The Beginning of My Travels & the Three Secrets of How I Made it All Happen

In the past ten years, basically since I’ve completed my A-levels in 2009, I have literally spent more time overseas than at home in Germany. Apart from my student exchange in the US when I was 15, I spent my whole childhood in Germany, except for maybe an occasional vacation with my family. This blog will give you insights on how my travels and stays abroad began and I will show you the three secrets of how I made it all happen.

How did it all start?

After my A-levels, I had to decide at some point what I wanted to do with my life. I went to a career fair and ended up speaking to a representative of a newly-established volunteer program which was fully funded by the German government. Since it was their second year of implementation, chances of getting accepted were said to be pretty good. I really wasn’t ready to decide on a career and to continue my studies right away. Also, one of the things I had wanted was to learn how to speak Spanish. I figured, this would be the perfect opportunity to “kill some time”, learn something new and have some fun, too.

In my application documents, I had to make a choice of three countries and my (very random) choices were Ecuador, Mexico and Costa Rica. Don’t ask me why…. Now how do I pick my first choice?

Well, I looked at the map and thought to myself “Costa Rica sounds like paradise and lots of coconut trees, it is one of the smallest Spanish-speaking countries which borders two oceans… This means my chances of being placed somewhere close to the beach is the highest in COSTA RICA!” – That’s how I picked my first choice, and… I got accepted!

The beginning of many more stays overseas – Little Miss Rose in a Costa Rican drug-rehab!

I was placed in a drug-rehab for addicted men (!) in a low-income district in San Jose (= the ghetto), and with ZERO knowledge of Spanish my tasks now included teaching English to a bunch of druggies. Great …. When I asked the responsible person at my host organization why they decided to put ME into THIS project, the answer I got was: “We saw that you are a boxer, so we figured you would be able to defend yourself in the ghetto and you could handle drug-addicts…”.

The things that I experienced working in this rehab is a whole other story and requires another blog. This year was so far the most influential and impactful of my life. Every day I was so close to illegal activities, robbery, assault, murder, people coming straight from jail, homeless people and drug-abuse – and little Miss Rose with close-to-zero Spanish-skills in the middle of it all. If there’s one thing I surely learned, it was how to smell bs from far and to be empathic.

In Costa Rica is where my passion for exploration, cross-cultural exchange and overseas adventures started…

After coming back from Costa Rica, I started a Bachelor degree in Multilingual Communication because I enjoyed learning languages and studying cultures, and the course program included probably 90% of classes in one of these two areas.

During my Bachelor studies, I did internships in Panama and Curaçao (Netherlands Antilles). Then, after finishing my Bachelor, I went to Dominican Republic and Trinidad & Tobago for another two internships.

Right after these, I started a Master degree in Development Management in Cape Town (South Africa). This program had interested me very much as it was to provide me with exactly those skills I needed for the career I wanted to get into: Development Cooperation… primarily sparked by my experiences in Costa Rica.

To be quite frank, I was not crazy about going to Cape Town, or going to Africa in general. I did it simply because I thought it would broaden my Latin America and Caribbean-focused portfolio and would hence offer me some more professional opportunities at a later stage.

During this program I had to pick a topic for my Master thesis and I decided to do my research in the Dominican Republic because the contacts I had through my prior internship were VERY cooperative in helping me shape my research topic, and 2) the DR ist just THE place to be. I had to go abroad for another few months to collect my data.

And this is how I continuously found ways to explore new corners of the world bit by bit.

But when you frequently roam the world and also end up staying in really cool places for some time like I did, people always tend to wonder: “How does (s)he do it???? And how does (s)he pay for this all????”

No, I don’t have rich parents who finance it all for me. My strategy was easy, yet it required A LOT of dedication. These are things I usually only share with individuals who specifically ask me about it. However, I decided to start my Youtube-channel so I could share the fun and crazy stories of my travel adventures and stays abroad with the world. I figured a good way to introduce my viewers to me and my background would be through a video about how I did it all ….

So here it is: the very first video of Miss Rose’s Travel Diaries on my Youtube-channel: “The Three Secrets to My Travels (Part 1)”

And continue with Part 2:

If you are a student and now decide you want to give it a go yourself, I am happy to share my knowledge with you and give you tips on how to succeed at making your dream of going abroad a reality.

Simply drop me a comment or send me a message and I will get back to you within due time!

If you’ve become curious about my insanely crazy and funny travel stories, subscribe to my Youtube-channel and follow all my adventures.