students speak

Hopping off the Inca Rail and leaping onto the cracked platform, the sun’s harsh rays mercilessly pierced my innocent eyes. I was suddenly smothered by a heavy blanket of pure heat that weighed me down like a lead anchor.

The air is sweet but there’s a dense filling that hangs between the lengthy gaps. It’s the first scent I smell when I step off the plane, my nine-year-old feet planting themselves in the place it all started.

“They’re just a pair of white Converse,” my mother tells me. Behind her, I sulkily gaze out of the dusty car window, endeavoring to translate the Arabic billboards in an attempt to distract myself from the recent ill-fated event. She turns around in her seat to gaze at my freshly purchased white Converse, the ones […]

The gondoliers in striped shirts and brimmed hats floating through the canals, the flocks of swarming pigeons in St. Mark’s Square, the tight, secluded streets, and the beautifully constructed bridges and archways… the beauty of Italy was overwhelming.

My legs were burning. My arms were aching. My skin was hot and sweaty. I wanted to cry, and yet I had never felt more alive. It was June 2014, and I stood on the rocks on the top of Flat Top Mountain in the Rocky Mountains National Park, in awe of the scene before […]