Megan Eaves is an avid traveler, writer, musician, explorer, teacher and free spirit. She received an M.A. in Intercultural Studies from Dublin City University in Ireland, and also holds a B.A. in Intercultural Communication from the University of New Mexico. She speaks Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.

Megan grew up in the wilds of rural New Mexico kicking down ant piles and riding her pony over the hill to her grandparents’ house. Though excruciatingly shy as a kid, her parents fostered her sense of independence which often led her to take herself (and usually her horse) out for long, adventurous walks through the cactus-laden fields or sometimes down into the dusty unknowns of the arroyo below the house. Those long, lazy desert afternoons were the seeds of her wanderlust.

During college, Megan was an active staff member of the American Chinese Civic Exchange and helped organise language camps in Nanjing (Jiangsu Province) in 2004 and Yueqing (Zhejiang Province) in 2005.  Those trips taught her how to play guitar in front of a bonfire in 40 degree heat on regional television and how to weather a typhoon on the 2nd floor of a flooded guesthouse.

After a brief stint writing ESL textbooks for Korean English-learners and a haphazardly-planned 3 week jaunt to Ireland and Latvia,  Megan took the plunge and moved to China. She lived and worked as a teacher and cross-cultural consultant in Anji, a very small town on the outskirts of Zhejiang Province. During that time, she learned to eat hotpot, longxia and scorpions, sang in front of 4,000 students, made a cat costume from scratch, galloped a horse across the plains of Inner Mongolia, played the slots in Macau, rode a ship through the middle of the East China Sea at night, got lost (and drunk) in Hong Kong (several times) and accrued a rather large collection of fireworks videos.

Her extensive background and travel experience over the years led her to begin writing and publishing freelance travel articles, many of them about China. Her first full-length work, This Is China: A Guidebook for Teachers, Backpackers and Other Lunatics, and her second guidebook, Insiders Guide to El Paso (Globe Pequot Press) are both available on Amazon.com.

Megan and Bill have moved around quite a bit over the past year and a half, including 6 months in Lishui, Zhejiang Province, China, almost a year in Megan’s hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico where they tied the knot in an impromptu wedding ceremony, and more than a year in Prague, Czech Republic.

Most recently, the two have settled in London where Bill is a journalist with Upstream Online and Megan continues her work as a freelance writer and also recently began work as an Online Content Producer for  Lonely Planet.

To get in contact with Megan, or if you are interested in hiring her for a writing project or book, please see the contact page for ways to be in touch.