An American in Peru Between junior and senior year of college, I studied abroad in the rainforest of northeastern Australia. I spent four weeks living in an open-air cabin in the middle of the forest learning about and aiding local reforestation efforts…the experience of a lifetime. Afterwards, I spent six weeks traveling in parts of […]
Getting out of the city Read More »
I know I shouldn’t complain about business travel to Africa. It’s always a rewarding experience. But it’s also an exhausting one. For nearly three weeks I had been waking up at 6, cleaning out my work emails, and leaving the hotel by 7. We would be on the road all day seeing projects. With the sun long set, I would return to my hotel room, eat an overpriced and usually mediocre hotel meal, and crash. So when I suddenly found myself with a free afternoon in Burundi, I was thrilled.
A Swim in Lake Tanganyika Read More »
An American in Peru If I wrote “Peruvian men are a bunch of scum-buckets,” that would be stereotyping. So I will phrase it this way: I have encountered a lot of Peruvian men who are complete, disrespectful slime-balls. I briefly touched this topic in the previous blog, and I would like to delve a
An American in Peru Being a housewife here in Peru is easy when you have a maid who comes once a week. This is a social norm among the upper and middle class. She cleans the house, does the laundry, irons, can run errands with me (or on her own), and as I was told
I was never really interested in France or French, preferring to study a less bourgeois language like Spanish in school. Not that my language prejudice mattered, because like most Americans I never mastered a second language at all. Sure, I later got by hitchhiking in Cuba with my rudimentary Spanish, but I didn’t speak the language. And then I married a guy from France…
Learning French in France Read More »
Six months ago, I was living in Seattle with roommates, working as an occupational therapist for a home health company. Now, I am a housewife in Lima, Peru. I am delighted to finally be living with my husband who has been working as a geotechnical engineer at a mine here for the past year. We were married in October, but he has continued to work his schedule of three weeks in Peru to 10 days in the States since). When Charlie’s company offered to move us to Lima, we were thrilled as we both love international travel and getting to know other places and people.
The sun rises slowly but the noises of morning come suddenly. I’m used to hearing roosters alarm sleepers that morning has risen, but here a large community (or so it sounds) is quacking and twittering “get up, get up.” As I stand in the yard a parade of animals make their debut, one at a time. A pig is scoffing his nose in the dirt and in seconds a chicken and her chicks come shuffling through in a line. They flip leaves over to see if a worm or bean lays underneath. A dog who has seen better days wanders through looking for any resemblance of breakfast. It dawns on me, poor dogs, that they don’t have it as easy as the other animals because they don’t eat grass or leaves.
Painting Nicaragua Read More »
There is no better way to experience Palestinian culture and get an inside look at life under the Israeli occupation then to go to the West Bank as a volunteer. I was in the midst of a six-month Istanbul to Cairo overland trip when I got an invitation to stay for a month. I couldn’t say no. The warmth and hospitality of the Palestinian people made it an easy choice for me.
Volunteer in the West Bank Read More »
“I tried to buy a ticket too, but they’ve run out of seats,” says the only other Gringo on the bus. There has to be 200 of us packed into this former American school bus. And without a ticket, this means we’ll be standing for the two-hour haul over the mountains to Matagalpa. This is our first time on an “express” bus, opposed to the “ordinario” or “chicken” buses which do not require an advance purchase or have seat numbers.
Where my coffee comes from Read More »
It’s been one week since we were robbed at knife-point in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. Since then I’ve had a multitude of emotions and feelings: anger, frustration, forgiveness, vengefulness, regret. As a traveler or tourist you expect to get your pocket picked on a crowded bus, you expect to get your purse jacked in
Getting Robbed in San Juan del Sur at Knife-point Read More »
Independent travel tips and inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
One e-mail per month - No spam. We promise.
