Stephanie Sadler - Author Interview

What inspired you to study abroad? Why did you choose London?   

I’ve always had a strong curiosity about the world beyond the small bubble of the United States. Growing up, I had pen pals all over the world. We wrote regularly, handwritten letters, sometimes sending photos or stickers.

At the time I considered going abroad I was inspired and restless and wanted an adventure. It seemed the perfect opportunity to pull all of that together.

London was the “safe” option for me. It was English speaking. I had been to this city throughout my childhood to visit my dad’s family. He was born here and the life he had before he moved to the States always intrigued me. I wanted to experience it for myself, more independently. It was also a great location for travel through Europe. CAPA offered the classes that I wanted to take as well as an internship with a publishing company where I edited newsletters and first learned about SEO.

You work for CAPA International Education. How have your study abroad experiences helped you grow personally and professionally in your present career?

CAPA was my own study abroad provider back in 2004 and it has been incredible to reconnect with them and see how much the company has grown and evolved over the past decade. The experience they offer has become richer and tied more closely to the global city environment.

Study abroad was a pivotal experience for me. If I hadn’t studied abroad, I probably wouldn’t have moved back to London immediately after graduation and tried to build a life here. Study abroad definitely made me more independent, open-minded, and adventurous. It expanded my global network of friends and contacts. It is undoubtedly one of the main reasons I am where I am in my career today. I also blame it for my incurable wanderlust.

You live in London. Being a New Yorker, what was your impression of London when you first arrived?  What were your challenges with the new culture?  Why did you decide to live in London?

I am a New Yorker, but not in the sense that people expect when you say you’re a New Yorker. I grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, upstate and didn’t experience New York City life until I visited at the age of 18, so living in a big city was all new to me.

I wasn’t surprised by London as I’d been to the city three or four times before I studied abroad there so I knew what to expect to an extent. The difference was doing it on my own. The tube was a challenge at first but it’s easy once you get the hang of it. What I wish I had known then was how easy it was to walk between some places without using the Tube at all. I found it difficult to meet real Londoners as we were such a big group of Americans all living together. My biggest challenge though was actually homecoming. I wanted to do nothing but return to London. I wanted everyone to be as excited as me, but it’s something you have to experience to really understand and appreciate.

I graduated in December 2006 and moved back to London a few weeks after Christmas. I had developed such a connection to the city and was itching to see it in more depth. Study abroad was a bit of an illusion. We were living in fancy Knightsbridge flats, attending classes, going to an internship part time, and travelling every weekend without worrying about working or paying rent ,or the mundane tasks that you really face when living somewhere for real. Living here is very different.   

Working as a Social Media Strategist in CAPA, what are the challenges faced by someone in your position?  What do you love about being a Social Media Strategist?

I absolutely love what I do for CAPA. It’s taken my personal hobbies of blogging, photography, travel, and social media and turned them into a job that can actually inspire people and provide them with valuable resources and information. It gives me freedom to be creative and the opportunity to engage with and interview people all over the world. It connects me to the energy that comes from students who are currently studying abroad or have just returned home and are eager to share their stories. There’s not much I don’t love about it!

The challenges are time to pay attention to our many different social media platforms and getting inside the heads of people who are just considering studying abroad or currently studying abroad so I can write about topics they care about.

You have been writing for over 10 years now and your writings have been featured (published) on many websites.  What was your inspiration for writing? How did your travel experiences help you develop or enhance your writing style?

I’ve kept journals since I was a child and started my first online blog in 2002. Since then, I’ve been blogging nearly every single day. I was a journalism student in university, news editor for the campus paper, and have written for a variety of publications over the years.

Travel definitely inspires my writing. It gives me an excellent excuse to take my camera out and explore the places I live or visit inasmuch depth as possible. My blogs are called Little London Observationist and Little Observationist. I started this particular series about four years ago as a reminder to truly observe the world around me and write about the sounds, smells, textures, and tastes as well as the obvious sights. When I moved away from home, my writing became less reflective and more about the changing world around me so I could share it with friends and family in New York.

Apart from writing, you are also passionate about photography.  How did you come to love photography? What are other things you are passionate about?

I remember coming home with 27 rolls of 35mm film when I studied abroad. They cost about $700 to develop and almost all of them were either blurry or with heads cut off or some other unfortunate disaster.

Before I moved back to London, I got my first DSLR. I took it everywhere. There was so much to see in this city and I wanted to capture it all. I started focusing on gritty areas, street art, secret parks, hidden nature reserves, and fascinating people – the bits of London that tourists didn’t often see or notice. I started sharing these through my blog and I was hooked.

What else am I passionate about? Travel, of course, and blogging. Tea. Trying new foods. Connecting with local people and learning about other cultures. Street art and creative projects that pop up around the world.

Aside from London, you also traveled and spent some time in Greece, Dubai, and in a remote Colombian village. How did you adapt to interacting with people from such different cultures?   

I guess just keeping an open mind and getting involved. I sat around a table in Colombia with a family picking legs and heads off of gigantic ants that were still crawling all over the place. We then fried them as is tradition and ate them. They taste like bacon. My Spanish was limited, but joining in on customs helped develop connections.

In Greece, it was similar. My dad and I learned all about the intensive process behind the production of olive oil by walking through it step by step with a local. Neither of us knows more than a few Greek words, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Dubai was another place I didn’t speak a common language, but body language was key here. Everyone can relate to a smile and understands that holding up a camera and making eye contact means you’re asking to take their picture. Many of them saw my camera before I approached and simply posed for me and shook my hand.

I like to travel to destinations where I know someone local. One example is that I went with my fiancé to Tenerife last year, a place that has a reputation as a party island full of British tourists, but he showed me the real Tenerife, introduced me to his friends and family. The experience was so much more fulfilling that way.

What can you tell your friends (in the US) about London that will interest them to visit the city (apart from the famous landmarks)?  

I am here! Ha. Just kidding. It’s the diversity of the city, the whole world rolled into one place that makes the experience so incredible. Just hop on the tube from Heathrow and you’ll hear 10 different languages before you reach your destination. There’s a giant Hindu temple in Neasden, the biggest outside of Asia. There’s mosques and temples. There’s Polish grocery shops and Mongolian restaurants. There’s Australian street artists painting the walls of Shoreditch. There’s a market selling Tibetan momos next to Mexican burritos next to Japanese okonomiyaki. There are Diwali celebrations and Chinese New Year celebrations. It’s a mishmashof cultures, religions, nationalities, languages, and so much to learn from all of it. My best friends here come from all different countries. It humbles you and makes you realize how gigantic the world is and yet despite all of our many differences, how much we really have in common as human beings.

If not London, what is one city or country you want to visit or live in the world?

All of them? I’m heading to Dublin, Copenhagan, and Spain before the end of the year and looking forward to those trips. I’d love to visit as many countries as possible. I’d especially like to explore more of South America and Asia. Where would I live? I could live easily in Amsterdam. Every time I’ve been there I’ve felt that I could live there. My fiancé is Spanish so perhaps one day Spain, but the beauty is in the freedom to go anywhere and the unexpected choices we make throughout the course of our lives.

What is one word that best describes Stephanie Sadler?

Curious.