Anyone who knows me, knows that I adore exploring new places.  Whether it’s traveling, working, studying, or simply wandering, it’s one of my favorite things.  I love Chicago, love living here (except for January), but as I consider my next professional moves, I am revisiting some of my favorites.  Almost every place I’ve been, I’ve spent some time thinking of what it would be like to live and work there.

I realize how fortunate I am.  By luck of personality, opportunity, and education, I’ve been able to do a fair amount of traveling and working abroad in my life so far.  Some of it was for work, and some of it was for fun, and some was a bit of both.  A few times I set out with friends, but mostly I went alone, meeting new friends along the way.  Sleeping on trains,  in hostels, and, once, outside on a lounge chair on the deck of an overnight ferry,  while living for days on a loaf of bread and some cheese remains one of my favorite experiences.

In my post Peace Corps travels, I wound my way through The Baltics (as this was in 1998, there were some incredible grass-roots memorials to the resistance movement that brought about the end of the Soviet occupation) and Scandanavia (Bergen is amazingly gorgeous, and I loved exploring Helsinki) ending up on the Isle of Skye just as the heather bloomed.  I went from two years of desert to this amazing profusion of purple flowers rising up against the stunning beauty of the Hebrides.  I ended up spending months there, when I’d originally planned on staying a few days.  I absolutely fell in love with Scotland, the people, the history, the culture.  I would move back to Scotland in a heartbeat.

In college, I spent a semester abroad at Flinders University in Adelaide.  Australia in general remains one of my favorite countries I’ve ever visited, and it remains the only place I’ve traveled that I cried at having to leave.  In addition to visiting the cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, I was determined to see as much of the country as I could.  I spent a week riding horseback through Tasmania,  an adventure which remains one of my favorite experiences ever.   I took a train to Alice Springs, scared the heck out of myself coming way too close to crocodiles in Darwin, visited The Pinnacles outside of Perth.  When I found myself alone on Thanksgiving in Cairns, (during box jellyfish season, which was an error in planning on my part), an amazing restaurant owner threw an impromptu party and fed me an incredible seafood dinner.  I flew over to New Zealand to meet up with my mom for spring break, and had an absolutely magical trip  through the South Island.

So many other amazing places I’ve worked and visited, from relaxing in Portugal while on R&R from my work with MSF in Sudan, to geeking out about all things William Butler Yeats in Sligo, to the scariest helicopter ride of my life in Sierra Leone.  From meeting up with my mom in Thailand on my R&R from MSF in China, to touring through the USA with the  MSF Access to Essential Medicines EXPO.  I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have met so many wonderful people in incredible places around the world.

My question today is:  if you could move anywhere in the world to live and work, where would you choose, and why?