The Conversationalist

Dear Family and Friends, It’s been a bumpy week of reestablishing my health and trying to find my Argentinian groove. But despite the beautifulness of the city of Buenos Aires and the friendliness of my hosts, I hit a bit of a wall this week.

Dear Friends and Family, It’s been a week of big transits. I left Horizon Peru, my host for the month of March, on Wednesday. And as the bus pulled out of Trujillo, I had tears in my eyes. This was an important measure of the meaningfulness of my four-week experience. Sitting on that bus, there were [...]

Dear Family and Friends, It has been three months now since my departure from Canada to tackle a one-year-around-the-world travel project. This means that I have completed a quarter of my journey. Like… woah.

Dear Family and Friends, When I travel, I’m a sucker for interacting with locals. And this week’s social events enabled me not only to practice my Spanish with a couple groups of Trujillanas, but I also somehow managed to turn paper into food. I’m a social butterfly AND an alchemist. Allow me to explain.

Dear Family and Friends, A new year of classes began on Monday morning for students at Collegio San Francisco de Asis in the neighborhood of La Esperanza (Trujillo, Peru). And I was there to remind them that white westerns are indeed the weirdest of all races.

Dear Family and Friends, It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’ve tucked myself into the Café Museo in downtown Trujillo for a bit of lunch, and a respite from Peru’s hot afternoon sun. Whereas Costa Rica was lush and humid and green, my new environment is desert-like and arid and adobe-colored. I appreciate the climactic change.

Dear Family and Friends, Sometimes life is challenging. And sometimes life provides the opportunity to sit on a beach for a week while reading classic travel literature and eating locally grown mangoes. This past week involved more of the latter than the former.

Dear family and friends, I’m into the home stretch of my three-week stint on a raw vegan farm in the heart of Costa Rica’s jungle. And what a jungle it is! During my time here I’ve seen a plethora of creatures ranging from the world’s smallest variety of hummingbird to the world’s largest species of [...]

Dear friends and family, It’s now been nearly two weeks since my arrival to Costa Rica. My location in the southern hills provides a gorgeous backdrop to this raw vegan cleanse of which I’ve embarked. It’s all very purgative, on many levels. There is a certain pulse to my days here. Each morning, shortly before [...]

Dear friends and family, It’s been a week of transitions. On Monday I said goodbye to my dear friends at Common Ground Relief. I had tears in my eyes as the plane took to the sky, and I looked west to see the sun sinking over the horizon. It was a sadness of certainty, knowing [...]

Dear Friends and Family, It’s been four weeks already since I left Canada! Time is racing like a drag queen who’s just discovered a last minute sale on plus-sized high heels. I’m just trying to keep up with that crazy bitch. It’s exhausting/exhilarating.

Dear Friends and Family, Oh what a week! I witnessed (and documented) my first Martin Luther King Day March on Monday. Then I made meatloaf on Tuesday night for the gang (and it turns out that I’ve got mad meatloaf skills). I worked on caulking and painting the exterior of a house on Wednesday. On Thursday [...]