About our Bloggers

Nils de Jong - Taipei, Taiwan

Nils is a 20-year-old college Junior originally from the Netherlands and currently studying in Taipei, Taiwan. His bachelors degree focus is on management, but also includes finance and economics courses, and he will be taking a Chinese Language Course two hours a day, five times a week, in an attempt to learn Mandarin, which is the most spoken language in the world. He is a huge soccer and tennis fan (particularly of Roger Federer), and also enjoys Roman history, finance issues such as stocks, reading and playing poker. His goal for studying abroad is, above all, to "have a good time and learn as much as possible."

Jack Krupey - Seoul, South Korea

Jack is teaching English for a year at the YBM school in downtown Seoul, the largest city in South Korea. A 29-year-old Information Technology graduate from Rochester Institute of Technology, Jack has worked in both the IT industry and as full-time real estate investor, flipping properties and managing rentals, and as a licensed real estate broker. He says he is using this opportunity to "experience a different culture and travel the world and escape the corporate rat race for a little while."" Follow along with Jack as he changes his life and the lives of those he teaches.

Sarah Dickerson - Paris, France

Twenty-year-old Wellesley College junior Sarah Dickerson is passionate about modern art and loves French culture. Perfectly then, as if she had planned it that way (imagine that), she is studying abroad in Paris, France. This fan of traveling, photography and modern art, who also loves playing music, singing, writing, dancing ballet, fighting for human rights, drinking tea and red wine (not necessarily together) and visiting museums, is excited to become fluent in the French language and to have no more problems writing compositions in French. Of her semester, she said before departing, "I just hope to get the most out of every day that I'm abroad, regardless of my experiences."