I got the apartment I wanted in Bogota. It's so lovely. It's light and airy like being in a plane or on a boat, navigating the city from the seventeenth floor. This is the view toward the mountains. The apartment hasn't been lived in recently, and when I moved in...
My first week in Bogota ended last Sunday with a spin through the city - on Sundays, the city closes down many major avenues and they fill up with people on bikes, people on rollerblades, people with dogs, people in wheelchairs, looky-loo tourists, police officers in...
Head out to the store and buy some "washing-up powder." Enjoy this step. It is cutesy in that English-accented way. It is also the last step that will be at all straightforward. Read the manual for the new machine, all white and shiny, sitting on your balcony. In...
The company I work for here in Pakistan has kept me and half a dozen others in a hotel for nearly seven months - telling us we'd "soon" be moving into some lovely furnished apartments. But it never happened, there was always some obstacle - leasing, furniture,...
Question: If you've got about 48 hours of awake time in London and want to see things you read about in guidebooks, shop at the special stores available only there, taste the meals of amazing and reknowned chefs, all the while traipsing tourist pathways and staying in...
Yes, of course, very busy, blah blah blah; however, I have been making a roundhouse effort NOT to work too much or spend too much time in front of the computer. I've just gotten back from several weeks in Pakistan - in time for the holidays - and I can tell the...
Kyle came up with the idea - we'd all go to St. Louis to attend Pat's daughter's wedding. Pat and Kyle were best friends growing up, and Pat's family and our family were the closest of neighbors. So... we made our plans. Kyle arguably had the best night of all of us,...
After a blistering period of work through spring and summer, I began to make plans to take some time off. I was still in Kabul, finishing up a final project report there and also another one being turned in back in Washington. It was grueling, so I allowed myself...
Oh, yeah, right, like I have anything interesting to report from Kabul. How about pizza dough? If I want to be important, daring, bold, or devil-may-care, everyone else here has long since beaten me to it. There's an article in the local expats' magazine with the top...
This was my very first trip to Pakistan. Kyna, my gorgeous darling sister, was already there, telling me it was all going to be great. She had already mastered driving around the city, meeting people, finding great places to eat, and enjoying the dramatic landscape....