alyson16

The following post was written by Global Gap Year Fellow David Gonzalez Chavez.

“There’s some good crack there” is what I heard from my coworker Finn describing a party he went to, which caught my attention—why is he bringing up heavy drug use in a tame conversation? After some brief thought as to how ridiculous that’d be, I asked what he meant by crack (or rather, the proper spelling “craic”) and he explained that it essentially means a good time or fun.  This is one of many moments I’ve had where different words or meanings have left me utterly confused while in Belfast.

I’m currently based in an English-speaking country—in theory, that should’ve meant that I’d be able to communicate just as well there as I would at home, but I quickly learned that the English spoken in Belfast is a wee bit different than I was used to hearing.

Take the […]

The following post was written by Global Gap Year Fellow Alyson Cabeza.

It was 2 am. I was crying. The idea of leaving everything I’ve ever known behind, in the next 5 hours, was finally hitting me. The phrases “I’m scared” and “I can’t do this” were constantly coming out of my mouth. I was reassured by the people who mean the most to me that everything would turn out alright. I was reminded that this is something I needed to do for myself. I calmed down and continued to frantically pack (last minute).

It was 2 am. After spending more than 24 hours in either an airport or on an airplane, I was hit with the stench of pollution as I arrived at my hostel. It didn’t matter though, because I quickly realized how beautiful Hanoi is at night. Even though all my energy was drained, I managed to spend […]