One of my favourite things to do in Oaxaca City In the next few months before our much needed family trip to my wife’s home town I have decided to write about some of my favourite places to visit in Oaxaca City. BS Biblioteca Infantil The Biblioteca Infantil (Children’s Li
Urban adventuring is my favourite kind of day trip I leave for China in about two weeks (!), and it’ll be my biggest trip in three years. Three years without a major trip feels like a long time, but in the past couple of years I’ve enjoyed a different kind of travel: the urban m
A Truly Intercultural Experience For the last 10 days, I have been back in the Cusco region of Peru to present the preliminary results of the research I participated in with UNICEF on Intercultural Bilingual Education. We have been back to the five schools in remote communities that w
Questioning the language of escape Last week I went on a short trip to Boston to attend a wedding. I was excited about the trip for many reasons, including that I was travelling sans computer. I recently wrote about travelling without a camera, but the last time I left for the airport
Some thoughts on dabbling in a non-official language in Turkey The short answer No, I don’t need to learn Kurdish, but it will make my life more fun! Some background: Using Kurdish in southeast Turkey The Kurdish language (the Kurmanji dialect, if we are being more accurate) has
Can I go to China without a camera? A close friend of mine recently came back from a few months in India, and during our hours-long catch-up one of the things we talked about was taking travel photos. It seems like such an integral part of travel: bringing a camera, sending home pictu
Dumplings, please! When I was living in Hefei as a student I wrote a Facebook post called “Things I haven’t eaten in almost a year and will delight in soon.” This was over five years ago, and the list includes some items that are baffling to me now (salami with mayo on rye bread…?), b
A Year Was Not Enough to See it All in Spain In 2006, I got a job teaching English in the small town of Cuenca in Spain. I had never heard of Cuenca before and it was a long and nerve-racking journey to get there but it was definitely worth it. Although at times it was difficult livin
The unique nature of international friendships I have super friends. All my closest friends in Vancouver I made in grad school, which means that we bonded over language. We’ve all lived abroad, learned other languages, and continue to travel. The friends I made in Chinese class in my
An American in Berlin You know those crazy people who speak more languages than we have fingers? Jeremy is one of them. I met him in Turkish language school in Istanbul six years ago, and this weekend I visited him in Berlin. He has been a constant source of inspiration for travelling
