“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 […]
I went to America for a week and all I got was a lousy concussion?
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, […]
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 […]
Just Did It: Camino Santiago
If my feet could talk, what would they say? After taking part of the El Camino Santiago pilgrimage, my ten little piggies and not-so-little bunion would say more than pass the Epsom salts please.
Transformation
Life repeats itself. Ten years ago, I was Madrid, Spain, waiting for a train to Alicante, my life at its lowest. My mom just died, my husband just left me in China, and my life was condensed down to one hundred pounds and a carry-on. I was in Spain to visit my nephew to make sure he was actually studying […]
birthday boobies (and other birds)
I never would have imagined spending my 63rd birthday looking at boobies.
Uh…not cleavage, but the Peruvian bird.