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Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
Why … Read more »
“Sometimes I thought of the Peace Corps as a reverse refugee organization, displacing all of us lost Midwesterners, and it was probably the only government entity that taught Americans to abandon key national characteristics. Pride, ambition, impatience, the instinct to control, the desire to accumulate, the missionary impulse — all of it slipped away.” –Peter Hessler, Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West
You can trust me when I say that any morning beginning with vomit and a side order of anti-diarrheals with breakfast for two thirds of the family is a harbinger of things to come. Add the words “chicken bus” to the breakfast conversation and it’s the perfect storm of endlessly horrific possibilities.
Every single chicken bus … Read more »
“China is easier to write about than Cheyenne, Leningrad easier than Louisville. But to see Cheyenne and Louisville written about well, to see the dailiness of America brought to life with freshness and humor, is to watch one of the hardest high-wire acts in travel writing.” –William Zinsser, They Went: The Art and Craft of Travel Writing
Cost/day: $50
What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen lately? A duck-billed platypus. Though sadly, it was only in the zoo. My friend and I were constantly on the lookout for one in the wild and … Read more »
We’ve always been big on making a game out of learning new skills, and turning even the ho-hum into an adventure for our kids. When they were tiny and we were preparing to take them to exotic places for the first time, we came up with a series of games we played at home to get them … Read more »
“Reading and restlessness — dissatisfaction at home, a sourness at being indoors, and a notion that the real world was elsewhere — made me a traveler. If the Internet was everything it was cracked up to be, we would all stay home and be brilliantly witty and insightful. Yet with so much contradictory information available, there is more reason to travel than ever before: to look closer, to dig deeper, to sort the authentic from … Read more »
Cost/day: $40/day
What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen lately?
Sidewalks! Living in Latin America for the past year and a half, sidewalks are unseen and non-existent… but not in Antigua, they have sidewalks to walk on, even if they are skinny and crowded.
Describe a typical day:
Some Lines Scrawled on the Door of Vagabond’s House
by Don Blanding
West of the sunset stands my house,
There… and east of the dawn;
North to the Arctic runs my yard;
South to the Pole, my lawn;
Seven seas … Read more »
Recently, I had my first experience, and it was a humbling, scary experience that challenged my fortitude and my creativity on a new level. We could have given up, defeated, but we held strong, kept the struggle to ourselves (because my Grandma would have been worried sick!), and we pushed through it.
I have only been broke once- right after my divorce. I made it out of that rut pretty quickly because A) My new … Read more »