YAY! After three long months of awkwardly hiding my nausea, fatigue, and increasingly poofy waistline, my husband Colin and I can finally announce: we are expecting our first baby this November… and we are so excited!!!!
As we walked through Boston’s Lilac Sunday in the Arnold Arboretum (aren’t these flower photos gorgeous?) with our mothers on Mothers’ Day, I thought back with a chuckle to 2010 when I was traveling [...Read More!]
Happy New Year from India… and WOWZA, what a year it’s been! Since I have limited internet access in India, I will not begin publishing articles about this remarkable country until I return to Boston in early January, but until then, enjoy this recap of 2012, accompanied by photos of a wonderful performance we just saw in Jaipur.
If any references below intrigue you, click through for full [...Read More!]
This is the FIVE-HUNDREDTH article I have written on my Around the World “L” Travel Blog since its birth in 2009! The timing is fitting for three reasons. Read on to hear them…
First, as you can see from these photos, I just got married!
What does that have to do with this site? Well, I started this blog when I left my job to voyage around the world for a year alone in [...Read More!]
“Argh!” my friend emailed, “How are you able to juggle all your work and social and fitness obligations??”
“Help me organize my life!”
In the email I wrote back to her, I realized that I have, indeed, honed a set of concrete Life Juggling strategies that have enabled me to get a ton done (click here for examples of uber-productivity) while still staying sane.
Allow me to share these productivity tricks with you now, as you [...Read More!]
Happy New Year from Madrid, Spain!
What a year it’s been, eh? As December 31, 2011 draws to a close, here are some glittering photos of holiday-decorated Madrid, Spain (as snapped last night), along with a kind of “State of the Union” run-down of statistics from this teaching-traveling website empire for 2011. (As always, click blue-highlighted words for related articles.)
2011 IN NUMBERS:
First-person world travel articles written on AroundTheWorldL.com in 2011: 59 Global education interviews and [...Read More!]
Hello From Madrid, Spain, where I am on a wonderful, whirlwind Free Teacher Training Tour run by EF Tours!
On this 5-day trip, I am in training with a group of teachers who have flown in from around the United States to prepare as much as possible to lead a group of our students abroad. In my case, I will be leading 42 Boston students to Beijing, China in just 1.5 months!
So far, this [...Read More!]
On Wednesday I came home to find a rose petal scavenger hunt!
Under the largest petal was a beautiful letter from my beau, Colin, along with the instructions: “Go to the smallest suspension bridge in the world.”
I Googled the clue… and it turns out the smallest suspension bridge in the world is in the Boston Public Garden!
I sprinted the five blocks from our apartment to the garden and onto the bridge over [...Read More!]
Yesterday was the first day of Fall, the Autumnal Equinox. And for myself and hundreds of other people who knew and loved a remarkable man named Kolajo Afolabi, yesterday was also a fall from innocence into deep grief as our dear, dear friend fell while running and passed away from the resulting injuries.
To celebrate our friend’s life, a life of warmth, contribution, love, and joy, I invite you to gaze at these [...Read More!]
You’ve read my account of the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, and other China tourist attractions, but now let’s get into the darker side of my 17 days in the most populous country on Earth.
The reality is that China is the most intense country that I have ever traveled to, and I have traveled to over 30 countries across the globe!
Now, the intensity of China travel is actually good news, [...Read More!]
One of the few songs I had on my small, cheap computer to travel around the world for 9 months was “Rains Down in Africa” by Toto, so you can imagine how many times I listened to it.
There are some songs that, while cheese-tastic, evoke a magical glitter in the air, and for me, Toto’s “Africa” is sure one of them.
So last Thursday, standing under the soaring dome and 100-foot arches [...Read More!]