Hi, I’m Jade, a 25-year-old traveler and culture enthusiast from a small town in Calabria, southern Italy.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been curious about what existed beyond the little world I grew up in. While a lot of people around me seemed perfectly happy staying close to home, I was always dreaming about somewhere else: different countries, different languages, different ways of living. I never wanted to just visit places, I wanted to understand what it actually felt like to live in them.
At 16, I got my first chance to do exactly that.
I won a national scholarship with AFS Intercultura and moved to Guangzhou, China, for a year. I lived with a Chinese family, attended a local high school, learned the language, and suddenly found myself navigating a world completely different from everything I knew.
It wasn’t always easy. Leaving home that young, adapting to a completely different culture, and eventually coming back as a slightly different version of myself came with its own challenges. But that year opened my mind in a way nothing else had before. It made me realize just how much there was to experience beyond the place where I grew up, and once I discovered that, it was pretty hard to go back.
After finishing high school in Italy, I returned to China to pursue my Bachelor’s degree. Then COVID happened, life took another unexpected turn, and I found myself back in Europe. Eventually, I moved to Switzerland, started working, continued my degree online, and began building a new life here.
In 2023, I returned to China one more time to finish my degree and graduate. I also used every opportunity I could to travel around the country, rediscover places I loved, explore new ones, and reconnect with a culture that had already become such an important part of my life.
Today, Switzerland is my home base. It’s where I’ve discovered a completely different side of myself, including a love for mountains, and being in nature that I honestly never knew I had. But the curiosity that made 16-year-old me get on a plane to China is still very much there.
I still love discovering places that challenge my perspective, learning about how people live, getting lost in cultures different from my own, and coming home with stories that change the way I see the world. For me, travel has never been just about seeing beautiful places. It’s one of the best forms of education I’ve ever had.
And that’s what this blog is about.
It’s my little corner of the internet where I share the places I’ve been, the cultures that fascinate me, the realities behind living abroad, and all the things I’ve learned along the way: from China and Switzerland to wherever I end up next.
If any of my stories make you curious about somewhere new, help you see a place differently, or give you that little push to step outside your comfort zone, then this blog has done exactly what I hoped it would.
Welcome – I’m happy you’re here.
