Seventeen thousand four hundred steps. That’s enough to work off the calories consumed from a grilled banana. That’s also the number of steps I walk to and from ICSLima (the school where I work) and my abode in Barranco in the Smirnoff Vodka building, formally known as the Pepsi Sabor Building. How long is the walk? About fifty-five minutes each […]
Why I Walk
A plumber and a prayer
Life in Lima can be just as ordinary as life anywhere. Sure, there’s occasional earthquakes to shake things up in Peru, buses lit on fire during a city-wide transit strike, parents of students getting kidnapped, and dogs better dressed than their owners. But the daily grind? It’s no more exciting that what you’d experience in Schaumburg. My hiking group is […]
Apu Siquay
Could this be the ancient burial ground of carnival rides?
Comfort Zone
This week, I moved out of my comfort zone. Actually, I sold it. I got the text from while I was sharpening pencils with my first graders in Lima, Peru, that someone wanted a second showing of my condo in Chicago, USA. I didn’t even know that there was a first showing. But by the time I had walked home, […]
MAC, Barranco Art on a Timer
Can you look at a piece of art for ten minutes without going bonkers?
Huaca Pucllana: Home of Captain Underpants
I really don’t care archeologists uncovered the ancestors of Sears Roebuck underwear models
Hooray for Huaraz, says the Lazy, Solo Traveler
I didn’t attempt any butt-kicking hikes in Huaraz. I just wanted to sit on what others wanted kick.
Sand
It’s funny the places you can get cell reception in the world, it being a lot more universal than clean toilets
Chicago-ing, going, gone
Was it jet lag or had everything in Wrigleyville?
I’m not just talking about the two middle-aged women whom I haven’t seen since they were young men
Beleza (Beauty)
Vincent Van Gogh It was about four AM in the morning in Madrid, me with a backpack my sister in her long- haul yoga pants. We are middle aged flowers in a city full of beautiful people, wilting like one of the still-life paintings in the Prado museum. Old ladies in dresses hobbling on cobble stone streets (not in Costco […]