I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, a city very close to Washington, D.C. My family tends to like routines, so growing up we always went to one of two places for vacations: 1) Myrtle Beach, South Carolina or 2) Orlando, Florida. In school, we learned about a lot of different places around the world, but I never really knew anyone who had actually been there.
When I was a freshman in high school, my choir planned a one-week summer trip to Italy where we performed in an international singing festival and I caught the travel bug. I attended George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia where I studied Spanish and Special Education, and during my time there, I managed to study abroad in five countries and visited even more!
After graduating from University, I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar where I taught English for two years. During my time there, I organized a summer school program at an orphanage run by a Maltese NGO, and I was told all about the wonderful country of Malta! When my time in Madagascar was coming to an end, I was looking around for jobs and found a Fulbright Scholarship for teaching English here! I applied and while I was waiting to hear back, I decided to backpack across Southeast Asia.
