Long before Richard Engel became NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent and won the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, he was a special education student at New York’s Riverdale Country School struggling with dyslexia.

He once attacked one of his teachers by hitting her in the head with a xylophone. "The more I was coddled and made to feel like a person with a defect, the more angry I'd feel," he said.

I'm all for supporting good things, as our Wandering Educators know! And do I have a good one today - it's a smartphone app that is all about sharing travel experiences (read our tagline! We love sharing travel experiences!). It's currently in development, and I'm impressed. Here's why... it was created by a 15 year-old - and we know that millenials know what they are doing online.

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Last week I caught up with a former high school student who happened to be in San Diego, California for a visit. Now a twenty-something graduate assistant and student finding her way in the world, we spent the day discussing travel wishes, living in new cities, dreams, opportunities, and how learning should be fun.

Sugar Land, 20 miles southwest of Houston, is poised to receive more than 10,000 food and wine lovers this week. The 12th Annual Sugar Land Wine & Food Affair kicks off Wednesday, April 8 and runs through Sunday, April 12.

Premium wines, only 400 bottles shy of 3,000, will be swirled, savored, and paired with delicious samplings of haute cuisine prepared by nearly 100 Texas, national, and international celebrity chefs representing some of the region’s best restaurants.

 

Are you planning an extraordinary vacation – wanting something different from the norm - out of this world family holidays? Short of jetting off into space, you’ve got some research ahead of you. But let me suggest something that will be remembered forever, marked down in family lore, and be magical, to boot – stay in a castle.

Yes. A castle. How cool is that?!

Wallace Stegner wrote a vivid novel with an equally compelling title: Angle of Repose. That title came to mind when I visited historic Holman Ranch, the 400-acre property in Carmel Valley, California. The ranch grounds themselves are in a lovely little valley of their own, sitting in an agreeable angle of repose among the oak-studded hills.

Have you ever wanted to visit every single country in the world? Get ready to be inspired by this new book by Albert Podell, then. We recently received a review copy of Around The World in Fifty Years: My Adventure to Every Country on Earth (thank you!), and I was more than happy to dig in.