While most ULM students will be taking it easy during the five-week winter break, one Ukrainian exchange student decided he wanted to see America…as a hitchhiker.

Anton Dudko, a 19-year-old math student from Ukraine, will spend the winter break hitchhiking alone to the Pacific Ocean. Dudko said he hopes to be in Oregon by New Years Day. He leaves Saturday morning at sunrise.

“The ultimate goal is to make it back to Monroe,” Dudko said with a laugh.

Dudko’s trip will be chronicled on his Facebook, Twitter and website, http://missionhitchhikable.net/. So far, Dudko’s experience of America has been largely spent in Monroe. By the end of his trip, Dudko hopes to add 12 more states to the list.

“You meet people and speak with them to learn their country in a way tourists can’t,” Dudko said. He said he is most excited about the unpredictability life on the road can bring.

Dudko said he got the idea while backpacking near Jackson, Miss. Fitting then, perhaps, that he would draw inspiration for his trip from author Mark Twain.

Listed at the top of Dudko’s website is the Twain quote: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the thinks you didn’t do than by the ones you did.”

Dudko said more of his inspirations will unfold as he discovers moving sites on his American journey.

Follow Dudko’s trip on his Facebook and Twitter. More information can be found at http://missionhitchhikable.net/.

Also, be sure to check the first print edition of 2012 of the Hawkeye in January for a full story on Dudko’s experience.