November 2-5th – Paris Week 10 flew by, as did my time in Paris this past weekend. To honor my short and sweet speed date with the “city of love,” I’m going to speed date this blog post, too, in the form of 10 short observations.* *You might think this is a clever commentary about fleeting young love or an erudite use of numbers because 10 and 10 match, but I’m really using this format because a) I’m exhausted from traveling; b) I’m tired of writing long blog posts; and 3) yo

A normal week that included a wonderful Beethoven symphony in the Municipal House and ended with a food- and fun-filled weekend in Belgium. Oh, and a surprise trip to Netherlands, because why not? September 11th – Remembering Cooked rice noodles with bell peppers and Thai peanut sauce with Jesse! Also made Korean-spiced broccoli and sausages for the first time. September 12th – Great Life Choices After a great day of class, cooking, and eating smoked salmon that Sean brought

Since most of my traveling will be from Thursday-Sunday (my classes are stacked M-W) during my time abroad, my “weekly blogs” will end with Sundays from now on. This week’s post is mostly a reflection on two local Prague tours, my 19th birthday, and my four-day excursion to Vienna and Salzburg. Travel itinerary and trip highlights included! August 26, 2017 – S(art)urday Went on a beautiful but exhausting 3 hour walking tour discussing the street names, religious relics, neo-c

“Hello from Praha” (“Dobrý den, Praha”) will be my series of weekly blog posts about my study away experience. Days will be longer or shorter depending on what happens (and how inspired I am to write). Some days will be only pictures, others only words. Some won’t even be in Praha! I’ll be updating the blog as the days pass, so some posts may be “incomplete” until the end of the week (Friday this time, but every Wednesday from here on out since I’ll often be traveling from Th

I’m sitting across from Ben Hon, better known by his 34.4k followers on Instagram as @stuffbeneats, inside the Vietnamese restaurant Madame Vo, a local East Village hotspot whose menu featuring long-standing family recipes never fails to draw long lines. We’re taking photos of the carefully arranged dishes in front of us, I with my iPhone 6 and he with his large Fujifilm camera complete with a set of three lenses. Next to us, two girls are pointing and whispering, until one o

Happiness Resolution #10: Post more frequently, less wordily. I’ve been in an uncannily good mood lately. It’s summer, I’m seeing old friends and living with others, I have a job that pays me to learn, and I still have time to take dance classes, eat out, and write, too. Yep, I’m living the good life (as I define it). But it feels especially good because, thanks to The Happiness Project, I am 1) not only more aware of all of the above but also am 2) more conscious of other pe

I’m sitting on a bench in Tompkins Square Park, reading a book next to Sandra and enjoying a rare errand-free afternoon in the heart of East Village. Across from us, speakers are playing 70s throwback songs–Boogie Shoes, Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting, Beethoven mashups. Dancing along to the tunes are a woman in hot pink shoes, light pink shorts, and a polka-dotted fuchsia shirt and a man in Elvis bellbottoms and a Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet. Passersby pause to soak in the

This post summarizes the work performed, goals accomplished, and lessons learned by the Stern International Volunteers of 2017 during their four days in the village of Woadze Tsatoe (Days 5-8 of the entire trip). The next post will offer a reflection on the course and this entrepreneurial trip as a whole. After a 6:30 A.M. wake-up call and a quick breakfast at the Chances Hotel in Ho, our group boards the charter bus, beginning the first of many hour-and-a-half long drives th

Petrichor, backyard barbeques, and car exhaust; the humid blanket of 80 degree weather; the busy highways overlooking a sunset-lit downtown and long, flat, and fat roads…welcome back to Houston, Texas. Home. For only one day. I spent it with young artists and writers; my freshman year English teacher; my best friend; my parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle; nostalgia; and myself. What a beautiful day. On March 25, 2017, Scholastic Art & Writing Awards gave me the opportunity

Hot, humid air envelops us in dusty clouds as we step into the city of Accra, Ghana. Through our bus windows, we watch taxis and buses swerve by as motorbikes snake through narrow lanes. Walking up and down the streets are men carrying racks of sunglasses, towels, and crafts and women balancing crates of baguettes, plantain chips, milk cartons, fresh fruits, nuts, and Adinkra pastries on their heads, selling their goods to anyone in a stalled vehicle. Long hourglass dresses,

Today, I am heading to Waodtze Tsatoe, a small village in eastern Ghana, with the Stern International Volunteers to develop two small businesses established there last year by a group of Stern students in partnership with Studio 189 and Adanu. One of these businesses is a fashion business that trains women to craft and sell traditional batik products, and the other is a clean water business that provides potable drinking water to everyone in the village. This year, our goal a

. . . to share some interesting words I’ve overheard these past couple of weeks. “I know this is going to sound weird, but please laugh for me, preferably out loud and very hard . . . There is nothing worse in this world than having to listen to the same joke twice—except maybe having to be that guy who forces you to listen to the same joke twice and asks you to laugh just as hard.” – John Oliver, Last Week Tonight (live) “Students need a chance to fail.” “If kids don’t have