travel

Why I’m having the best week ever

by Marian Schembari on November 13, 2012

For the past few months I’ve been tossing and turning over the idea of moving back to the States. As much as I’ve grown to love New Zealand, it’s not my home and I miss my friends, my family and the ability to travel the world without spending all my savings and all my annual leave. (New Zealand is very, very far from, um, everywhere.)

Finally, after months of freaking out over what I was going to do with my life, I decided to just make a decision and go. Without a plan, I figured I would road trip across America for a year until I found my ‘dream job in my dream city.’

The next day – decision made no matter what happened – I saw CouchSurfing had posted an opening for a Social Media Manager.

So I made this:

Two weeks later and I’m booked on a flight to San Francisco to join the CouchSurfing team.

Yup. Writing that was just as heart-poundingly exciting as I thought it was going to be.

I’m moving to San Francisco to work for my dream company doing my dream job in a city I’ve wanted to live in since I first visited at age 18.

My CouchSurfing Story: The Abridged Version

I fell in love with CouchSurfing a year ago, when I spent five weeks staying on couches, air mattresses and guest bedrooms up the east coast of Australia.

You guys were with me when I subsequently discovered the CS community in Auckland. When I made fast friends and did everything from hike the Tongariro crossing with 80 surfers to motorbiking with a speed-loving Indian doctor through the Coromandel.

The CS community changed my life and made me view my place in the world both as something bigger and smaller than I ever could have imagined.

If you’re unfamiliar with the breadth of CouchSurfing, here’s a brief quote from their mission statement that sums it up perfectly:

At Couchsurfing, we envision a world where everyone can explore and create meaningful connections with the people and places they encounter. Building meaningful connections across cultures enables us to respond to differences with curiosity, appreciation and respect. The appreciation of diversity spreads tolerance and creates a global community.

I couldn’t be more humbled, more inspired and more honored to be able to work for a company like CouchSurfing. And the fact that I get to move to San Francisco in the process? Icing on the cake of life, yo.

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The Best Thing I’ve Done in New Zealand

by Marian Schembari on October 17, 2012

I’ve lived in New Zealand two years and it wasn’t until this weekend that I did The Best Of All Things.

One of my besties here, Amanda, worked on a farm in Ponui (home of New Zealand’s only feral donkey) studying kiwis (the birds, y’all). This weekend she invited some friends to stay for the weekend. After only 24 hours on the island I decided I would never leave. (Spoiler Alert: I had to leave.)

We arrived in a rickety boat. Our cabin was run down, had no heat and a phone system that operated like Morse code. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

We barely had time to settle in that night before Amanda walked us through pastures, up a mountain and through the bush on a kiwi hunt.

As soon as we left the house we came across a little blue penguin. A penguin. IN THE WILD, GUYS. The penguin (christened Herbert) was running around in the pasture when a cow spotted him. The cow immediately lumbered up and the bird – terrified – just stood there. The cow would inch sloowwwly forward, Herbie would twitch, and the cow would jump back. This process lasted five minutes; a stand-off between the tiniest blue penguin and a giant, hulking cow.

As soon as we started walking again we came across a kiwi. IN THE WILD, GUYS. These things are hysterical. They’re fat, only come out at night, can barely see, make an absurd amount of noise and can’t fly. He looked like a very fat man with very short legs. I love that this is the national icon of New Zealand.

Eventually we found our way to a lookout: a small ridge looking over the island, the water, then Auckland in the background. We sat without stars or moonlight, staring over our city. Five foreigners, from three different countries, all strangers less than a year ago. Sometimes I forget just how lucky we are.

We then made our way to the base of a gully, which is where we found glow worms. GLOW WORMS. IN THE WILD, GUYS. These bad boys were so big and so bright we could see them even with our flashlights on. (You can pay $150 to see glow worms in Waitomo, or have A-Cakes show you around an island in the middle of nowhere New Zealand where they litter the trail like stars.)

I slept like a baby that night. I haven’t slept so long or in so late since before my course and it felt amazing.

After breakfast the next morning we met Buster, the chicken Amanda saved when it was just a chick.

Amanda gave us a tour of the wool shed, walking us through the process of shearing a sheep. We all got to stamp wool, making our feet covered in lanolin and (literal) shit. My toesies have never felt lovelier.

