Hello, Friend—

Matemwe, Zanzibar

Human Ingredients is a collection of digital stories and resources for those who seek meaningful intercultural experiences. 

But first— what does it mean to have an intercultural experience?

Unless you’ve recently emerged from hermit-hood (which if you have, thanks for visiting this page), you’ve probably noticed how many different people you come across every day. Technology and globalization have created spaces where people and content from all around the world intersect. Every time you interact with or consume content from somebody who has significantly different life experiences than you do, you are having an intercultural experience.

What makes an experience meaningful, however, is often left up to the individual. Beyond classic books and Netflix series, many people have a desire to go out into the world looking for their very own intercultural experience. For some, it’s a spontaneous pub crawl with new hostel mates during a summer backpacking trip. For others, it’s joining an organized tour about famous historic sites and communities. As long as conducted in ethical and respectful ways, these experiences are perfectly valid and exciting ways to travel.

But for some people, having a meaningful intercultural experience is more than just watching a documentary or spending a few weeks on holiday. It means living and interacting with a local community for an extended period of time, adjusting to different routines, and trying to speak a language for which there are few study materials. It means learning to question and reflect when faced with a behavior that may seem normal to everyone else, but conflicts with some of your most deeply-held values. And it means knowing how to engage in difficult conversations when these cultural breakdowns occur, as well as learning how and when to keep your silence.

The goal of Human Ingredients is to help travelers seeking to deepen their experiences abroad by offering tools, resources, and insights:

Learning Languages   

Because people are the ones who create and sustain culture, language learning is paramount to getting to know them and better understanding them. Although this blog talks about major world languages (e.g. Chinese, French), its focus is on languages which are rarely taught in the classroom, as well as how to learn any language on your own.

Sustaining an intercultural experience

Finding ways to travel long-term can be challenging in many ways, so this blog discusses the practical means for starting, sustaining, and finishing your journey. 

Challenges and Reflections of Intercultural Living

No matter how flexible you think you are, culture shock and homesickness are real. Although I can only speak for my own experiences and what’s worked for myself and many others, part of learning how to overcome culture shock is creating solutions that work for you in your contexts. I hope what I share here on the blog can help you think through these solutions for yourself.

General knowledge-building and self-development

Intercultural learning never ends and involves literally everything—from pop culture to high performance art to data science, history, and sports. Writing about new experiences in different fields is a way of increasing the range of people we can connect with.

WHERE I’VE TRAVELED

Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

-Hafez

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