Posts from ‘January, 2010’

I’m sipping red wine and eating Turkish figs and chocolate-covered lokum, thanks to Tracey Z, who breezed in to town Saturday night with another friend, Andrea (and bags of special treats). They both teach at Koç School in Istanbul, where Tony and I got our first taste of international teaching. We worked and played with [...]

There’s a name for everything. Yesterday I learned about “false summits.” Those are the tops of excruciatingly steep hills – where you creep up on your bike in the lowest gear, sucking deep desperate gulps of air, pain searing through your hamstrings, your heart audibly booming in your chest, telling yourself, “I’m almost there, gasp, [...]

I chalked up another 50+ kilometers on my bike this morning with Team Dai. We rode out of the city center and then turned on to the smoothest paved road I’ve seen in Laos. It was built for the Southeast Asian Games (which took place in Vientiane in December) and led to one of the [...]

Vientiane sometimes feels like a VERY small town. News travels quickly, and I’m guessing there are about 2 degrees of separation between each expat here. So when a Belgian restaurateur started driving to Thailand each weekend to buy mussels that he serves up nine different ways with a selection of imported beers, his Mekong-side café [...]

Tony and I have spent the last week of our long winter break hanging around Vientiane. We ride our bikes in the countryside, walk around town, try new restaurants and chill out at home. One of our favorite places to relax is at our patio table under the mango tree. Unfortunately, that little oasis has [...]

When we lived in China, one of the Filipina teaching assistants sold me a karaoke system. She had heard me wishing for one, and she said, “All Filipinos have karaoke! I have two.” It’s so fantastic and so simple. There’s a microphone and a book with thousands of song titles. You just plug the mic [...]

If you ARE a woman living abroad or you KNOW a woman living abroad, then check out www.ExpatWomen.com, a fantastic website celebrating its third birthday online today. It’s one-stop shopping for interesting articles, travel resources, and captivating blogs by women around the globe. Here’s what the site says about itself: ExpatWomen.com is a comprehensive, global [...]

Here are the books I’ve read so far in 2010! Click on the book cover to link to the author’s website. (1) Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear (completed Jan. 2) This is the fourth book in a series about Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator, who solves mysteries in post-World War I London. I am [...]

Before moving on to 2010, I want to offer a short list of my favorite reads from last year … in no particular order (some were published before 2009, I’m sure): * Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout * Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith * Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth [...]

After giving our bodies a good workout with the morning bike ride on Saturday, Megan and I gave our minds a good workout with an afternoon meditation at Wat Sokpaluang. Although I can barely maneuver the motorbike with just me on it, I nervously drove the two of us the short distance to the temple. [...]