Have you heard about this global school of mine?

I like telling stories around the world: in written form, through snazzy visuals, and from both experiential and academic perspectives. I would do this of my own volition (ahem, Nomadderwhere), but thankfully my job allows me to do this for pay every day. From time to time though, I also make marketing videos to give more context of this visionary establishment that houses such endeavors. Here are the latest ones of note.

Q&A: Field trips vs. independent travel on SAS

I think there's merit in going on a field trip (or field programs, used to be FTPs in my day) in the first location, because–as cliques form quickly–you can meet random new people and create relationships with many people from the get-go. I did a quick trip to El Yunque rainforest in Puerto Rico, and this pulled together some adventure-loving travelers who were excited to get their new hiking boots dirty.

Uruguay: a new country experience with a vintage video feel

Here's hoping border crossings are all fresh. Visiting Uruguay a few weekends ago reminded me how lucky I have been to see different countries. I wanted to reflect my appreciation for a new place with a new video technique: light leaks.

Photoblog: Sundays in Buenos Aires make the whole week

For over a month, I've been sinking my claws into Buenos Aires, Argentina. Within the first two weeks, I found an apartment with a new roommate/co-worker in the beautifully-located barrio called Recoleta. Its coordinates in the city as well as decor and baller terrace(s) cause me to internally chant: I'm not worthy!

What I would happily quote from Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw

I became seduced by the world–and the freedom that television had given me–to travel it as I wished. I was also drunk on a new and exciting power to manipulate images and sound in order to tell stories, to make audiences feel about places I'd been the way I wanted them to feel.

Adios, America. It's time for new places and fresh air.

It's time to navigate away from Indiana again. The school year is starting, and I'm about to move to a country I've never visited. Come Tuesday, I will have some new students, new co-workers, a new home with someone else's furniture, and a new culture to study...thankfully in a language I'm already comfortable with. Last year's school locations of Ecuador, Thailand, and Germany look to be replaced by some diverse locales, all brought to you by the letter "B".

Photoblog: a summertime reunion of travel friends in Vermont

One year of teaching in China and two years of Peace Corps in Malawi later, my dear friends from Semester at Sea and I finally reunited. Alexis and I flew to Burlington, Vermont within 20 hours of Garrett's homecoming, and these are the good times we enjoyed. When I'm not at work, I don't want to be continuously documenting my life in high def. That's why I played with Instagram this time around (click on the images to view in lightbox).

When Wabash takes to the riverbanks, nature sighs with relief

I spent my childhood in Wabash (and took innumerable visits in the last twelve years), and this was one of my top ten favorite mornings in my hometown. Maybe it had something to do with flying above the trees with the wind in my hair. Remember, I'm a converted adrenaline junkie...when the wind is just right.

This is a promotional video for the clean-up efforts of the Wabash River Defenders.

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Q&A: going solo on Semester at Sea and other Q's

Q: I am from Birmingham, AL this is going to be way out of my comfort zone do you recommend finding a friend or just going alone. Is their a good floor to be on and does the inside/outside room make a difference? How many classes did you take while you were there and did studying abroad put you behind in your studies when you got back to school?

Filming the Wabash River 'as the crow flies'

The upcoming term in Argentina will mark my 52nd country, and every once in a while I'm perplexed that this whole world obsession and world tour started from a town of 11,000 in rural Indiana. I talk about this town often–one I haven't lived in for 12 years to the week–and it's a weekend like my last one that confirms its hold on me. I continue to have those awe-inspiring moments in a place I thought I'd adequately covered.

Clean Out The Banks! is an annual event in Wabash, Indiana conducted by a volunteer group known as the Wabash River Defenders. If you were at Paradise Spring at 7:00am last Saturday, eating free donuts and preparing to wade in the silt, you're likely a member...or a donut enthusiast.

This year's 365 participants engaged in a community event for the benefit of their environment while spending time with that environment on a beautiful day. Being a recent student on the effects of community, I was eager to witness my first River Defenders event and document it for distribution.

The river stretches 19.2 miles across Wabash County from east to west, so my fellow documentarian, Chelsea, and I didn't have to drive far to reach the many scattered clean-up crews.

