Connecting the Americas, Bridging Cultures Supergringa in Spain: A Travel Memoir
A decade ago, a friend told me that she had changed her mind about Friday the 13th; not the movie with lots of ketchup, the calendar date. She decided it would be a day of blessings. I realized she was right, and that convinced me to rewind my tape on the whole affair. We create […]
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The only Spanish-speaking destination where I’ve rented a car is Puerto Rico. On our honeymoon, we arrived in San Juan and then drove in a clockwise circle around the island. We saw El Yunque park, beaches, hot springs, the phosphorescent bay, and the Arecibo radio telescope. That was a different form of travel than I’ve […]
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The year my husband and I lived in Santiago, Chile, we rubbed elbows with locals who sought to amaze us with their English mastery. Evan and I would walk hand in hand through a park and a young man would bellow, “F$%#!” a couple of times. His friends would whistle and clap with delight. He’d […]
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We tend to think of holiday calendar traditions as fixed and universal. However, in the United States, we honor our nurturers the second Sunday in May, and in the UK they do in March! When we go south through the Americas, the variation gets wider. Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador have a set date of […]
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Our biggest changes may arrive when we are looking the other way. Perhaps a stork , a blood red cardinal, or the wind delivers them at our door. At 20, I hoped to travel the world with my partner in the future, but I didn’t feel comfortable going on my own. During my first two […]
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Fall of my junior year in college I went to Spain for a semester. Those four months were key to who I’ve become. What I learned about myself and what it meant to be a gringa in the world was central to my experience. Here I confess what I learned about my own personality. 5 […]
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