my hands dirty.

Somewhere outside of Barstow...

As much as I love to travel, my home is the American West...and there's plenty of hiking to be done. To quote the famous frenchmen: "America reversed the directions: it put its Orient in the West, as if it were precisely in America that the earth came full circle; its West is the edge of the East." -Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus