Having spent a semester studying abroad in Paris, France, French Literature major Matia Guardabascio brings you to some of her favorite spots in the city of lights, including Montmartre and Sacre Coeur, Rodin’s “Thinker” and the Statue of Liberty (in Paris), and of course, the Eiffel Tower . Paris, Je t’aime, as they say…Enjoy.

Carnavales. A month-long debaucherous hell-of-a-good time. As I wrote in my last column, it takes a lot more than a few words to fully explain this experience. Therefore, I have decided to let pictures do most of the talking.  Below, you will find a few notes to supplement your curiosity. You can click through them at your own pace, pause the show to read some of my notes, or enlarge it to full screen for added effect. Enjoy!

While on a recent trip to Berlin, Germany, Ali Riaz took the time to catalog examples of the prolific graffiti and street art on display there. No photo’s have been doctored in any way. Enjoy.

My journey into Korea started with an application to teach English in rural Korea under the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. Unlike other programs that offer people the chance to teach English abroad, this program is unique in that it offers both long and short term contracts to its scholars, and as much as they want their applicants to be able to provide exposure to Korean students who often do not have such a chance to experience the English language, they also want to provide their scholars with the ability to learn and love the Korean culture through planned trips, excursions…

Immersion. What else can describe the sensation of diving into new? New what? New everything. I submersed myself into a new lifestyle, while speaking a new language, surrounded by complete and utter strangers. Though they weren’t strangers for long.
My first clear memory of the Cajamarca I know is stepping onto the roof of my new home/workplace. Everywhere I looked there was unfiltered, natural beauty. Well almost everywhere. There was the ugly roof of our next door neighbors. I digress. To my left was a breathtaking view of evergreen mountains. To …

I read an interesting article[1] the other day by Tom Swick, a veteran travel writer.[2] In it, Tom made mention of the precarious state of travel writing today. Staff writers are becoming more and more scarce, even as their freelance counterparts are finding it harder and harder to sell their work, and all at a time when travel writing is just coming into its own. On the one hand magazines and newspapers, almost universally afflicted with substandard advertisement income and faltering readership bases, are less and less ready, willing or …

The Pyrenees mountains are like the crumpled, discarded tissues of giants; awesome, majestic and yet somehow remarkably regular. This was my first impression of Spain as I flew over the northern coast. A most remarkable feat, as the island that we had just left had been stricken with snowfall in a way it had not seen in over 25 years…and dealt with it as if it had never seen snow at all. My brother and I had been in Ireland visiting our family members, …

The moon was a smokey spotlight over the car. Our getaway car – Pat’s new-old Lexis – stick shift – crammed with all our belongings: books, clothes, guitar, ukulele. There were four of us: Pat, our driver, always down for a spontaneous adventure (we’d be heading down to New Orleans and Florida to see graveyards and beaches in a week), Mike, the singing poet-writer-reader from Brooklyn, Mike’s older brother, Bryan, bursting with voice and music and life, just hitching a ride with us to Vermont …

A little over a week ago I returned from traveling for three weeks in England. I was there visiting my friend who lives and studies in Oxford, as well as a cousin who lives in London. I was asked to write responses to five questions regarding my stay there. However, one of them contains a lie. If you can spot it, leave your guess in the comment section and you’ll get some sort of prize or figurative slap on the back.

Over this past winter break, several of our staff members found themselves traveling, both at home and abroad. We decided to take the opportunity to ask each of these writers to answer some questions about their recent travel experiences. Brendan McInerney, staff photographer and photo editer to the Johnsonville Press, talks about his time in Madrid, Spain.