Amanda also showed us how to shear a sheep using our dear friend Helen as an example. I think Helen was secretly pleased.

We walked along the beach that afternoon, buried our feet in the sand, splashed in the water and played explorer on a docked boat. What could be better? Oh yeah, yoga with a view of the water. THAT HAPPENED.

We practiced our sun salutations on the beach while the sun came out from the clouds. The boys relaxed with a beer with the chickens. I filmed a top-secret video for CouchSurfing, read while it rained and walked up to the top of a nearby hill to look out over to the Coromandel.


And then this happened:

I don’t even have the words anymore.

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Can someone please tell me what America is like now?

by Marian Schembari on September 28, 2012

I haven’t been home in two years. Haven’t seen my brothers or my best friend. Haven’t had a real apple pie or tasted my grandmother’s cooking. Two years.

TWO.

EFFING.

YEARS.

Part of me doesn’t understand how that happened. I am not that person. But, here I am, and it’s been two and half years since I’ve lived in the United States. Two years since I’ve been home at all. I had no idea that when I came here it would be so permanent. But once you arrive in New Zealand, it’s like an entirely different planet. It’s my love/hate relationship with this country… The fact that it exists in its own little bubble separates it from the rest of the world. World news doesn’t matter. Movies, foods, fads, are all decades behind. But, of course, if it weren’t for this isolation it wouldn’t be the spectacular, charming, awe-inspiring country that it is.

Which is why I’m torn about going home. I won’t be here forever. And as my time winds down, my visa runs low and my homesickness gets ever greater, I wonder what being American really means.

When I first moved abroad I couldn’t wait to get out of the States, but I also couldn’t stand how much negativity we got as a people and as a country. While the rest of the world doesn’t hate us as much as Americans think they hate us (read this post), there definitely isn’t a sweeping positive feel-good vibe about the Great US of A.

How is it possible that I feel so homesick and so sick about returning home? Is the States even my home anymore? What is it even like?

The longer I live away, the more I realize how easy it is to hate on America. I’ve based my entire knowledge of Americans on four things in the past two years:

  1. Foreign news reports
  2. Popular culture that makes it’s way over here (movies, bad TV shows that happen to get international syndication, and celebrities famous for nothing i.e. Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber)
  3. American tourists
  4. Facebook status updates from people I haven’t seen since high school

These four things have made me think of Americans as:

  1. Violent
  2. Shallow materialists with an odd sense of humor
  3. Loud idiots with no sense of direction
  4. Obsessively crazed about politics and either very strongly conservative or very strongly liberal

How can I have possibly forgotten what Americans are actually like? How can I possibly have let non-Americans so fully influence my opinions of Americans? And why am I so suddenly terrified about a simple Christmas visit?

Because, if anything, Christmas is when there is nowhere else I’d rather be. I want the white lights and the snow and the New York City trees. I want the big family dinners and the eggnog and the Frank Sinatra Christmas carols. No way in hell I can do another BBQ Christmas with carols from the 1980s, Santas wearing Bermuda shorts and garish lights on palm trees.

But here I am, two years since leaving home, and completely unaware of where home actually.

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The Blogger’s Guilt No One Talks About

by Marian Schembari on September 25, 2012

I recently wrote a post for Brazen Careerist about how neglecting my blog helped me accomplish some big life goals. The content of this post is so important – so near and dear to my heart – that I need to re-mention it.

Go here to read the full post. In it, I discuss what prompted a two month hiatus on this site, despite having worked so hard to get it to a certain point, as well as the life goals I’ve accomplished because I haven’t had to worry about posting every day.

What I don’t talk about is the guilt.

I’m at work by 8am every day and stay until 5 or 6. I rush home, then hop into class, where I stay until 8 or 9pm. I rush home again, then frantically shower and make dinner. Which is a bloody mission because I’ve had a slew of health problems recently, meaning my diet is severely limited and every meal is this major stress. Then it’s 10pm and if I want any sort of sanity I need five fucking seconds to myself before collapsing into – thankfully – a dreamless sleep.

But every day I want to blog. There is so much in my brain you have no idea. I love the online community and I love everything writing has opened up for me. So I wanted to keep it going. But with finally getting my yoga teaching certification (squeal!), work, couchsurfing and my health, there was never enough time for it.

