I went to America for a week and all I got was a lousy concussion?

“Ginger! Ginger!” I heard my friend call. I was by my luggage ready to go to the airport, luggage that was bulging with fifty pounds of “Can’t Get This In Peru” whatnot. Chocolate covered cherries. Maple Syrup. Barrels of Costco vitamins, wash clothes, Good N Plenty, and Expo White Board Markers. Except I wasn’t standing by my luggage, I was […]

Why I Walk

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]