Walking along the river in Lagro, we found an ATV or mountain bike track that looked like serious muddy fun. We passed by many groups of fishermen heading to the water. One of the teams had a kayak, and its slender shape reminded me of rowing sculls torpedoing down the thin and shallow river. My imagination was probably stretching the water possibilities on this Mississippi tributary, but the flanking land offered no such limitations to outdoor enjoyment.

Lindsay flying over Wabash County in an antique airplane

After a couple hours of tracking teams' progress, I was extended the opportunity to admire Wabash County from above on an antique open cockpit airplane from 1927. I couldn't stop relating myself to Snoopy. It was a beautiful aircraft, and it lifted effortlessly above the forests and farms to find the snaking river.

Lindsay and an antique airplane in Wabash, Indiana

In the past couple years, I've had some very active shoots on land, while treading water, and even underwater with wild animals. Prior to this flight, I'd never had the chance to film from the air. The 90 mph winds pulled at the camera, but I had it strapped tightly around my hand, my arm anchored to my body. It was tough to shoot around the wings and stabilize with the turbulence, but the adrenaline rush from the open cockpit helped me achieve some awesome moments on film.

I wasn't at all surprised that such a plane existed in a hangar at the Wabash airstrip. The town is full of eccentric characters who collect distinct items, create unique artwork, build hidden bars in their basements, and wrangle community support for every facet of life, culture, and sport. A trip home can be comforting in its predictability or reveal a unique opportunity unfathomable hours prior.

It was this mid-morning flight that determined the angle of my documentation, supplemented by the mini-revelations along the banks of the Wabash. I spent the majority of my childhood outdoors, but my backyard was only a small indication of what my surroundings held. I won't always have an antique airplane ride to jostle my pre-conceived expectations of a place, but this one surely helped.

I'm currently in the process of editing a promo for "Clean Out Our Banks!" and will post once live. Here's a news package from WTIU of the event.

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Consume & Update: making it count, making good art & making it home

I've finally stopped moving for a while. Want to see what I've found as of lately?

World travel on Nike's dime

Nike made a new product that basically detects energy expended (a.k.a. Nike Fuel) throughout your typical, active day, and with this new product comes an intense online marketing campaign called #makeitcount. This video, created by Casey Neistat and Max Joseph, is reminiscent of the STA Travel Australia video "Move" and shows Casey plowing through his budget from Nike with 10 days of globe trotting. I just had dinner with one of the developers of this campaign. The world is small, people.

Advice for starting a creative career

This is good and giggle-worthy. Here are my favorite excerpts:

...it's true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn't wind up getting the money, either.
IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.
The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be starting to get it right.
That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.

Other discoveries

Getting better production audio: who wouldn't want that? STA Travel's World Traveler Internship 2012 commences: Matt and Amma begin the documenting of their European jaunt with this video of a Czech beer fest. Reinventing the office, how to lose weight and increase productivity: Though these days I have no control over what my office looks like, I like to take these tips and think of how they could again be redefined for this transient setting. The new MacBook Pro: No Film School explains the newest version of the MBP.

Update on Nomadderwhere

Throughout June, I felt incredibly confident in my role as media specialist for this world-touring school, TGS. I don't know if it was the homey accommodation we had, the energy of Berlin, the enthusiasm of the students, or something else. I created a rhythm of working and playing that felt solid and sustainable, which is harder than it seems to create structure in a fluid, ever-changing environment. It was so successful that I had time and energy to document for myself.

A few weeks ago, I packed up my ephemeral life and reverted to backpack living for about 25 days. After train journeys through Prague, Budapest, Salzburg, and Austria, I flew to meet friends in Denmark and said goodbye to Europe from Stockholm. Landing stateside in early July, I quickly picked up again to visit my hometown of Wabash and then the third place I'd call a 'home': New York City. Home is a loose term for me.

This summer break from school will consist of portfolio tweaking, reading of many travel narratives, home creative projects, and the ever-important duty of reconnecting with my community.

Here's my latest work:

Q&A: Dealing with cash and cards on the road: Just my tips and habits at the current time
Is it important to visit the places to visit from which your family originates: A reflective piece after a trip with a student to investigate her family history in Germany
What creating art in a world art capital looks like: Two videos covering the Creative Arts curriculum in Berlin

Videos and captions are those of THINK Global School. The opinions stated in this post are mine and do not reflect the positions, strategies, or opinions of THINK Global School.

