For Story Shuffle 7, held in a fine rowhome in the Newbold section of South Philadelphia inside a beautiful and eventually stormy night, I told the story of my first hitchhiking experience in South Dakota. My lesson: trusting in strangers is a great risk that often comes with great reward. Check out all the stories [...]

On Christmas Eve, why not discuss gifts. For, what, the past few hundred years, the more far-flung and exotic the purchase or discovery, the better. Those emotions are mixed up into colonialism and exploration and Manifest Destiny and so many human and American spirits that I don’t care to explore them. But I think there’s [...]

I did my best to see as much of the country as I could in the beginning of my college career. Here are some notable examples. Number of Views:93

Friday, March 2 to March 10, 2007 I spent about a week in a few Italian cities, unfortunately, my luggage was lost, so I was without my camera for most of the trip.  I flew in and out from Rome, was based in Florence and made day trips to Pisa, Sienna and Venice. Here are [...]

In 2007, I was blessed with several opportunities to explore new corners of this great country of ours. Number of Views:84

By Christopher Wink | August 29, 2005 | Travel Reflection Africa was not real to me.  It was imaginary; I saw a place where elephants roam and people starve.  I saw children with flies around their faces in villages and huts and tribes.  I saw in stereotypes and misunderstandings and prejudices and lies.  That was all [...]

By Christopher Wink | May 25, 2006 | Travel Reflection I have proudly represented Temple University on service immersion trips before. I have had South Dakotan ground beneath my feet before, too. Moreover, I have been with Jason Riley in a rental car and with John Dimino on an airplane before. Still, it is easy to [...]

By Christopher Wink | March 18, 2006 Temple University sent 23 of us to Laredo, Texas to work with Habitat for Humanity. We slept on the ground of vacant classrooms, took less-than-hot showers, and worked a watered-down form of construction from 8am until 4pm daily. For those unfamiliar with what the phrase college spring break [...]

By Christopher Wink | January 28, 2005 On a recent trip to poverty ravaged Tijuana, I could not help but see the irony, clichéd as it may be, of a border wall – that divides with great tumult the U.S. and Mexico – extending into the serenity of the Pacific Ocean. It is unreal to [...]

By Christopher Wink | Dec. 19, 2006 | Final JYA blog post UPDATE Feb. 12, 2011: All my NBCU JYA writing, video and photo work has been transferred to subdomain japan.christopherwink.com. Things are easier on this side. I realized that when I woke up and, in my persistently active manner, decided I had to go the [...]