Greetings!

Welcome to my Travel Blog Hub (or as I like to call it, my ”Trablub”).  This is an attempt to synthesize (using an incredible amount of synergy) all of the traveling and documenting that I’ve done over the years.

Like most people, visiting a new place has always been a source of joy for me.  It challenges, educates, inspires and humbles.  As Mark Twain brilliantly stated, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”  It has the power to transform a person but also simultaneously affirm that we are all human with similar goals, needs and motivations (despite the variety of manifestations).

I feel incredibly lucky and thankful that I’ve not only been able to see and do all that I have, but also have had the means to document and share it all.  The ability to capture and bear witness to the beauty in the world is a true privilege that I don’t take for granted.

Here are some quick links to my work:

Australia/New Zealand Blog

Peace Corps Blog

Semester at Sea Blog

Semester at Sea Videos

Other Travel Videos

Misc. Videos: WTI Application Video, Picture a Day, Legos 1 & 2

And Here’s My Story:

My first big international adventure happened between my Sophomore and Junior years of college.  My friend Eric and I knocked out 9 European countries in two and a half months.  We met up with a variety of friends from back home, we were visited by both of our mothers (His in Nice, France. Mine in Ghent, Belgium) and were able to see and experience an incredible amount.

Some highlights:

  • Riding scooters from Cannes to Monaco along the French Riviera
  • Being accused of being a spy in Bern, Switzerland
  • Watching fireworks go off behind the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day
  • Catching Simon & Garfunkel (I didn’t film that) perform in Munich, Germany at the 1972 Olympic Stadium
  • Cuttin’ a rug at a 5-Story Dance club in Prague
  • Strolling through Park Güell
  • Being housed, fed and taken out to an incredible all-night festival in Zürich, Switzerland by Swiss students we met on a train.
  • Seeing the incredible Ghent Altarpiece (which I had just studied about in an Art History class)
  • Taking the train everywhere on our Eurail Pass (my favorite was through the Swiss Alps)

This being my first big trip, I didn’t document as much as I should have.  I took a minimal amount of photographs, didn’t keep a blog, and only emailed with a few people.  I kept a pretty serious journal, however, which I read from time to time to reflect on that summer.

When I do reflect on that summer I am always surprised by two things: 1)  How lucky I was to see and do so much and 2) that I survived.

After that summer, it was official: I had caught the travel bug.  I knew I had to get back out there.  I found a cheap ticket a few months later and went back to Paris with 3 other friends to visit Eric who was studying abroad there.  We were packed into a tiny Parisian apartment, probably drank more wine than water (it was cheaper), visited Jim Morrison’s grave and got a rubbing, and biked all over the City of Love.  I made a short movie about it, but somehow lost it over the years (along with the Jim Morrison rubbing!).

While at school that year I ended up working three jobs in order to save up enough money to backpack through Australia & New Zealand the following summer.  (Luckily my step-father is a pilot so I was able to fly stand-by at a reduced rate-although there are drawbacks to this mode of transportation).

I arrived in Sydney with a laughably small budget, my backpack and a return ticket to the US that left in two months.  I wasn’t prepared in the least but that made it more of an adventure.

I was a little better about documenting that summer (I kept a blog but still no digital camera).  Over my two months I came to really enjoy updating the blog and I feel that I improved as a travel writer that summer.  Here are some of the highlights from that trip:

An incredible summer, to say the least, and I was really happy that I did it.  Traveling alone had its perks (I was forced to make friends at every stop) but also its drawbacks (it could get really lonely at times).

Senior year of college!  It was time to make some decisions!  What was I going to do after I graduated?  I had studied Psychology with a focus in Human Development and had long term aspirations of being a child or school psychologist.  But I wasn’t ready for graduate school yet.

Through college I had volunteered a lot, traveled and done a good amount of service work.  I looked into ways that I could possibly synthesize the three for some sort of post-grad option.  I looked around quite a bit and the Peace Corps ended up making the most sense.

I applied, went through the long drawn out application process (Interviews!  Health screenings! More interviews!  Phone Calls!  Emails!  References!  Arm wrestling tournaments!) until finally I got the green light:

“Dear Casey Hudetz,

We are happy to report you will be a part of the Apiculture program in Paraguay!

Love,

The Peace Corps”

“Great!”  I thought.  I went straight to a dictionary (Apiculture=Bee Keeping).  “What the?”  And then straight to an atlas (Paraguay is in between Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia). “Land locked!”

I was ecstatic.  What an unexpected placement!  It temporarily put my post-grad anxieties to rest.

My senior year Spring Break came and my friends and I decided to spend it in San Diego.  Below is one of my first attempts at a travel video.  It was a lot of fun to film, edit and show to friends and I think they really enjoyed it too.

From there I graduated, spent a summer preparing for the Peace Corps (practicing Spanish, running/biking, working on a farmer’s market, trying to get stung whenever I saw a bee).  It was time.

