Seek out global connections while you’re still at home (with Kristin Van Tassel)

Deviate with Rolf Potts

“Travel has become a way to remind myself how it feels to get lost, and then get unlost. It is a way to remember the discomfort of uncertainty and the unfamiliar. It’s an exercise in receiving the unexpected.” –Kristin Van Tassel

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Kristin discuss being in DC, living in Kansas, and Kristin’s family trip to Mexico using migrant-economy buses (1:30); how seeking international restaurants and grocery stores at home can be a window into distant cultures (8:00); Kristin’s motivation to learn Spanish in middle age, and how it connects to her perspective as a teacher (16:00); Kristin’s harrowing experience of getting lost on a run in Nairobi in 1990, and how getting lost in a place is a way of experiencing it in a deeper way (20:30); how Kristin experienced the country and culture of Moldova through soups and salads while being hosted there by a former student (34:30); and how to stay open to being lost without compromising yourself, and embrace unfamiliar languages as a traveler and learner (41:00).

Kristin Van Tassel teaches writing and American literature at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. She writes essays and poetry about place, teaching, motherhood, and travel.

Notable Links:

• National Portrait Gallery (art museum in Washington, DC)
• Lindsborg (Swedish-American town in Kansas)
• Long-distance hiking at home (Deviate episode)
• Guanajuato (city in Mexico)
• Zacatecas (state in Mexico)
• Meeting Sudanese refugees in Syria (dispatch by Rolf Potts)
• Hmong people (ethnic group in Southeast Asia)
• Salina (small city in Kansas)
• Kimchi (Korean side-dish)
• “Swamp Creatures,” by Kristin Van Tassel (essay)
• “Swallowing Fear in San Miguel de Allende” (essay)
• Hangul (Korean writing system)
• Punta del Diablo (beach village in Uruguay)
• Nairobi (capital city of Kenya)
• Rolf’s 2010 no-baggage round-the-world journey
• The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
• Chișinău (capital city of Moldova)
• Anna Gabur’s baking-themed Instagram
• Borscht (Eastern European soup)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

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