The next morning I drove the autobahn to a tiny village called Remsa, and was put to work herding and stabling alpacas. I learned more about alpacas than any city girl should know. There are 22 natural colors of alpaca fiber, and some farmers breed their animals with the intent of creating new colors.

They honored my visit by allowing me to name the baby that had been born early that morning. As the first American to ever visit the alpaca farm, I selected a "strong name" (based on the Natalie Portman movie about a baby born in Wal-Mart). I called him Americus.

A month after my visit, I received an e-mail from Hartwig with a link to his farm's webpage. To my surprise, I was pictured on the entry page. He had snapped a picture of me with one of his red alpacas. Our hair matched exactly!

I have a million more quirky travel stories. For example: I walked into my hotel room in Kuching, Malaysia, to find three maids clomping around in my shoes. I ate live lobster - literally crawling off the plate - with my class in Tianjin, China. Another instructor and I decided to cook authentic Mexican food for our classes in Hsinchu, Taiwan. It was my impossible mission to find tortilla chips. I could go on, but I'm out of space.

Global Technical Instructor, Applied Materials
Age: 31
2003 AAdvantage Miles: 54,007

When this contest was going on, Carolyn was indeed training for her fourth marathon. But in November she completed it by finishing the New York marathon in an impressive four hours, 29 minutes, and 13 seconds. Even more impressive is that because there were no cabs when she was ready to leave and the subway wasn't accepting cash, she walked an additional hour and a half to her hotel while wrapped in her foil blanket and with her medal around her neck.

This determination epitomizes Carolyn's view of life on the road. A chemical engineer with a degree from Purdue, she's driven and results-oriented (a closet Type A personality). Yet she knows how to find the humor in every situation and delights (an understatement) in the simplest things. In an effort to further challenge herself, she recently moved to the marketing and sales side of her business, where she can concentrate on something other than "teaching semiconductor etch processing to process engineers."