my year(s) teaching English in France
Experiencing my own country with a foreigner is maybe as close to really traveling in it as I've ever gotten. Here with Victor, I delight in the little quirks that may surprise him. I explain why we always tip, and how much to plan on. I smile as he fumbles with the standard American how are you?, which tends …
Continue reading half a mile of the american dream: a glimpse of route 66
When Victor came to visit for two weeks in July, our travel plans were quite literally a rough sketch. The napkin on which I had scribbled ideas during a phone call became the backbone of our road trip. As the day of Victor's flight approached, we had little more than city names, a few reserved …
Continue reading “make no little plans”: in chicago, the road trip begins
"It’s less than exhilarating, my existence here. Friends have moved on, to engagements and new cities. My old jobs are positively vintage, inaccessible. What’s left is family and this old house where each creak of the floorboards is familiar. In a world so full of noise, this kind of quiet feels almost radical."
The Leaning Tower of Pisa: sweet little underdog with a quirk no one could correct. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
It's interesting what we block out when we dream of or anticipate a place. We must ignore the great unspooled ribbon of mind-numbing highway. The ugly big-box stores. The cloud cover that renders a day as colorless as a lump of pizza dough. Sometimes I think we reserve those kinds of stringent observations for home: to criticize what we are used to and tired of.
A stranger in the kitchen. That was my first impression of Rémi. I didn't know how to politely phrase the question 'who are you and what are you doing here,' so I assumed he was related to my AirBnb hosts, a cousin or something. We had a whole conversation before I realized he was just …
Continue reading shades of blue: falling for gorges du verdon
Maybe we'd get there, to this dusty abandoned hamlet where I'd have a herd of sheep for company, and I'd have to beg Stéphane to let me back in the car. Have mercy! I'd cry, or its rough French equivalent.
