Quick India update: In my final week there, I became deathly ill and then my iPad died. I’m back in the USA now, and I’ll post a final India recap when I have the time. Until then…

Here’s a post that I wrote for my other blog, Edu-Hacker. Enjoy!

10 Things That I Learned About the U.S. by Traveling

 

Dearest readers of Blake Travels,

As many of you know, my travel plans for the second half of 2011 recently changed. The Unschool Adventures “Eurosurf” and “New Zealand Ultraventure” trips didn’t garner enough interest to become viable. Thus, I will no longer be traveling internationally after my India trip.

But fear not, as I intend to continue blogging for the rest of 2011–but the name and theme of the blog will change from “Blake Travels” to “Blake Eats.”

Yes, that’s right. I eat. And I like taking pictures of what I eat. You may have noticed that. I’ll post every day about something awesome (or not awesome) that I ate, along with a photograph and the occasional nutrition commentary.

Thanks for following my blog!

Cheers,

Blake

 

March 13-26, 2011-

Between South America and my next big international trip—India—I spent time at Brenna’s house in Asheville and presented at the InHome Conference outside of Chicago. While there were many highlights, here are the ones that I managed to photograph!

Hanna, Jonah, and Garrett wished me goodbye after all the other South America students founds their flights home from Miami.

I crashed with my old friend Tom Fiori (from Bakersfield and UC Berkeley) and his wife in Miami. He’s a radical anarchist, and we don’t see eye-to-eye on many things politically nowadays, but it was great to hang with him nonetheless.

In Asheville, Tara Dean (another former Unschool Adventuree) and her friend found us while driving across the country. A few days later, Tara was taking off to volunteer in Africa delivering babies. Dang unschoolers!

Fast forward to March 23-26, where I presented a ton of workshops at the InHome Conference—a 1000-person, all-inclusive homeschooling conference drawing people from all over the midwest. Here I led a teen workshop entitled “Indescribable Sexiness” (edited by the conference board to “Indescribable Attraction”).

Many former Unschool Adventurees were at this conference! Featured here (from the top-left, clockwise): Aytch, Nicolette (who applied to go on a trip that was canceled), Paige, and Claire.

They helped me run my exhibitor booth, along with Erica and Luke.

You gotta watch out at these homeschooling conferences—lots of tricky Christian games and curricula out there. Here, someone apparently redesigned the (excellent and non-religious) game “Settlers of Catan” to become “Settlers of Canaan”, where your goal is to lead your tribe of Israelites to salvation or something. I was offered 20% off because I told the guy that I was going to India, which he immediately assumed was discount-deserving missionary work.

But really, the highlight of the whole conference was seeing my name on a foil balloon. What more does the human heart desire?