Future Travels?

Recently I have been toying with the idea of doing something different after I graduate from college than I originally planned. The original plan? To graduate with my English degree, possibly head to grad school at University of Pittsburgh to study Children's Literature...or, to simply graduate from Penn State and immediately find a low-ranking job at a children's publishing house and work my way up the ladder! With this plan, I have always wondered when I would get to travel the world...get away from America and go to places that I actually do feel a connection with. Then I realized that teaching English as a foreign language could be a possibility of something to do after I graduate college for at least a year in another country to build up my resumé and live that life of adventure that I've always craved. I want to have crazy stories. I want to live an unusual life. I want to spend it full of doing things that I love. You get paid very well to teach English as a foreign language and sometimes accommodation is free! Also, you don't need to know the host country's language since the classes are English-immersion, which creates endless

possibilities as to where one can work. However, in whatever country you are living you are usually given free language lessons to help accustom yourself to the local culture.

Ever since I did our school's Living Museum project on a most fascinating woman, Gertrude Bell, I have been in love with Arabic and the Middle Eastern culture. Gertrude was an absolutely amazing woman. She travelled, alone on camel, throughout the Middle East as a sort of spy for T.E. Lawrence and Winston Churchill in the first World War, amongst many many other things. Anyways, after doing the project I intensely wanted to learn Arabic and live in the bright colors so talked about by her. Besides the fact that I would be just a tad frightened to go to the Middle East as an American woman, I plan on doing so...at least to some of the more safer countries - my paradise being Morocco...

Imagine walking along narrow stone streets dating back not hundreds, but thousands of years..the strong smell of spices wafts through the thin desert air. This is a place one can become completely immersed in. This is what I have been looking for. This is a united, collective culture. Everything here is simply Moroccan, it is old world...it is taking a step into a different time, a different world. Men sit on small tables outside of ivy-covered stone buildings sipping sweet-smelling mint tea and taking mammoth puffs of their hookahs. It is a relaxing atmosphere.

This is where I long to be. Teaching English to young, bright-faced Moroccan students in Marrakech or the fertile mountain region of The Kif, amongst the blue-streets of Chefchaouen, as shown below..

However, I do not want to always sit here and stare at pictures of places that I seek to go in my life. Such a thing will only end with me not doing anything but sitting at home depressed and missing out on a significant portion of our world. There are so many things to do, to see...and I hope that I get to do just a fraction of them. One must be bold, however, to step out into what is now such a scary world by oneself. Teaching English to kids across the world may be something very intriguing to do until I feel like moving into a steady life full of a 9-5 job, a husband, kids..etc etc. I want to adventure, garner stories. I want to be a woman full of stories and knowledge. I want to offer something to the world. My English skills? We shall see.