A Map For Saturday – Essay Contest
A winner has been selected!
After reading through hundreds of worthy entries, we’re excited to announce Malena Stiteler is the winner of the Big Trip Contest! Malena, an engineer who previously served in the Air Force, wins the following great prize compliments of Hostelling International USA:
- An around the world airline ticket
- 20 nights hostel accommodation at participating Hostelling International facilities around the world
- A Hostelling International membership card valid for global travel
- A travel backpack (with a few great travel goodies included inside)
A big thanks goes out to all of you who submitted an essay. You made this a great success and have inspired many of us to really travel again soon.
We’re still keen to hear from the many other travelers out there on their own journeys. If you have a blog or other account of your trip you'd like to share, please e-mail Brook Silva-Braga at contact @amapforsaturday.com) and he’ll add it to the links page.
Thanks again for all your submissions and happy travels!
Brook Silva-Braga, Producer of A Map For Saturday and all of us here at HI-USA.
The Big Trip contest winning entry by Malena Stiteler
Tracing the history of the slave trade at Cuban sugar plantation. WWOOFING at Costa Rican vanilla farms. Eating Australian musk-flavored Lifesavers (that's right, MUSK.) Learning the secrets of cocoa production in Ecuador. Trading English lessons for candy-making lessons in Cambodia. Visiting the factories making the Mexican gum that spilled from piñatas in my youth or the jelly beans and candy bars I snack on at work today (now made, like so much else, in China.) Volunteering at New Delhi dental clinics. Celebrating the Day of the Dead with sugared skeletons or Burmese New Year with sweet rice balls.
As a child, my earliest memory is trying chewing gum for the first time. In elementary school I sold Airheads to schoolmates, in theory for a profit (foiled by my inability to stop eating the wares!) I'll never forget the sweetest ice cream sandwich I've ever tasted: eaten after 1 month without sugar at boot camp. In the traveling I've done to date, the glorious castles and cheap wines of Hungary are inseparable from the creamy hazelnut candy bars eaten there. Pistachio flavored Turkish delight reminds me of the bustling bazaars of Istanbul and the elegant Cappadocian rock formations.
I've been planning, scrimping, and saving for three years for a round-the-world trip and am set to depart in March of 2008. My journey will focus on the history, production, and (of course!) consumption of candy world-wide. I travel not just to see new sights or meet new people, but also to explore a fascinating, delicious, and at times unsettling aspect of human history. From the historical use of slave labor in sugar cultivation, to modern day international corporations forcing the closure of local businesses and pushing eating habits that lead to diabetes and tooth decay, candy can have an unsavory core. I won't shy from this, but neither will I hide the comfort and celebration candy can bring us, no matter where we are. My stories, candy reviews, and photos will be published in a travelblog while I'm on the road.
With all this, what would an international candy tour be without stops in France, Belgium, and Switzerland? How about Papua New Guinea, where sugar was first cultivated? And of course the colorful, cartoony candies of Japan are currently out of my price range. This contest could allow me to expand my travels to some of these pricier destinations.