Book Review - Tripping

Ilya Gutlin, a traveler, takes us with him to the "university of backpacking," where he learns about one culture after another as he crosses cities, countries, and continents. In his memoir, Tripping: Diaries of a Travel Junkie, a must-read, the author illustrates his encounters so vividly that the readers feel his experiences are their own. I recommend this book to anyone who loves traveling, is curious about other cultures, and enjoys good storytelling. 

Reading & Writing

I'm home after a seven-week absence. I traveled to Indiana to teach four six-week ESL classes:
Structure in Use 3, Structure in Use 6, Reading 7, and Writing 7.  

In my writing class, I had seven students. I gave them a huge project on the first day: Each had to publish a book on Kindle. I explained that every assignment in the class would help their final project. By the last week of class, all seven students published a very short Kindle book. 

Here are their blurbs:

In Nourishing Experiences: Volunteering, the author takes her readers on a short trip across three different volunteering experiences and explains how volunteering offers us a different perspective of socio-relational dynamics and how it helps us to improve the lives of not only others but also ourselves by connecting with our inner child and exploring new sides of ourselves.

In Failures as Teachers, the author explains his causes of failure in various situations and how he learned from his mistakes. This book helps readers use their past experience of failure for the betterment of their future life.

In Expectations: Sadness and Anger, the author speaks out against the stresses of ordinary life, describing his own stressful situations, and provides advice on how to live a more stress-free life and how to know oneself better.

The book Understanding Others is about one Japanese girl’s experiences in intercultural environments. She shares her experiences, creating new perspectives for people who don’t know about other countries’ cultures.

In his memoir Adventures & Advantages, Pedro writes about the sequence of events that took him to six different cities in the last eight years and how living in each place helped him gain new perspectives and achieve self-improvement.

In The Power to Change, the author gives readers a clear understanding of their capacity, encourages them to believe in themselves, and leads them to find their own way to success.

The author uses her own experiences to explain, in a simple way and with clear instructions, the path to becoming a lawyer in the United States. How to Become a Lawyer… Again bridges the gap between practicing law in a foreign country and pursuing that practice in the United States.

When I first told them about the final project, these students, all international students from various countries learning English as a second language (ESL), didn't believe they could write a book. Some did better than others, of course, but they all did it. They are now all published authors, and I am so proud of them! Two of these students have shared with me that they will use their published Kindle book as a base and continue to develop their writing until it's ready to publish as a paperback.