Sandra Stevens-Theizen:  

I don't know how I can capture the passing of some 50 years in a few words, but let me just give a summary of some major events... I have been living in Washington State since 1984, when I came back to the States after living in Holland for the previous 3 years. It was definitely an interesting experience being an American in a place that has such a long history compared to the United States. You may ask how I ended up living so far from home... I guess it began years before when I was in college and spent a couple of summers traveling around Europe. Something about removing myself from the life and culture that I knew too well and replacing it with new people, places and cultures really attracted me to traveling abroad. After I graduated from San Jose State, there was high unemployment in the country, so chances of getting a job using my diploma (Sociology/ Psychology) was out of the question. I ended up in Tahoe, working in the casinos and skiing every winter as a result. Even though life in Tahoe was fun, I got bored with it after some years and realized that I had to move away. But where? The prospects of the other options that I had in my life at that time were even more boring, or so it seemed. Then I found a boyfriend who was a world traveler, and we started making plans to hitchhike to South America together, which was what we did. In 1975, we hitched across the United States, then to Central America where his parents were retired in San Jose, Costa Rica. We then flew to Colombia and continued hitching through the Amazon and down to Salvador da Bahia in Brazil, where some friends of his were living. We lived there together for a year, but then we broke up. He went home, and I decided to stay. I stayed in South America for 5 years all together, traveling, meeting people, learning Spanish and Portuguese, teaching English to earn money, and having an assortment of adventures that will remain with me until the day I die. I traveled from the Amazon in the northern part of the continent all the way down...Expand for more