Have you ever found yourself completely lost in a moment, engaged with every sense you have and unaware of the larger world? When this happens while you travel, you’re experience the best of what is now called “cultural immersion.” Moments and anecdotes from my travels flutter into my memory as I go about my day-to-day …
I like to fancy myself a citizen of the planet . . . I go places, I see, I do, I eat and I learn. And on the eating front, I take cooking classes in new places with the forever hope that someone eventually imparts in me the skills it takes to cook anything beyond …
The pulse of traffic hummed behind us on the busy streets of Bangkok, Thailand. Pedestrians and motorbikes split and converged on the other side of our trio as we negotiated the terms for Laura’s highly coveted shiny green guitar. “Okay, maybe you’ll take 800 baht and a really fun monkey mask?” my friend Laura replied …
I was meandering through my Facebook page yesterday in the mindless manner I somehow instinctively revert to when I need to get work done but secretly welcome distraction. So yeah, I was doing that when I noticed this message on my sidebar: On this day in 2009, your status update was: Yay! Heading to the Fringe Festival today …
Solitude. Tranquility. Utter peacefulness. That’s what it’s like underwater; you become a part of a world outside of human society – we can go down there for a visit, but it’s not ours.
I learned scuba diving the summer before leaving on my travels; my first stop was Australia and I was bound and determined to be comfortable underwater before hitting what I considered the mac-daddy of all sites, the Great Barrier Reef.
The smell of burning wood hit me first as I ducked through the entrance of the small house—ducking saved my head from earning yet another gash and also put me right at eye level with the beaming smile from the Guatemalan woman nervously wringing her hands in the center of the room. As I stood …
I almost overlooked Guatemala’s sweetest little river while backpacking across the country. Stretching between Lake Izabal and the Caribbean coast, the Río Dulce—literally “Sweet River”—cuts through a lush pocket of eastern Guatemala that feels entirely different from the rest of the country. The river reminded me a little of the Florida Everglades from my childhood: …
As is the norm in North America and Europe, I drink milk. In fact, my dad is the poster parent for the National Dairy Council because I drank at least two glasses a day well into my twenties. Then I went to Southeast Asia. And stopped drinking milk. Outside of Western countries, dairy consumption often drops down …