As the poet Robert Frost once exclaimed “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—took the path less traveled” I too encountered the fork in the road. In fact, not only did the road diverge, it splintered and fragmented into a mad mess of tiny unmarked trails in a glowing enchanted forest.
Japan Airlines flight 291: After graduating from the University of Minnesota, I packed my bags and set out for adventure. With the Robert Frost poem resonating in the back of my mind and a scene from the movie Dead Poet’s Society, “Carpe Diem: seize the day” in my head, I packed my bags and bought a one-way ticket to Narita Japan. I travelled across Asia and through Vietnam and into Thailand. I soon found that Mr. Frost’s simplistic view of only 2 paths in
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I was an apprentice for 3 years to the flamboyant and outspoken Professor Gloria Wood. She encouraged creative problem solving in her teaching techniques, and I too begin to think outside the box as I followed her lead. I used stories and picture to relate concepts from class to more practical things that students saw in their everyday life. Yet even though, I was a teaching assistant I never wanted to be a teacher. As a 7-year-old boy, I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be the first man to do backflips on the Mars with those cool big shoes that Neil Armstrong wore when he first set foot on the moon. With my French ancestry, I wanted to be the first French-American to test and see if indeed the moon was made of cheese. Boys will be boys my mom use to say!
When I was 11, I traveled to Brazil by myself and lived with a host family. I was selected to attend a junior international high level soccer developmental program in the small Brazilian city of Goiania. My host family did not speak English or know much about American culture let alone anything about American cuisine. At most dinners, I found myself as the center attraction because I was the “best English teacher” in the city. I imagine that was not too hard to do because no one else taught English in the