Hello! I'm Isaac now--a 22 year-old undergraduate at Yale majoring in political science. Since 2014 I have transitioned from female to male and, broadly speaking, now identify as transgender. My life has changed drastically since 2014 in so many different ways--to articulate all of them in this one blog post would be very difficult. But for one, I've visited Jordan a lot, as my Mom works at the embassy there. It was pretty tough going to Amman as transgender this past January, but so it goes.
In any event I was just watching Al Jazeera on my dorm room TV and thought about how I should channel my love for travel through writing again. This past year--full of a social transition from female to male--has been really grueling and I feel like I deserve some mental-treat-yourself time.
For New Year's, my twin sister Helen and I have decided to go to Cartagena, Colombia. Cartagena is an old colonial city on the Caribbean coast with plenty of historical treasures and white sand beaches to frequent. We're really lucky and will actually be flying to Colombia from Wyoming, where we'll spend one week skiing in Jackson Hole. It'll feel refreshing to be a cosmopolitan wanderer again with no school or medical appointments or activist endeavors to think about. For the first time abroad I'll hopefully just feel like a relaxed guy.
Right now Helen and I are focused on saving up money, finalizing hostel reservations, buying flight tickets, getting vaccinations, and maybe learning some rudimentary Spanish. We'll operate on a shoestring budget but still find time to explore small gems outside of the city, such as an eco-friendly island and volcano with mud baths.
I promise to make my writing accessible but a little higher quality than in this post--it always feels fulfilling to craft sentences that are not too fantastical in their fiction yet not too stringent in their fact. People say that Cartagena is a city of magical realism, so that can hopefully infuse my paragraphs with just enough splendid touch to make historical trivialities stand out. I look forward to describing my adventures with Helen, my encounters with other travelers, and my observations of this enticing Latin American country.
