One of my favorite parts of traveling and living abroad is that I meet kindred spirits. People who are also interested in growth through adventure and who have taken risks to travel and try out new things for the sake…
One of my favorite parts of traveling and living abroad is that I meet kindred spirits. People who are also interested in growth through adventure and who have taken risks to travel and try out new things for the sake…
Today is the official day to celebration singledom in Brazil. Feliz Dia dos Solteiros! I found out when a Brazilian Facebook friend posted a photo of himself cooking alone and called it his “Feliz Dia dos Solteiros” photo! I spent…
During 2010, as I traveled alone through France, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina, I regularly encountered people who find it courageous to travel alone. I remember a hairstylist in Bogota. As she blow-dryed my hair, she told me she couldn’t picture…
Lindo Como Vos: A professional tango singer (and taxi driver) Victor Diaz serenades me on the ride home from a milonga, Zona Tango in Balvanera, extremely local, sort of grungy, one of my favorites. I predict this will be the…
The American holiday Thanksgiving is approaching, and with it, millions of families (and urban tribes like mine, pictured above) will gather to gobble down turkey and sweet potatoes with marshmallows baked on top. Many of them will also go around…
Words from a foreign language reveal how people from another culture think, and that can be endlessly fun. This week one word kept popping up in conversation in Rio. It’s a particularly Carioca word called “Malandro.” The first time that…
After two weeks in Cali, my Belgian friend Griet and I, wandering our somewhat bohemian neighborhood San Antonio, found a gym an astonishing two blocks away. The gym offered a dance workout—rumba aerobics—Saturday mornings at 10. What a find! Although…
Colombia is an amazing country, full of mountains as stunning as the Swiss Alps and people as sweet and welcoming as the people I met in the Northeast of Brazil. It’s also full of strange and hilarious bathrooms. Well, two…