Vertical Ethiopia in the Midwest

I got up, got ready and headed down to Minneapolis' Midwest Mountaineering for its Outdoor Adventure Expo.

I was going to hear one of the event's featured speakers: Majka Burhardt.

She's this fascinating gal (a Minnesotan turned Colorado girl) who is a mountain climber, traveler and writer.

She's on staff at Climbing Magazine, she is a guide with the Colorado Mountain School, and she just put out her first book, Vertical Ethiopia, which is a coffee table photography book of her recent mountain climbing expedition in that land.

I thought I was just going to hear her speak, but when I arrived at Midwest Mountaineering - a mom and pop version of REI - I discovered a whole event going on that I wanted to attend.

I did catch the Vertical Ethiopia show -- which was brilliant.

But I also twirled through the vendor booths chit chatting with hostel owners and tour guides running operations as far away as Peru, Patagonia, Tanzania, Mongolia and more.

And all of them, all of them, had some sort of Minnesota connection. These avid adventurers, these ex-pats living in another land, had all been raised in Minnesota.

I ended up hanging out at the expo much longer than expected as it felt so good to be surrounded by fellow travel fanatics who all happened to be from my home town.

Photos © Gabe Rojel - from MajkaBurhardt.com.

Vietnam Redux

For the second time this month, I spent the day in a local 8th grade classroom talking about my travels in Vietnam.

The kids were all world geography students and they were eager to see photographs from a land so far away. And yet they were able to pick out things in my photography collection that reminded them of home.

This shot of me eating a Vietnamese version of pineapple on a stick got a big reaction each time it flashed on the screen, revealing the true colors of all the kids in the class: They were Minnesotans.

A true Minnesotan knows all about food on a stick.

Wonder why? You obviously haven't been to the Minnesota State Fair.

Quotable Me

A new travel guide was released this month titled Best Girlfriend Getaways Worldwide.

It's the follow up to a title that came out last year: 50 Best Girlfriend Getaways in North America. Both books were written by Marybeth Bond.

But the exciting thing is that this second book, the newest one, the worldwide one, quotes me. Yes, me.

I interviewed Marybeth Bond for an article published on GoNomad about women and travel, and in the course of our conversation she said, "Can I interview you?"

Of course! As a writer, it's not often that I find myself on the answering side of a question. Usually, I am the asker.

Two quotes by moi made the final cut in the chapter about studying abroad. I said...

"As a teacher, I had summers off, so I have studied history, creative writing, music, dance and languages in Rome, Prague and Havana. I did the program in Rome through Loyola University in Chicago and the one in Prague was through West Michigan University. Educational programs give you a reason to dig into a culture, put down roots, and discover a place at a slower pace. I also liked the safety and social aspects of living in a dorm with other students."

"I wanted to improve my Spanish, but I didn't know how to find a good, affordable Spanish study program. Limiting my search to Guatemala, I did an internet search for 'Spanish language school, Guatemala' and reviewed the web sites I found. I wrote to the schools, asking for a list of references. Then I emailed past students. I asked about the schools and the host families. They were very honest with me. After all, if you've had a fabulous travel experience, you love to talk about it, and if you've had a bad experience, you want to warn others. I learned which schools to avoid. My advice is to email for references."

New Articles Up

GoNomad posted a new story by yours truly yesterday.

It is called Pack Your Lipstick and is about four travel guidebooks published in the last year that all offer travel advice strictly for women.

I interviewed the author of each guide in order to write the story. It was inspiring and energizing to have four enlightening conversations about women and travel with women who think about travel as much as I do.

Also out this week is a story I wrote about four teens at a local high school who won the championship title at the state cooking competition. They go to San Diego this week to complete against 30 other teams in the national cooking competition.

Imagine that -- a high school cooking team! There was no such thing when I was in school. And even better - I was so impressed that out of this culinary team of four, only one was a girl.

Let's hear it for men in the kitchen!

Chef photo by Mark Trockman.

Free Rice for Everyone!

Somehow, between all the Internet surfing I do and all the people I interview, I ended up at this totally awesome web site: Free Rice.

Before you follow the link, be sure to read this warning: Free Rice is addictive.

Here's why. You go there and a series of vocabulary words begins cycling on the screen. You are asked to click on the correct definition. If you get the answer right, grains of rice are donated to a hunger program somewhere in the world.

The more vocabulary words you know, the more bowls of rice you fill. The more time you spend on the site quizzing your vocabulary smarts, the more hungry people you feed.