Knowing that communication was going to be a lot harder, I wanted to keep a pretty in depth blog and post photos.  Which I did.  Here are some of the highlights:

  • Meeting all of the amazing people in my program.
  • Living with my host family and having my host brother teach me Spanish at dinner every night.
  • An intense first couple of weeks of training.
  • Week 4: Received a compliment in Guaraní! My Spanish improved!  My bee keeping was harrowing!
  • Lots of pictures on this post.  Plus:  Bee Stings!  Struggling with Guaraní!  Visiting a cemetery on the “Día de los Santos”!
  • A painful entry: The danger of Mango trees!  The worst bee attack to date!
  • Encountering the mythical Pombero!  Visiting my future site and the hilarity that was my host family!
  • Swearing In and Training recap!

Now one of the most unexpected and painful experiences of my life happened after this.  Right as I went to my incredible community (on the border of Argentina & Paraguay) I became ill and had to be sent home.  Man!

I was devastated.  All of my work for nothing.  I had no plan B.  Nothing else to do.  With the rug pulled so violently out from under me, I struggled greatly to stand on my own two feet.

I had the love and support of friends and family which helped me regain some balance that year, but it still stands as one of the hardest years of my life.  I managed an organic farm in Michigan for a growing season before returning to Chicago where I accepted a job as a Middle School Multimedia and Technology instructor (Computer Teacher).

Since then, things have turned around once again.  I have loved working in a school setting and have taken full advantage of what it has to offer (such as having the summers off).


The summer between my first and second year working there I decided that I wanted to get back out into the world.  Return to what I had loved so much only a year earlier.  I decided to apply for a position leading a service trip for Putney Student Travel.  I was accepted and spent a month in charge of 18 high school students in Costa Rica.

It was incredible.  We did service work for 5 days a week in a small community and then on the weekends we would explore the country.  We stayed on an organic farm in the mountains, spent a weekend at a beach resort, went whitewater rafting (I fell off at the first rapid-I will not be posting those photos) and had an incredible time.  Throughout the course of the month I had to play a lot of roles: father, brother, friend, confidant, medic, soccer player, translator, slave-driver (“Go disassemble that retention wall!”), exterminator (I could not believe the size and variety of bugs that somehow crept into students’ sleeping bags) and chauffeur (At one point, I actually had to bribe a Costa Rican police officer to make sure that I got a sick student to the airport on time.  But that’s a story for another time).   The students were all fantastic, the sights and sounds were beautiful and the experience was priceless.  I kept a blog with the other leader so that the parents could see what the kids were up to (although it is pretty basic).  I made a lot of great friends that summer, both with the students and with people in the community, which made it really hard to say good bye.

After the students left, I had two friends meet me to explore for another 10 days.  Below is a video I made of our time together:

After Costa Rica, I returned to my job in Chicago.  Traveling that summer had reinvigorated me and also reminded me that there was still a lot of exploring I had yet to do.  The aftermath of the Peace Corps had somehow made me temporarily forget my love of international travel.

So I decided that I was going to seek out other similarly exciting work for the next summer.  Below is a quick look at my second year of teaching:

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My second year went incredibly well.  Classes were fun.  Developing curriculum was a challenge but exciting.  I also made time for myself.  I traveled to Portland, played guitar in a Bluegrass band (my brother drew the picture below), went to my sister’s graduation in Connecticut,  trained for and completed my second triathlon with my brother, danced the Jai-Ho with fellow teachers (that’s me in the front row), and returned to San Diego with that same group of friends from my senior year.

All of that took place before the best summer of my life.  Like I said before, I had wanted to find some sort of exciting international job for the next year.  I applied to a variety of places and feel very lucky to have been accepted by a few.  The best offer, however, came from the incredible organization Semester at Sea.

I was hired to be the Information Technology (IT) Director for the ship.  I couldn’t believe it.  I would be working aboard a floating university that would deliver me to 8 different countries throughout the Mediterranean.  I had struck gold.

Now, seeing as I had kept a few blogs before, had a good handle on video editing and had a blossoming interest in photography, I knew that I wanted to document this summer from all angles.  After each port visit, I would lock myself in my room until I had produced a written entry for the country as well as a complementary video.  It was my duty (or perhaps a hobby taken a bit too far).  Looking back, I am so glad I did it and I’m sure the videos will become more and more valuable with each coming year.

Here are some of my blog highlights:

Our first stop in Cádiz, Spain

An incredible 5 days in Italy (with a corresponding video below)

Biking, Jet Skiing, Cliff Jumping and exploring breathtaking Croatia (with video below)

An attempt at creatively describing my time in Greece (with the help of Sherlock Holmes) and my video below:

My favorite stop of the whole summer (and possibly my life) Istanbul, Turkey (My friend Eric [travel partner in Europe] met me there along with two others])

And I believe that this video (which tied for first place on the shipboard film festival) may be my best yet:

Another favorite video of mine from my time in Bulgaria:

A Two-Part Blog entry from Egypt.  Both fiction, but with some truth sprinkled in there.  Approved Blog Entry and Explanation (and, of course, my Egypt video is below)

After Egypt, my friend Andrew (he’s one that visited me in Costa Rica) met me in Morocco.  He is a talented writer so I asked him to write about our time traveling from Casablanca to Marrakesh.