So I let it go. But I never did it officially. I never gave myself permission to let it go, even for a while. Every day I wanted to be the kind of person who could fit in a post during her lunch break or whip something up first thing in the morning before work.

But I see so many other bloggers who just had babies sharing updates the day after they gave birth. And apparently if you sleep at night you’re doing it wrong because apparently to be successful you can’t ever rest because if you’re not working you have to be working on a side project.

Maybe I’ve been in New Zealand too long, but the thought of working when I get home from work AND teaching makes me want to kill myself. I want a life. I love blogging, but I love going out into the world more. I love taking epic walks on the beach in the Coromandel or flying to Australia for the weekend to visit my childhood best friend.

When I DO get time to myself I love going home and curling up in bed with a fantastic book more than I love reviewing that book. (And on that note, I really do owe you a dozen book reviews.)

My point isn’t that I want to abandon this site. I couldn’t. What I do want is an understanding of how people do it! Is it even possible?

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How Nicaraguan Tour Guides Can Shape Your Social Media Strategy

by Marian Schembari on June 21, 2012

Alexis Grant is an entrepreneurial writer, digital strategist and author of How to Create a Freakin’ Fabulous Social Media Strategy. She also offers a free newsletter.

A few months ago I traveled to Nicaragua and visited Ometepe Island, which holds not one but TWO volcanoes.

While wandering Ometepe’s main port town, I noticed most of the tour offices displayed a similar sign, one that offered free information.

The tour guides in this town were SMART. They wanted tourists to hire them for tours, wanted to guide visitors on a morning volcano hike or take them for a horse ride along the beach. They wanted us to PAY for their services. But to get tourists to bite on that sale, they first offered something free, something that was incredibly helpful: information about the island.

This is exactly the lead you should follow when it comes to your social media strategy, whether you’re growing an online presence for your company, a client or yourself.

Because yes, you want your community to buy something you offer or participate in your events or use your services or whatever goal you want to reach. But before you ask people to shell out money or time or effort, you’ve got to give them something for free.

What can you give them?

Free information.

And let’s take this a step further, because your community doesn’t just want free information. Like tourists on Ometepe Island in Nicaragua, they want free, HELPFUL information.

Why offering free information should be the crux of your social media efforts

Offering free information benefits you in two BIG ways:

1. It demonstrates your expertise, so people know you’re an expert in your field

2. It increases your likeability factor — because who doesn’t like someone who’s helpful?

Both of these benefits lead down one fabulous road: toward you getting hired. Or selling your products. Or landing you customers. More than anything else, offering free information will help you reach your goals.

Because once potential clients learn how knowledgeable you are, they’ll want to work with you. And if they see how NICE and HELPFUL you are, they’ll LIKE you, which is yet another reason they’ll want your services.

Let’s explore a bit more how this works. As an example, we’ll look at blogging.

How smart bloggers use free information

Bloggers offer a good amount of information for free, with the hopes that some of their readers will want to go beyond that free information and buy whatever they have to offer.

My own blog falls into this category. I blog at least three times a week about careers, writing and social media. People come to my blog to read for free. Indeed, I could put a banner at the top of my site that reads, FREE INFORMATION! (Don’t worry, I won’t actually do that.) You can come to my blog again and again, and you’ll always be able to learn something for free.

Then, if you really like what you see, there’s something ELSE you can get for free: my newsletter. So I actually offer several forms of free information.

And yet, some of the people who land on my blog want more than what’s free. Some readers step beyond that free threshold, purchasing one or more of my guides or courses.

See how this benefits both me AND my community? I use free information on my blog to prove that I know what I’m talking about. And I give you a little taste of the extra awesomesauce you’ll get if you choose to pay.

Oh, but we’re not done yet. There’s yet ANOTHER benefit of providing free information: it increases the satisfaction rate of people who do buy, because buyers have a good sense of what they’re going to get. They’re familiar with my style when they press “buy,” which means their expectations are where they should be and they’re more likely to be satisfied – and hopefully inspired – by my product.

In more ways than one, offering free information sets me up for success.

So how can you set yourself or your company or your client up for success by giving information away? What expertise can you share that will help your community?

How can you follow the lead of those brilliant Nicaraguan tour guides? What free information can you offer?

Alexis Grant is an entrepreneurial writer, digital strategist and author of How to Create a Freakin’ Fabulous Social Media Strategy. She also offers a free newsletter.

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