Over a decade ago, I packed my life into a backpack and hopped on a one-way flight to New Zealand to follow a boy.
It was only supposed to be for a year.
I naively thought I would spend a few months working in New Zealand before I had enough money to travel to Australia and South East Asia for the rest of the year.
Instead, I spent over a year living in and traveling through New Zealand. My boyfriend and I bought a station wagon, an air mattress, and a camping stove and lived out of our car for six weeks.
Then, I moved to Australia where I fell in love with Sydney. I still feel a little heartache when I think about living there, but it wasn’t time to settle down.
We lived in the city for just over a year, then we packed everything back into our 80-liter backpacks and gave away the rest. We traveled from Darwin to Cairns (we rented a real campervan this time). We bused it from Cairns to Sydney, then finished our two-year Australia adventure in the red center admiring the one and only Uluru.
I headed back to the US to see my family for the first time in three years. There were nieces and nephews to meet, weddings to attend, and money to save. But it didn’t last long. After six months of floundering and living in my parent’s spare room, I was off again.
I decided to try my hand at teaching English in Korea.
It lasted a year. It was the best thing that ever happened to me and I couldn’t wait to leave.
It took us a few years longer than intended, but we finally made that trip around South East Asia. Two weeks in Japan, a week in Taiwan, two more weeks learning to dive in the Philippines, a month in Vietnam, a month in Cambodia, a month in Thailand, and a month in Laos. It was the biggest and best adventure of my life.
Eventually, though, that too had to come to an end. I was back at my parent’s house trying to figure out how the hell to not be living at my parent’s house (I love them, but I was 27 at this point and still running out of money all the time).
So I started this blog. I’d been blogging before (enter my blogspot website if you dare), but never in a way that would sustain me as a writer and adventurer and videographer and photographer.
Eternal Expat was born. I was, after all, eternally moving to new countries with no end in sight. It seemed like the right name (I also love alliteration almost as much as I love traveling).
So armed with a new website and a desire to make a living from my writing, I took my boyfriend, my camera, and my laptop and I moved to Mexico.
And as if by magic, five years passed. I spent most of that time in Mexico City before the pandemic ended our stint in the city and we decided to head to the beach to figure out our next steps. Baja California Sur embraced me like a warm hug from your grandma when she’s got something on the stove cooking for you even though she didn’t even know you were coming.
I love Mexico, as you can see from most of the content on this blog.
It’s been the place where I’ve found my feet, where I created a life for myself that I can take anywhere.
But the world was calling and it felt like as good a time as any to answer. Now I’m based in Lithuania learning about winter shoes and experiencing the joys of $10 flights across Europe.
Through this blog and thanks in large part to all of the people that I’ve met along the way, I’ve managed to find something that I love waking up and doing.
I may not be the most eloquent writer, the best photographer, or the funniest person in front of the camera, but I love what I do. I love helping people figure out how they can travel more, how they can make the most of their vacations by seeing and eating the absolute best there is in each destination, and how they can have a life that they love.
The world is a big place and I find that walking, laughing, and eating my way around it makes me happiest.
If you ever have any questions about places I’ve been, how I’ve managed to stay on the road for so long, how I make money as a digital nomad, or life wonderings in general – send me an email, I’m happy to help.
Want to Know More?
My favorite things are really good food, really great books, and the sun on my face.
I feel most at home when I’m near the ocean, but I’m not a huge fan of sand.
I like the idea of hammocks, but every time I lay in one I feel a little bit motion sick.
I used to think yoga was for people who hated exercise. Now I do it almost every day.
I cry when I’m happy, I cry when I’m sad, when I’m hungry, when I’m angry, when I’m nervous, and pretty much every time I read a book.
You can find me most often on Instagram where I post daily photos of my travels with plenty of musings in the comments section and on Instagram stories. I also love posting funny videos on Facebook.