The day that everything started might not have been as dramatic as the title implies, but it certainly came out of nowhere. Until then I was a normal university student, majoring in Creative Writing and desperately trying to find a way to make that relevant. One day, completely by chance, I arrived at a poetry class about ten minutes early and heard two students discussing their own study abroad experiences. I listened to the excitement in their voices as they talked about all of the places they had seen and the wonderful people they had met, and an idea began to stick in my mind. These quiet ideas are the worst. They are subtle. They are tenacious. They bide their time until you're sleeping, or showering, or doing some other mundane task that doesn't require much
... read more