Maura: Today we are going to do a Chatterbox episode, and that is where we chat about all different kinds of topics. In our Chatterbox episodes we also interview people, and that is what I’m going to do today. So today I’m going to interview my sister Erin. She is visiting so I thought “Why not interview her?” She’s actually been to so many countries and travelled around and just visited so many places. She can share some of her insights with us today. Since she’s my sister, her story starts off quite like mine. She was born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario, in Canada, and she still lives there. So Erin, why don’t you tell us what you’re doing in Kitchener right now?
Erin: I work at a local university as a project manager for health-based research.
Maura: OK. Cool. And how do you like that?
Erin: It’s good. I went to school for public health so it’s related to my interests and my education.
Maura: So I started off by saying how much you’ve travelled. Now I want to ask you a tough question. Can you name every country that you’ve visited?
Erin: Let’s see. I think I can. Well I’ve lived in Canada. I’ve been to the United States. I’ve visited Belize, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Grenada, Antigua, Ireland, Uganda, Tanzania, Fiji, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. Did I say Thailand? Maura: I don’t know.
Erin: Oh, I just remembered another country. I’ve been to Costa Rica.
Maura: That’s a lot. I can see that you kind of went around the world and it was a map in your head.
Erin: Yes it was.
Maura: I guess that’s the only way to really remember them.
Erin: Yes. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked that question. The other way I could probably think about it is the timeline. So the first country I went to, going through to the last country I’ve visited.
Maura: OK. So what was the first country that you visited?
Erin: So the first country I’ve been to was probably the United States.
Maura: Yeah. I think most Canadians, especially the ones who live near the border, have been to the United States at some point. And it’s not too different from Canada. The culture’s very similar and of course we can still speak English everywhere. But what’s the first country that you went to where it was actually quite different from Canada?
Erin: I would say that would be Costa Rica. The type of trip I went on was exploring the country and it was a volunteer and travel experience. So we stayed up in the mountains and we did some work on landscaping and we were working with animals and then we actually travelled around a little bit more. And that was a group trip.