One of my classmates looked out the window on the train ride to Tianjin and said that he’d heard a rumor that half of the world’s supply of cranes were in China’s growing cities.

Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

The grandpa at Starbucks happily announced for everyone who was wondering,“¡Es americana!” (“She’s American!”).

But when I arrived at my new home I was met with a much different type of Paris than the liberal, trendy one in my mind.

Our encounters can be counted as three, and the first, we were both minimally dressed. Budva, Montenegro. He was in the black speedo whose ubiquity I had anticipated, perhaps too readily underestimating the influence of American culture. I was staring down past my toes, into the turquoise water—it waited, welcomed, mocked and threatened. The only [...]

There’s something about the Mayan ruins of Caracol—located in southwestern Belize—that seems to exude a sense of profound awareness.

This month, The 195 teamed up with Northwestern University Radio Drama, a weekly storytelling show on WNUR 89.3, for a live performance of stories from our contributors, past and present.

This podcast features a story by Beau Garret, a contributor in Chile during summer 2010.