About
My name is Emily and I’m a senior at Georgia State University. I currently reside in Atlanta, GA, as I work to wrap up my journey as an over-stressed college student. I will be graduating in December 2009 with a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies in International Studies, a minor in Middle Eastern Studies, and a TEFL certificate. I’ve always hated the first sip of tea, coffee, maté, or any other hot beverage because you never know if it will burn your lip.
It seems I’ve had a blog in some form or another since I was 13 or so. This blog actually started out as a free hosted blog titled Notes from My Travels on Wordpress back in June 2008 to chronicle the adventures (and misadventures) as a study abroad student living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
As time progressed I realized how much I missed writing and after encouragement from friends and family members decided to take it seriously and see where the path would lead. I got frustrated with the limitations of a free blog and decided to purchase my own domain name and hosting which finds me here, at OtrasRutas.com.
Notes from My Travels was primarily a travel blog and initially I thought I wanted to keep the same direction with Otras Rutas. However, I like to live by live by the following quote, and thus, my blog, as a reflection of my life, will sometimes be about things other than travel:
Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things–childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves–that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers. — Salman Rushdie
Since Otras Rutas, Spanish for “other routes”, was envisioned to be a travel blog the name was intended to convey the less-traveled path I tend to take when backpacking but–fortunately for me–it is also fitting to the alternate paths I take in my life. Recent years have found me struggling to create the life I imagine and more often than not it is less conventional than the life most Americans in the 21st century lead.