Photoblog: a gray day in the Swedish village of Landsort

After the Berlin trimester ended, I flew to Copenhagen to begin a wee Scandinavian tour. The best part of this week was being with friendly residents and visiting their homes. Yes, homes. Not houses, accommodations, hotels, hostels, or dorms. In both Copenhagen and Stockholm, I stayed in city homes and then visited vacation homes by the water. Both cities are impressive and relatively unknown to me, but I valued most those moments where I was experiencing someone's place of hat-hanging. Rarely did I want to venture away.

Kari and Kristian heading to Öja, Sweden

Landsort is a village on the island of Öja an hour south of Stockholm. It marks the southernmost point of the Stockholm archipelago. My new friend Kari took fellow TGS co-worker Andy and his two friends to his vacation home on the island of Öja by way of a flat-bottomed boat. The sky was gray and occasionally spitting, but we enjoyed some walks along the central road (rarely a motor in sight) and up by the lighthouse that gives the village its name.

The southernmost point of the Stockholm archipelago: Landsort

The mostly-pedestrian streets of Landsort on Öja island in Sweden

Kristian, Andy, and Luisa at Kari's house on Öja

To see more travel photography, view my Flickr collections.

My global kids romp through four countries in five days

Some of my students called it "the best five days of their lives." That kind of statement carries a good load coming from kids who visited the Galápagos, the Amazon rainforest, and the Bavarian Alps this year alone. At the end of the academic year, my students were given the great opportunity by the school to live out their own Amazing Race through Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria.

I went along for the ride.

This is what the last three months in Germany looked like

Lindsay, Irene, and Andy in Prague acting silly

Freshly relieved of my Creative Art teaching responsibilities and greatly assisted with social media management, I not only had time to create videos, edit photography, and write blogs on the ground; after a 10-hour day, I regularly had hours to myself in the evening to produce work of my own volition and be in the incredible city of Berlin.

What creating art in a world art capital looks like

The last three months of living in Berlin have been culture-filled indeed. One of our guest speakers this term expressed his belief that if Paris, London, NYC, and other global cities had their heydays in past decades, Berlin is having hers right now. While it's harder to find a contributor to culture living in New York City than it is a financier or business person, in Berlin the culture contributors are the vast majority and the makers of the dough. If you're going to study art today, this is certainly a place to witness a present movement gaining definition.

Is it important to visit the places from which your family originates?

It could also be because this is the first foreign country in a while where I can feel a deeper sense of belonging. In China, Ecuador, and Thailand, I felt like a visitor and often an unwelcome one, regardless of my language acquisition or the warm hospitality received. Though I still get some awful stares for breaking j-walking and cycling unspoken norms, I don't have the sense of being an intruder in Germany.

Q&A: Dealing with cash and cards on the road

Send in your questions, too!

Hi Lindsay, I am just wondering about money situations when you are traveling? Soon i am about to embark on a year long journey to central America and have been struggling with the whole money idea and how much i should take and what credit card or travels checks i should take. I was just wondering how you do it and did it in the past on your world travels.
I know there are fees for credit cards when you want to take money out and i do not want to travel with more than a 1,000 dollars on me in cash and i am just not sure about the whole travels checks. So if you could help me out or give me some pointers or tricks you have up your sleeve that would be great. And i would really appreciate it.
Just what ever run down you have about traveling with money and where you get it when you run out. Thanks Lindsay, i appreciate it. Have a swell day. -Pavla M.

Hi Pavla. Thanks for your message. I'd be happy to provide insight into what I did for money along my similar travels.

I haven't taken traveler's checks anywhere since 2003 as they've never proven convenient. Those might be becoming a thing of the past. Of course, I've never found myself in a situation where they would have been helpful, and I thankfully keep a good hold of my valuables.

Instead, I've always just used debit cards to withdraw money in large sums. If you're going to be in a place with the same currency for a while, just take out as much as you can every time, so as to avoid excess fees. I consider those fees ones for convenience, because I also don't like carrying around a lot of money. I take out a couple hundred at a time, slowly use it, and give my credit card/debit card for purchases as much as possible.

One important note: make sure you have both a MasterCard and a Visa card, also at least one credit card and one debit card. That worked very well for me, because some countries only have one or the other. And if you need to rent a car or something similar, a credit card is far better. That diversity should serve you well. Keep them in separate places but always in secure spots (clearly).

