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
Coming soon: my book Dancing in the Fountain: How to Enjoy Living Abroad . The title comes from the story about a blazing hot night when my husband and I were sitting on the edge of a big stone fountain. We began dabbling our feet in the cool water, and the next thing I knew, we…
A late entry! Looking for something else on the Internet, I stumbled across a picture of this fountain at a nearby Seville hotel. I ran down to take a look and this photo. I love the tile work, which is SO Spanish and would add a lot of color to the cover of my book.…
So I’m in this temple in Nepal, walking through a maze of crumbing shrines, throngs of worshippers, monkeys underfoot like kids at a church picnic and clusters of holy men. Many are ascetics who have renounced society to seek enlightenment through self-deprivation, such as wandering the world nearly naked, smeared with ashes and refraining from…
This interview just appeared on the popular expat website, Costa Women . As it’s a members-only site, I got special permission to reprint it here, so you’d all have the chance to see it. Introducing Karen McCann Did you find Spain, or did Spain find you? I kind of stumbled across Spain on my way…
Remind me again, does the ladies’ room sign start with a character that looks like cross stitching, or is it the character kind of like a stick figure with a window for a head? In a visit to Japan years ago, I found it so difficult to decipher the kanji signs that I usually just…
So Rich says to the horse, “I bet you five dollars I can tell you where you got your shoes…” This horse doesn’t like losing the five dollars. Here, he appears to be eating Rich. .
So Rich and I are walking along a deserted street in New Orleans, and this tall, good-looking young man comes up to us and remarks, in a charming Southern drawl, that he hopes we are enjoying his fair city. A bit warily (we’ve read a lot of stories about untoward events that start this way)…
This is a famous set of tiles on the outer wall of San Pedro’s church in Seville, depicting people suffering in purgatory so they can eventually get into heaven. I love the way that nobody seems to be in real torment; some appear irritated while others merely look bemused, as if they were at a…
I knew a jungle lodge in the Peruvian Amazon was not going to be a Four Seasons, or even a Motel 6. But I had no idea that a few days after we arrived, the guide leading our little group would announce that we were to leave the lodge’s comparative comforts (mattress, mosquito netting, wooden…
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.
