Sitting on the ground, scooping a few grains of rice out of a newspaper with my bare hands, I had never felt more ready to start a riot. Just a few feet away, a girl was seated at a table, eating a grilled chicken breast and pasta, not unlike the many dinners I had prepared for my own family at home. That could have been me, if not for an unlucky draw from the hat. I had come to the...

There exists nothing that cannot be theoretically improved by taking a dip in batter and hot oil, from the classic French fry to the lesser known fried butter on a stick; at least, that’s how my friend the Georgia State Fair veteran would have me believe. But of all of the cardiologist’s nightmares, my personal favorite will always be “Deep-Fried Thursday.” Every Thursday afternoon for the majority of my high school career, I could be found on the...

Some say that the most important part of any culture is the language of its people, and in the summer of 2012, through Spanish classes and homestays in Bolivia, I had ample opportunity to experience just that. Within just a few short weeks in South America, I found myself giving directions to taxi drivers, holding produce purchased from local vendors on the way home to my Quechua and Spanish speaking homestay family. I graduated from "¿que?" and "si" to discussions about...

When I was in elementary school, I had the immense responsibility of practicing piano for an hour every day. It was strictly enforced, as everything seems to be to an eight-year-old, and my mom would sit in the adjacent room rejecting my every plea for a bathroom break, or a water break, or any kind of break at all. I was sneaky, changing the time on all of the clocks so my “hour” would end early, and there was no...