The site is run by the World Food Programme and is supported by advertisers.

Check it out. As I said, it's addictive, but at least you're doing good.

How many addictions can boast that?!

Of Confessionals and Travel

I like poetry, but it's not often that I sit down with a book of poems. The act of reading poetry seems to require more stillness, more quietness of the mind then I have on hand these days.

Yet I was recently wandering the stacks of a local bookstore and found myself standing before a shelf of poetry. Hmmm, I thought, poetry.

My eyes were drawn to a slim book with a red cover. No surprise. I like red. Turns out, it was a new book of poems penned by a poet who's name I actually recognized: Grace Paley.

I flipped through the pages and stopped on one. The title drew me in. It was: "I Met A Woman On A Plane."

I read it through, then I read it again. It reminded me of all the random conversations I've had with people I've met on a plane, those stories belonging to others that I just can't shake even though the teller's name is a mystery. Indeed, the teller's face soon fades. But their stories remain.

What is it about an airplane that makes total strangers reveal intimate parts of themselves to others?

The annonymity of it all, I suppose. It's a bit like a confessional. A chance to spill your beans, to say what no one in your daily life wants to hear, and then the chance to walk away from the moment, from the secret-spilling, without any guilt, judgment or blame.

Here is the poem:

I Met A Woman On A Plane

she came from somewhere around Tampa
she was going to Chicago
I liked her a lot
she'd had five children
no she'd had six, one died
at twenty-three days

people said, at least you didn't
get too attached

she had married at sixteen, she
married again twenty years later
she said she loved her first husband
just couldn't manage life

five small children? I said
no not that
what? him?
no me, she said
I couldn't get over that baby girl
everyone else did, the big
kids, you'll drive us all crazy
they said, but that baby, you can't
believe her beautifulness
when I came into the kids' room
in her little crib, not a month old
not breathing, they say get over it
it's more than ten years, go away, leave
us for a while, so I did that, here I am she said
where are you going


* Note * I added commas where the author put none. She intended wide spaces instead, but blogger keeps auto editing out my tabs and squishing all text together.

Che in L.A.

And of course there was a Che-Sighting in L.A.!

I caught these images of Che hanging out on a hat rack in Chinatown.

At $5.99 a piece, I could have bought the whole lot. But I didn't. I practiced restraint!

Eating My Way Thru L.A.

I love visiting a city when I get to hang out with people who actually live there. They tell you all sorts of timely, local gossip. Plus, they make sure you eat good stuff.

My L.A. family certainly didn't take me to the trendiest, spendiest restaurants in town, but I don't tend to like those places anyway. Here's a sampling of the places I did stop to eat on my recent L.A. tour.

Pinkberry is a chain of frozen yogurt shops. They were started in L.A. by a Korean ex-pat named Shelly Hwang.

Her concept is really simple. You choose from three flavors of frozen yogurt and then top it with fresh fruit, nuts or carob chips. The yogurt flavors are coffee, green tea or original.

The coffee is very coffee, the green tea is very green tea, and the original is not vanilla. It's tarty plain as in plain, original-flavored yogurt.

We went in the evening and I was trying to avoid any caffeine, so I sprung for the original topped with mango, raspberry and strawberry.

It was yummy!

We also hit up the Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax.

What started as a simple, homegrown farmers' market back in 1934 is now a permanent collection of food stands.

A "market" feel still exists, however. When strolling through the cool, covered alleyways, I felt the same curiosity I've felt when strolling through a market in Mexico or Thailand or Vietnam. What's around the bend? What funky food will I find?

We ate at two of the stands. Loteria served up massive lunch burritos overflowing with juicy pulled meats. We were all so stuffed that dinner hours passed without hardly a peep from any of us. The iced limeade was especially refreshing given the hot, hot outdoor temps and my niece seemed particularly fond of the guacamole.

We also hit up Bob's Donut Stand. Again ... yummy!

When we finally recovered from our burrito stupor, we went for an old-time diner experience at Dinah's. According to all the signs, Dinah's serves up the best fried chicken in town.

If it's not the best, it's certainly the most plentiful! Goodness -- the size of these helpings!

The decor is a throw back to days-o-yore. Circular booths. Swivel stools at the counter top. An odd color scheme of maroon and blue.

It would most definitely be the sort of place to head for a massive, heart-stopping breakfast of eggs, toast, bacon and all the fixings to fuel any sort of sight-seeing in L.A.!

