The Toronto Star recently listed China’s Urumqi as one of the Top Ten worst places to live in the world. The reason? Pollution. The list prompted my strangely fond memories of coughing and spluttering through winter in Urumqi while teaching English there between 2005 and 2006. By Alison Bate It’s winter in Urumqi and everyone is...

My story about teaching in Khartoum, Sudan in 2007 is now on the Transitions Abroad website. It begins this way: By Alison Bate Shortly after I arrived in Sudan, one of my favorite male students quietly passed me a handwritten note, whispering that I should read it later. After class, I read a charming explanation that because he was Muslim and I was a woman, he...