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Run, Write, Repeat | Spain 2019
I have spent the past month in Valencia, Spain, surviving on a healthy dose of banana pancakes, watermelon, and Maggie Rogers to get me through writing my dissertation. It has been a whirlwind month, beginning with arriving straight from Cape Town via Leeds to join Jess at 48 Carrer Peurto Rico in Russafa, a quirky…
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UN PRME UKI Conference 2019
“Aujourd’hui, je vais vous parler de…” My first public speaking competition was in the fifth grade when our French Immersion class was tasked with preparing a speech as part of Concours d’Art Oratoire. The topic of my presentation? Emily Carr, my favourite artist at the time (whose works I still cherish). I detailed Carr’s early…
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South Africa Series: No. 5
After writing our final exam on Friday afternoon, we threw our bags into Tom’s Defender and headed to Table Mountain. Dominic and Donal had hiked up earlier in the day, and we arrived with just enough time to get last-minute tickets to ride the tram up. Once atop the mountain, we found winding trails leading…
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South Africa Series: No. 4
My sisters and I were raised on a healthy dose of Willie Nelson, Dire Straits, and Paul Simon. Don’t get me wrong, we could also belt out every Disney song under the sun, but it was more common for us to know all the lyrics to You’re the One or Blue Eyes Crying in the…
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South Africa Series: No. 3
你要去哪里 | Nǐ yào qù nǎlǐ | Where are you going? This is one of the few phrases I can recall from my middle school Mandarin classes. I studied the beautifully complex language for two years, yet I can only remember a few basic phrases. What I do remember, arguably more importantly, were the lessons…
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South Africa Series: No. 2
July 3, 2019, officially earned the title of “best day of my life so far”. A bold statement, but let me explain…a road-trip along a coastal highway to visit a National Park, catch a sunset, and visit some penguins. Throw in great company who, despite hailing from different countries and speaking with various accents, become…
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South Africa Series: No. 1
Although my dissertation research is about the Arctic Blue Economy, I have kicked off Summer 2019 immersed in the London School of Economics-University of Cape Town short course “Africa and Global Transformations: The rise of emerging powers and a new international order”. South Africa and the circumpolar Arctic may be around 11,000 kilometres apart in…
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Paris | June 2019
Audrey Hepburn was quoted as saying “Paris is always a good idea”, but as I packed my bags to leave London, I was questioning this advice. I was so enjoying my time in South Kensington that I could hardly bear the thought of saying good-bye to the city I’d only just grown to love. Nevertheless,…
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Malta | May 2019
In June 2018, I completed a journal exercise in which I wrote what “a Day in the Life” would be like for me a year and a half into the future. While many of the details of this fortune-telling exercise are yet to reveal themselves as true, there was one piece that has already come…
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When in Rome | May 2019
I am fortunate to have many incredible, passionate, resilient, hilarious, and downright inspirational women in my life, and my Auntie Janice is no exception. A talented artist, Auntie Janice opened her watercolour studio Lower Lonsdale, North Vancouver, a few years ago, and also coordinates workshops abroad. When we met for lunch during Christmas holidays in…