Jessie Rudin’s
Travels

I was adopted from Russia before my first birthday, and by age two I was on my first international trip. I’m lucky that my parents brought me along on their adventures instead of waiting until I was older, because travel became my first classroom.

Since then I’ve made it to six continents: Australia, Chile, and Argentina as a little kid, Costa Rica and Israel as a teenager, and places like Thailand, India, Egypt, and Rwanda along the way. Every pin on this map is somewhere that taught me something about how other people live, and about meeting people where they are. That’s the same thing I try to do on the ice and in my work here in Iowa. This page is where I’m collecting those stories, one place at a time. And yes, Antarctica is still on the list.