Welcome to Kiev. (And f*@& Off.)

Before I left Turkey to Ukrainian friends gave me very different directions on how I should greet their country for them when I landed in Kiev to transfer planes on my way back to the US this week. One directed me to five the country a warm embrace and the other requested that I flip [...]

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Notes from the X-Ray Machine

New York City, La Guardia: They could give a crap if laptops are out of their bags or thrown in with jackets and shoes. Liquids here and in the rest of my recent US travels weren’t even glanced at. Chicago Midway: Laptop must come out of its bag and be placed in a separate container [...]

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Travel That Never Ends: Paradise

Please vote for my friend Meagan’s video (a parody of the Old Spice ads) and help her achieve every traveler’s dream: (paid!) travel that never ends! CLICK HERE TO VOTE (No sign-up required! Just type a capcha and you’re done!)

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I’m in a moral dilemma whether to get a Kindle or not…

I’ve just finished the book I picked up at Barnes & Noble when I was home in Maine two weeks ago.  I plowed through it as I generally plow through anything on a subject I’ve been wanting to get my hands on for a while.  It was a memoir called Stalin’s Children, chronicling “three generations [...]

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On Coming And Going – Musing

Does everyone’s stomach feel wretched if they get up too early in the morning?  Or is it a bodily memory of bad travel experiences? There’s also a feeling I get boarding a plane; it feels like isolation and quiet sadness.  I imagine that’s a bodily memory too, of all the planes I’ve boarded by myself.  [...]

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Relocation Ambivilence

I’m three days away from coming home to the US (again).  This time around it’s been five months.  During those five months I was in a world I thought was magic and could be the rest of my life, but quickly turned out not to be.  Normally I’m excited to come home.  Or I’m loathe [...]

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Why Are So Many People In Their 20s Taking So Long To Grow Up? – From the NY Times

Perhaps things are different because I moved out of my house to go to college at the age of 18 and never came back after that.  Actually, I sometimes take a while to come back to the country, let alone the state or my mom’s house.  But now that I’m 27 – and will be [...]

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Realization: I Travel Like the Child of An Alcoholic

I’m sure there’s a healthy way to travel.  But I’m also sure I don’t do it. 1. The Situation What do I know to be familiar from being the child of an alcoholic? An environment where everything seems out of my control; where rules are made and then broken.  I know a ‘culture’ that is [...]

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Travel Addiction

I’m an addict.  I leave Turkey to fly back home in a week and a half and all I’ve been thinking about and talking about for the past few months is how excited I am to finally be going home.  And then I saw this post: I used to dream of working at a beach [...]

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Close Approximation: Turkish Version of My American Favorite

I wasn’t intending to mimic my mother’s chocolate chess pie recipe but it accidentally happened that way.  A bowl of Turkish vanilla ice cream, called dondurma, a wee bit of chocolate ice cream and a square of baklava… That’s all it seemed to take and suddenly I was imagining myself at home on Thanksgiving. Maybe [...]

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