Since I didn’t have to write that entry, I instead tried my hand at producing a podcast (and made another movie)

Finally, I made a Picture a Day movie for a condensed look at my summer:

So those are all of my blog entries and videos from my time with Semester at Sea. However I did produce a few more items I’d like to share.

While on the ship, I helped get a Film Festival off the ground (I taught classes on video editing and tried to spread the word and encourage submissions).  I not only entered my Istanbul video, but also helped write, edit and produce a  “Kid Noir” detective movie with a friend and some of the children on the ship.  It got second place.  Here is what we did:

;

Also, prior to the voyage I had read about silent discos and wanted to try to produce one on the ship.  So on the last night of the summer about 70+ people turned up with their iPods and pressed play at the same time to one long dance party I had produced with a friend.  It was so much fun.  Click here to listen.

And see a Blair Witch-like video below to see how it looked to everyone else (I think the girl at 1:32 pretty much sums up the outsiders’ reaction):

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Here’s a short video of me getting schooled by an Ice Cream man in Istanbul, performing at a talent show, and a song written about me.

Semester at Sea also had it’s own official videographer and Youtube channel Below is one of the films they posted from the summer.  I wanted to share this video below for a few reasons:

a)  It showcases the hard work of my friend, the incredibly talented videographer for the voyage Tiffany Rogers

b)  It gives a little peak into what the summer was like

and

c)  I’m in it!  (4:52)

Enjoy:

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After returning to my school this fall, I knew I wanted to somehow talk about all that I had done while abroad.  In an attempt to educate, inspire and entertain my school, I put together a presentation and also posted an explanation and recording of it here.

So!  That was my summer!  Quite an adventure (to say the least).  Since I’ve been home this fall I have continued to document my travels.  When one of my friends from the summer came to visit me, I took it as an opportunity to learn the editing software Final Cut Pro.  Below is my first video produced in that fashion (I kind of went a bit overboard with the effects):

This fall, I also made the goal of running a “Destination Half Marathon.”  What I meant by that was that I wanted to train for a race, but also use it as an excuse to visit a different part of the country that I’d never been to.  I decided on Austin, TX.  I followed a training plan, got in touch with a few friends that lived in Austin and everything else fell into place.  Here’s what I did:

So far this school year I have worked with the 7th grade science class to try to get a Podcasting Unit off the ground. Also, I have been an assistant coach for a Lego Robotics team for the past few years.  Although they’re not technically “travel videos”, they are still a lot of fun to produce.  Here are two movies I made for this season.

The Regional Tournament:

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And the State Tournament:

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Two more videos.  I just recently applied to the World Traveler Intern position for 2010 through STA.  Here’s my application video.  I’m happy with how it turned out and feel very confident that if I was chosen, I could do this job incredibly well. The interns’ responsibilities are a) traveling b) keeping blogs c) taking photos and d) making movies. So essentially, it’s what I’ve been doing as a hobby for the last 5 years. I’ll let you know how it turns out:

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Most recently, I flew out to see Eric (although it took me two days due to standby tickets on Valentine’s weekend!).  We took a bunch of photos and I mashed them all up together.  Here’s what happened:

One more video. In February of 2010, a group of my friends and I all piled into a bus and drove to Iowa to visit a very cool man. This is the video I made from our weekend spent together (I produced another iPod Dance Party that was a lot of fun too).

  

Okay. One more video. In February of 2010, a group of friends and I participated in the Chiditarod. This event is part shopping cart race, part Halloween, part charity event and part pub crawl. Our theme was New Orleans’ funeral. Here’s a short video of our race. It was the perfect day:

Here are some photos from a recent trip to NYC (it was my first time there):

A short video from my time in NYC:

My second visit to San Diego for the year! I had a great time with my friends Eric, Kristin and Jeff. I experimented filming with Eric’s Nikon D90 and a few other editing techniques. The “push-pull” focusing might be a little too much at times, but I am happy with it overall:

    

Okay: My final STA Application video. I really hope my love of Chicago shines through with this video (plus it was a lot of fun to make from start to finish: The brainstorming, picking the music, running all over town to film, adding new ideas, editing on the fly, reshooting certain shots, voice overs, finalizing, testing to see if the audio would get shutdown and then officially uploading. Check it out!

So that’s it!  A mini-portfolio of sorts.  Travel documenting has become a relatively serious hobby of mine over the years (as you can see) and something I plan on doing indefinitely.

Thanks for reading/watching/listening to all that I’ve done.

All the best,

Casey