Now there is a story I’d like to read! Will you write about that please?

Exactly. A cultural tourist is still a cultural tourist. Sorry things weren’t all Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Express for ya, sweetie. Maybe next time do a little research before traipsing halfway around the world and this shit won’t come as a shock to you. A good deal of my family is from Iran. I’ve met women who are…

I was really struck by the fact that, two weeks in, she had been to his family’s house enough to learn their rules, and one month in, she was familiar and comfortable with them. That is...a lot of time spent with the family of a month-long foreign fling.

That’s disheartening. You’d think that a campus with an IR program would be interested in that. Then again considering the attitudes about race in this country perhaps I was expecting too much.

I dunno - my cousin got her degree in International Relations, took a class just on Arab Spring, still says things like “I hate Arabs.” IR classes only correct for western savior stuff when the campus as a whole is correcting for western savior stuff. If the campus actively promotes western savior stuff, then, not so…

I don’t understand how you have a BA in international relations and yet still manage to post something this tone deaf? Surely there must be a class that teaches people how to discuss cultural differences without coming across as some sort of western savior? Perhaps my idea of international relations and what a degree…

It’s not about her race, it’s the typical “western woman goes to the third world and fucks an exotic macho man because she’s looking for thrills”. It’s been told a million times and it’s boring as shit and brings nothing to the table. Her naïveté doesn't make it special or endearing.

How small can this town be if there’s an airport, and a MASSIVE collection of UNESCO listed temples? How exactly did you get bored?

I’m an introvert and I hate people, but that has nothing to do with being an introvert.

And what bothers me just as much as his overt gender-based disrespect is the subtler disrespect of this kind of romantic tourism. A travel affair that’s never meant to mean anything more than “surprises and adventures” is fine if both parties go into it with their eyes open, but he was bringing her home to be with his…

For example, it’s a common assumption that introverts hate people and that makes it okay. That isn’t introversion, it’s just being an asshole.

She “was” young and naive and self-absorbed, but the author’s tone still conveys that despite the intervening years. It’s that lack of any sense of reflective criticism whatsoever that rankles a bit. Especially when it’s the typical “affair with swarthy, macho man in a foreign land” story that ALL those types of…

It’s true that a lot of people correlate introversion with shyness, they do go hand n hand a lot, I know I have both but I also know they are different. I dated an extreme extrovert and we were so drastically different it was laughable. But I really enjoyed our differences. He definitely got his energy from others.…

Uff, this is such a terribly condescending article. As an Indian urban woman from a city, I find her tone patronising to say the least. I have no desire to defend the deep patriarchal mindset that most Indian men, and several women, in my country swear by - but c’mon, this is ridiculous. She goes to a semi-urban part…

I am constantly astonished at the degree to which teaching is treated as something anyone can do as long as they have a vague knowledge of the subject. I was a secondary school teacher for a while, so I do have training, but I have taught at many other levels since, and at most, there would be a one-day seminar…

Genuine confusion over this: People have suggested the teaching English thing to me often, but I would feel really presumptuous going to a country where I don’t know the language, without a teaching certification or experience, and presuming that I can teach English effectively. But most people I know who have gone…

Yeah...those people, whle I admire their gumption to go abroad and travel seriously, kind of give ESL as a profession a bad name. They usually have no training and think any native speaker can teach English, which is demonstrably not true. I’m not against the backpackers coming in and getting jobs in our profession -…

IF your overseas company gives you time off. I taught ESL in Korea, thinking I’d have grand travels in the meantime, but my company only gave me a whopping 5 days off a year, sick or for vacation. So, there’s that.

Yeah, at the school I worked for that was a real problem. People come in talking about taking day trips to Russia, and it’s like, we’re working six days a week y’all, do you even have a visa? No? Okay, go back to grading placement tests until I tell you to stop. They weren’t dedicated to teaching and passed off…

My daughter is 20. She works (hostess at a restaurant) and has two roommates in a house in the hip part of town. She plans on traveling like that young lady there. So, in July, she’s giving up her part of the lease and coming home for a few months, then leaving in December. You only need $700 to fly roundtrip to…