Dr. Heidi Forbes Öste interviews her niece, Alden Forbes, about her gap year working and traveling in Asia and South America as a solo young woman. Alden Forbes, is a first-year Contemplative Studies and Music Performance student at Brown University. With a sense of curiosity instilled in her from a young age by her globe-trotting parents, she took a year before college to travel. Self-funded and self-designed, her nomadic nine months consisted of homestays, hostels, work-aways, hitch-hiking, and even weeks in a Buddhist monastery.