My blog has migrated to a new host and is being painstakingly reconstructed here. Please bear with me as I iron out wrinkles, hammer out the dents, and apply enough spit and duct tape to hold it all together.— Karen
When it comes to adventures, the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected. You go on an ordinary high school field trip and get bitten by an irradiated spider, giving you special powers. You’re running for shelter from a tornado, and the next thing you know, your house is dropping on a…
When I was a journalist in Ohio, I was often astonished by the incredibly indiscreet things people would blurt out for the record . For instance, I was once interviewing a friend for a piece called “What Women Think Men Should Know About Sex,” and she told me, “Men know nothing about pleasing a woman.”…
Don’t you just hate getting stranded in crocodile-infested waters? Me too. Like the time in Belize, when our flat-bed boat – more of a motorized raft, really – kept getting its propeller tangled in the weeds. “Run to the front of the boat,” our captain would shout, and our little group would rush forward until…
“Have you seen what they’re charging for laundry here?” I said to Rich, aghast. “It’s more than we paid to buy these clothes.” We were in Hong Kong’s legendary Peninsula Hotel, splurging on two nights of luxury on a long road trip. The glamor of our surroundings, and the prices, were stunning. “I think we…
If you google the phrase, “don’t let your vacation be ruined by…” you get 23,100,000 results earnestly explaining how to avoid flood season, hurricanes, burglars, pickpockets, sub-standard hotel rooms, the stress of traveling with your family, the stress of traveling without your family, ghastly intestinal parasites, jet lag, lost luggage, mosquitos, scams, kidnappers, fire, bedbugs……
The great thing about living abroad is that it provides so many fresh new ways to screw up. Any gravitas you might feel you’ve accumulated over the years goes right out the window as you start taking the inevitable social and linguistic pratfalls. Every foreign language is studded with sneaky little trip wires, such as…
Looking for advice about getting along with your mate during long trips? Oh sure, you can consult self-help books, counselors, psychiatrists, even (carefully selected) clergy. But Rich and I have often found the best sources for realistic, marriage-saving ideas are B-movies and so-so TV shows. Photo by tommipictures.de/flickr For instance, late one night we were…
When you’re invited to an American home for dinner, you can arrive in the happy confidence that little more is expected of you than praise for your hostess’s cooking, a few carefully chosen quips about what’s wrong with the world, and, if enough wine flows, one or two of your more amusing stories. In other…
So I’m paddling along in a canoe in the Amazon rainforest, with every sense so keenly – almost obsessively – attuned to signs of piranhas, electric eels, tarantulas, pit vipers and other local hazards that I neglect to get my hand out of the way when our boat smacks up against another, and I break…
Have I ever told you about the miracle cure I performed on Rich? Years ago in Mexico, in a moment of misplaced confidence in the standards of our rural hotel, Rich ordered a plate of shrimp. As he popped the last glistening morsel into his mouth, he got the first inkling he was in trouble.…
CELEBRATING GOOD NEIGHBORS These days I’m writing about Good Neighbors, exploring how the people around me are working to help each other get through these challenging times. My weekly posts appear on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on my travel and research schedule.
THIS BLOG IS A PROMOTION-FREE ZONE. As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things I find interesting and/or useful.
