Because competitive parenting is not a real sport.
There is plenty of time to reflect during a 26-mile hike in the jungle. About life and love and why I believed that a five-day trek to Ciudad Perdida (the Lost City) would be fun. Because it wasn’t. It was a lot of other things, of course. Magical. And torturous. Stunning. Profoundly uncomfortable. Challenging. Tedious.... Continue Reading →
We are at the halfway point, the apex of this journey. For three months we’ve been climbing up from our monolingual, baffled-by-everything starting point, and now we’re teetering at the top, starting the long slide toward our return to “normal” life. In the grand tradition of Buzzfeed, where every article is “26 Male Celebs With... Continue Reading →
Cartagena is a strange stew -- one part Rodeo Drive, one part the seedier section of New Orleans, and one part quasi-third-world nation. The juxtaposition is startling. Painfully picturesque, but smelling vaguely of urine and sweat. Toothless men push sloshing handcarts of dodgy limeade past gorgeous arrays of high-end handicrafts gleaming behind spotless plate glass... Continue Reading →
You will gain deep insight into local culture. In fact, you can watch the entire life cycle of couple’s relationship -- meeting, courtship, marriage, first baby, the inevitable descent into nagging and stony silence -- as the bus crawls sllloooowwwly past. You can complete all of the primary research required for a PhD dissertation on... Continue Reading →
There are, to American eyes, five seats in Cero’s Land Cruiser: a driver’s seat, a passenger seat and a bench seat for three in the back comprised of ripped leather, wayward springs and rusty exposed bolts. This being Colombia, however, nine of us squeezed into his vehicle to tour the mountains above Santa Marta, one... Continue Reading →
For all of us who have lived outside our own culture whether by choice, by necessity or even by accident of birth, this: Everyone stares. Your skin is too pink, or too brown. Your hair is too bright, or too curly. You are too tall, or too curvy, or too something. Little kids squirm in... Continue Reading →
Sleeping in a hammock on a beach has a certain romantic charm, in concept. It sounds adventurous and bohemian and edgy, the kind of line that will start stories when I’m eighty: “We were staying in hammocks on this beach in Colombia’s Tayrona National Park…” That charm wears off a bit when you climb in... Continue Reading →
The following thoughts are culled from various one-off discussions with the children (aka “interviews”) when they felt like sharing information about this new world – Colegio de la Presentacion – that they have entered. For Retta, these discussions come in a daily hour-long monologue where the English that has been building up all day comes... Continue Reading →
Everything in Colombia is difficult. That sounds melodramatic, and I recognize that the degree of difficulty would be much greater in, say, a remote African village, or an Asian country where I can’t sound out street signs, or anywhere in the Middle East, but there, I'd have lower expectations. Here, everything seems straightforward and simple.... Continue Reading →
It started to snow during the first kilometer, which is not what you’d expect, hiking in Colombia. It wasn’t a soft, New Hampshire, get-out-the-cross-country-skis snow, but a Rhode Island coastal snow, halfway between snow and sleet, that uniquely snot-like texture that sticks to and soaks through everything. Which is unfortunate since we were wearing 90%... Continue Reading →
Dear Universe, Thank you. We asked for somewhere lovely to spend our time here, and then we hustled around talking to everyone and following leads and sweating in the noontime heat and habla-ing and exercising patience and here we are. Paradise. Spanish-speaking Shangra-La. Ex-Pat Xanadu. An idyll for idling. Sixth floor. The whole floor of the building.... Continue Reading →
It turns out, interestingly enough, that I’m not so good with ambiguity. It will surprise none of you who have spent more than five minutes with me to hear that I like to get the facts, decide and move on. Every professional -- and most of the amateurs -- of whom I’ve asked life advice... Continue Reading →
When I was in Russia, my favorite folk saying was, “Don’t hang noodles from my ears.” It took the place of, “Don’t pull my leg” but provided more picturesque imagery of an obsequious bureaucrat carefully hanging strands of pasta from his boss’ ears, or what 50 years of Communism probably felt like. In Italy, they say... Continue Reading →
The second-most frequent question people ask about our trip -- after, “Why Colombia?” in a variety of tones from simple curiosity to horror -- is, “Can you just pull your kids out of school?” This often comes in a scandalized tone, and phrased more like, “But what about the kids’ school?!” as though we were asking... Continue Reading →
In Spanish, there are four different ways to say “I was”: estuve, estaba, era and fui, meaning variously, “This one time, I was…”, “For a while, I was…”, “I pretty much permanently was yet something changed since then,” and something else that I haven’t quite grasped because that word can also mean, “I went,” and... Continue Reading →
The equator runs through Colombia, so -- on a flat map -- it looks consistently tropical. But the dizzying heights of Machu Picchu’s Andes don’t end abruptly at the Peruvian border, instead pushing northward, splitting into three fingers (known as cordilleras) of snow-capped and volcanic peaks divided by deep river valleys. Bogota sits along the... Continue Reading →
Last night, we had what is becoming a quintessentially Colombian lesson in letting go: of plans, of control, of the idea that we are masters of our own destiny. It went like this: At 6pm, we went to Conversation Club at our language school, where we practice speaking painfully slowly, clearly and correctly... Continue Reading →
Yesterday, someone asked if I was homesick and I was surprised to realize that I’m not. Not yet, anyway, or not in the way I have been on past trips, yearning for my normal, or at the very least, the familiar. Like when I spent a summer in Russia and day 5 found me in... Continue Reading →
Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages? A: Bilingual. Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language? A: American. Yesterday, the kids and I went to the gym in our building to use up some energy. After some time on the ellipticals and with the weights, the gym attendant approached... Continue Reading →
Last weekend, at the finca [farm] of our Spanish teacher’s mother deep in the Zona Cafeteria where all the coffee made famous by Juan Valdez is grown, the soundtrack in my head was Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime. You know, the part where they sing, And you may find yourself living in a shotgun... Continue Reading →
The World's Okayest Mom 