• Skincare on the silk road

    Can you buy adapalene over the counter in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan? Yes, and I did. A humorous travel essay about anti-aging skincare, Silk Road cities, and the quiet fear of turning thirty.

  • From Bible Verses to Boarder Guards:

    A sleepless flight, an unsolicited sermon at 30,000 feet, and a minor immigration incident later, I arrived in Almaty already exhausted and oddly exhilarated.

  • Shymbulak: Visiting a Soviet Ski Resort

    Visiting Shymbulak above Almaty reveals a mountain escape slowly being consumed by tourism and late capitalism.

  • Far From Impressive

    On travel, escapism, and delaying adulthood I’m eagerly awaiting Miriam Webster’s call to use my  likeness for the word loser since, I think I am a textbook example of one by most metrics. Well, loser, pathetic, failure, whatever they prefer. I’m versatile that way.  I’m 25,  I still live at home, I can’t drive, I’m…