Outside the fences of a folk festival on in her hometown on the shores of Rhode Island, Mrs. Madison Nunes sits on a kayak, entranced by the whimsical voice of Lana Del Rey. “I actually didn’t get tickets, but my dad and I went. Because it’s on a peninsula, you can kayak into the water or take a boat or anything. And you can hear the music because the wind blows it,” she said. 

The clever workaround for her musical messiah echoes a larger pattern in Nunes’s philosophy. “I really see value in spending money on taking trips, going to concerts, doing a training or something like that,” she said. 

She elaborated on her relentless search for once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. “[I am] adventurous because I don’t like to feel like I’m stagnant,” she said. “It’s such a hard thing for me to save money because I really want to spend it on experiences. And we might never get this time back.”

The creed stems from childhood summers spent with her cousins. “A lot of my childhood summers, we would go up to my cousin’s farmhouse in Maine. Sometimes we would go canoeing, [and] if we were lucky, they would rent a boat and we’d go tubing or wakeboarding,” she said.

 One particular memory epitomizes her adventurous spirit. “There was this watering hole. It’s a rocky river with a steep point where you can jump into a pool of freezing cold water that would be 8 to 10 feet high,” she said. “So basically, it’s cliff jumping into a natural pool of ice-cold water. I’m not really afraid of heights, but I was definitely scared to jump off of it when I was little.”

As an adult, Mrs. Nunes once again jumps—not into icy water but from country to country with her career as an English as a Language Learner (ELL) instructor. “I just like to travel, try new things, and meet people. That’s why I left my home country—to have more of an adventure,” Nunes said. “I taught in New York City for a while, and it was like my second home. And then for the last five years, I’ve been living abroad in China, India, then in Côte d’Ivoire in Africa, back to China, and now Korea.”

The new chapter also reflects her curiosity for new horizons. She said, “[As for] coming to Korea, it’s important for me to learn about countries and cultures while you’re there. Though you can learn by reading and watching videos, it will never replace going there—visibly seeing performances, cultural performances, talking to people about their families and talking about different traditions. I find all of that really interesting.”

From a kayak ride set to the soundtrack of Lana Del Rey to journeys across the globe, Mrs. Nunes shares a life shaped not by possessions but by experiences. “That’s how I create meaning in my life—through these experiences in which I learn new things, try new things, or even just have fun.”