Currently I am abroad, video podcasting at WeDontSpeakTheLanguage.com: A video podcast and blog about traveling the world for the young and broke. Follow me there, but also continue to enjoy regular posts here at ChristopherWink.com about the plight of a young, aspiring journalist, which will appear below this reminder.
Continue reading We Don't Speak the Language: European Exploration
Today, my good friend Sean Blanda and I are departing for London. I mentioned this trip last month.
He and I are beginning an open-ended European backpacking adventure. We have no return ticket, no definite plans or destinations: just a month long, 10-stop itinerary on the way to Hungary and vague plans of reassesing our funds to get down to Greece and circling all the way back to Spain.
We’ll be blogging and video podcasting the trip together, but more on that next week when the official rollout comes.
Stay posted for that, but don’t worry, ChristopherWink.com will remain fresh and posted – I know you’re concerned.
God bless America and wish us luck. Lots of exciting news to come next week.
Today is my last day in Harrisburg.
A buddy and I are packing up my life from a summer-long post-graduate internship covering state government in Pennsylvania’s capitol. After visiting the 30th annual Pennsylvania Chili cook off here in Harrisburg who knows when I’ll be back.
So, here’s my Harrisburg to-do list and how I fared this summer.
Continue reading My Pennsylvania State Capital To-do List: what you have to do in Harrisburg
JOHN MCCAIN WAS IN LEGENDARY PITTSBURGH EATERY PRIMANTI BROTHERS earlier this month.
The joke was that he went to the 75-year-old eatery for local flavor and instead ran into his own constituents – tourists from Tempe, Ariz. there to check out old Steel Town.
I HAVE GIVEN IN ON ANOTHER HOLDOUT OF MINE, THIS one on CouchSurfing.com, after catching a lot of flak for recently joining the Facebook, having avoided it throughout university.
One signs up, offers up a couch or a place to sleep in exchange for the same treatment elsewhere. Avoid hotels and even hostels and get a local view of wherever you’re visiting. The most frequent concern is one with safety, and, like I’ve seen with hitchhiking, there is some truth to it, but, more often, there is the opportunity for cheap travel and profound interaction.
In preparation for future travels on a limited income, I thought now was the time to finally get on board with another social networking device online.
I HAVE BEEN IN South Dakota since last Monday, though this blog has been running on forward posts since.
I first met the group I’m visiting now back in 2006. With some other Temple University students, I did some community work in White River – a town of 600, nearly half of whom are American Indian – just north of the Lakota Rosebud reservation. See some photos of that trip below.
I WAS FIRST IN SOUTH DAKOTA in 2005. I returned in May 2006 for a service immersion trip with a small group of Temple University students. It was then that I met a gaggle of friends from the Lakota Rosebud reservation near White River, S.D. It has led to lots of adventures, including two years and nearly 600 miles of hitchhiking, but that’s for another day.
Since Monday I’ve been traveling back there again and, if all went correctly, I should be in White River now. Check Google Maps here.
Read my reflections after first interacting in an American Indian community two years ago.
This region of Dakota’s limitless expansion is only interrupted by flurries of elevation change. Once on ground, the pavement of interstate 90 appeared to have tamed the land into a consumable table of gentle slopes and caressing ridges. All of which leads me to offer muddled explanations of the region’s geographical features: endless plains with small, yet punctuated elevation changes interjected regularly. Read more here.
I have been traveling since Monday, I should be at my destination, White River, S.D. sometime this afternoon.
TODAY I AM LEAVING TOWN in a Subaru. An older friend and I are headed to White River, South Dakota (Google Maps), just north of the Rosebud Lakota Reservation, to which I’ve gone each of the past two years, including an initial trip with a Temple University service group.
We’ll do some community work, meet with friends, learn and I’ll be sure to clear my head.
I am done with my college career and have my graduation looming.
Indeed, I am returning on May 21, the day before I am set to graduate. Asking for trouble, I know. We’ll see.
Anyway, don’t you worry. This baby will keep cooking, as I’ve forward posted lots of stuff I have been meaning to get up here. What you can be sure of is that it won’t be on anything breaking.
Be well and good thoughts.
I spent a semester living and studying in Tokyo, Japan last fall. While there, I blogged, photographed and videotaped my experiences for the pilot season of an online-only show by NBC called JYA, Junior Year Abroad.
I just got word from the show’s producer that it has been posted on a new NBC digital media Web site, Hulu.com.
Through it, major media companies can license the content.
As result, today AOL has done just that, posting my videos, in addition to those of the other cast members. See it here.Check out my most popular video, chronicling my scaling Mount Fuji, Japan’s tallest peak, on my own, on a whim, unprepared.