If you run out, have someone Western Union more to you as you get your bank account sorted out. Hopefully this doesn't happen to you on the road, and with good planning, it won't.

Was this post helpful? Have any more questions about dealing with money abroad? Any questions period? Send a video or message to me with your queries, and I'll be sure to get back to you!

Consume & Update: 1952, Berlin Tetris, and Bavaria-bound

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I've been talking to a co-worker a lot lately about her balance of consuming and creating, and it reminded me of my old balance between absorbing what the industry is putting out and telling the industry what I'm adding to the mix. After almost two years, here's the latest Consume & Update!

Great use of soundtrack to arc story

This Vimeo staff pick, directed by Peter Simonite & Annie Gunn, is a stunning result of great cameras handled by great cameramen. It is also a great example of a singular soundtrack lending to the arc of a story in a short film.

I've begun teaching a new media lab at THINK Global School, which encourages students to share and reflect their world experiences using new media. An upcoming lesson will be on the use of soundtracks to carve out, structure, or heighten the message of a video. I'm on the hunt for great examples of this, and I'm also asking filmmakers to explain their choices to the students.

What Berlin looks and feels like to Berliners

Christian Andersen makes the second video in his series on the street aesthetic of a city, this one "capturing the culture and everyday life of native Berliners. In this short film, I also tried to capture the special urban vibe Berlin has and visualize the aesthetic of Berlin's street corners, parks, buildings and structure." I think the coloration and rack focusing fit really well to the soundtrack by Aphex Twin.

East Berlin architecture in game form

This video by Sergej Hein does what we all wandering East Berlin want to do with our telekinetic powers:

The idea is based on a kind of parody of the former Socialist building style. They used to build whole cities where each house was designed identically to create cheap housing for workers. These ‘blocks’ were so similar that in Soviet times, you could easily wake up at a friends place in another city and still feel like you are in your flat. Even the furniture was the same.

Other discoveries

The Love Competition: A range of people are interviewed about love and then receive MRIs to measure their brains as they ponder love. The arc of the story is compelling, and the music is powerfully linked to the sentiment of the short film. Berlin Dynamic: A timelapse video of Berlin's many vistas and defining aspects, including the TV tower skyline, bright yellow subway, and famous buildings Little Big Berlin: A tilt-shift timelapse of Berlin set to Franz Liszt, if you're looking for a calming sensation.

Update on Nomadderwhere

For the last month, I've been feeling incredibly confident in my role as media specialist for this world-touring school, TGS. I can't tell if it's the homey accommodation we have, the energy of Berlin, the enthusiasm of the students, or something else. I've created a rhythm of working and playing that feels solid and sustainable, which is harder than it seems to create structure in a fluid, ever-changing environment. It's been so successful that I've been able to document for myself.

This weekend marked our first school trip out of Berlin. We hit up Bavaria for a look at Munich, a nearby concentration camp, the Alps, and the Champions League final game between Bayern München and Chelsea. Details to follow.

Here's that work from the last month in Berlin:

Guten tag and lederhosen and whatnot: bound for Berlin: I let ya'll know I'm going to Berlin...and planning on real-time blogging er'thang.
Photoblog: details of the hipster haven that is Berlin: I wondered around Mitte (the city center) with my camera, finding and having moments.
Finding the fulcrum below me in Berlin: A prose poem on the flight to, initial settling experience in, and eventual comfort found in Berlin, Germany while working for TGS.
What our experiences in Berlin look like thus far: A run-through of three Berlin-based and Berlin-focused films I've made so far for TGS.

The opinions stated in this post are mine and do not reflect the positions, strategies, or opinions of THINK Global School.

What our experiences in Berlin look like thus far

Though I'm not processing my own experiences in video form as of lately (due to lack of time), I'm really please with what I've been able to crank out in Berlin. There are moments when what I've documented for work has impacted me, mostly at Wannsee Haus where the Final Solution was created. In this great city of culture and history, cinematic moments abound. Here are the ones I've caught thus far.

Finding the fulcrum below me in Berlin

The immigration line stretched to meet me at row 35 on the 767-200. A strong arm could toss a tennis ball beyond the width of TXL's international wing. Elbowing through the Red Rover chain that was a Canadian tour group, bags launched to my shoulders and bolted for fresh air.