Cruising Venice, L.A. Style

Of all the places I have traveled, I've never traveled to Venice -- Italy or L.A.

Today that changed. Now I can say I've been there, at least California style.

Considering the rush and jumble seemingly all of West L.A. has to offer, the Monday morning canals of Venice were a pleasantly cool and calm place to stroll.

There were some joggers. There were a few dogs. There were ducks quacking, following us along hoping for whatever crackers or crumbs we might toss their way.

And there were for sale signs! Oh, what a dreamy way to pass a morning -- musing over
a swanky home on a Venice canal.

Hot, Hot Le Brea Tar Pits

A long time ago, when I was a young girl, my parents took me to the Le Brea Tar Pits during a family trip to L.A.

I have no idea how old I was, elementary aged for sure. Yet the museum made an impression on me.

Saber tooth tigers stuck forever in bubbling pools of hot tar? How could that not make an impression on a kid?

I'm all grown up now, nevertheless, the Le Brea Tar Pits was at the top of my list when it came to "Things I Wanted to do in L.A." I guess I wanted to know if my memories of the place held true.

Turns out that bubbling pools of hot tar still impress me. Even before we reached the door of the museum, we'd run across several places where tar was simply seeping up out of the ground.

And perhaps equally impressive is that the Le Brea Tar Pits are not on the outskirts of the city. They are in the middle of L.A.! Right on Wilshire Boulevard!

Imagine that! Underground pools of liquid tar are swimming just under the surface of our country's second largest city!

And while Ice-Age animals are no longer wandering astray and getting themselves all tangled up in goo, the museum showcases plenty examples of animals that did perish at the hands of tar.

Like this creature. It's a "Harlan's Ground Sloth." The animal is extinct, but 76 skeletons of the species have been excavated from the tar pits at Le Brea.

Even though there were displays of extinct deer, wolves, mammoths, and saber tooth cats (not tigers, cats is the correct name I learned), it was the remains of this goofy looking half bear-half sloth that most fascinated me.

It reminded me of a similar extinct animal my hubby and I had run across in way southern, southern Chile - the mylodon.

And no wonder the tar pits were especially bubbling during my visit. In the afternoon, we spotted a bank sign boasting a temperature reading of 107!

The news later reported Saturday's high at 96. No matter. It was still hot enough to boil tar.

Feeling Groovy in L.A.

I've come to L.A. for a visit with family. I'm feeling lucky to have gotten out of Minneapolis. It's sleeting and snowing in Minnesota, but hot and sunny in the city of angels.

I'm also feeling groovy, thanks to the photo booth program on my sister-in-law's Mac. It provided lots of good fun as we perfected the two-faced shot.

And just to set the record straight. That is not a poof of blond hair growing out of my neck. That's my niece, who was engaged in her own brand of photo booth fun.

Torch Bearers and Tibet

The recent scuffles over the Olympic Torch in San Fran, Paris and London have caught my attention.

Indeed, even earlier protests over the progress of the torch on its way from Athens to Beijing have made me take notice.

That's because I recently finished a book about Tibet and the abuses of human rights its people have been suffering. The book was called A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World.

It was written by British authorIsabel Losada, who apparently, after a quick check of her web site, was arrested in London over the weekend for aiming a water gun at the torch.

But I didn't pick up her book because I wanted to read about Tibet. I picked it up because I wanted to read a woman-penned travel memoir. I thought A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World was going to be about one woman's travels in India, Nepal and Tibet. And it was. But it was also so much, much more.

Turned out, Losada traveled to Tibet and was so affected by what she encountered there, that she returned home to London and founded a nonprofit organization called Act for Tibet, which works to educate the public about the Tibetan cause and "act for Tibet."

In the course of the book, the author spent more time in London investigating the various Tibet-minded organizations operating there and learning to navigate the world of protests and nonprofits than she did traveling to Tibet or nearby India and Nepal.

Yet as a traveler, I was really struck by the book. I couldn't help but admire Losada. She traveled far from home, let those travels get under her skin, and then returned home determined to make a contribution. She didn't just travel and forget. She traveled and transformed.

As the protests over the upcoming Olympics look to continue as torch makes its way about the world, I highly recommend A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World.

It's inspiring, funny and educational.

Author photo from IsabelLosada.com.

Ho Chi Not Hoochi

I spent the day at an area middle school giving a photography slide show presentation on Vietnam to 8th grade world geography students.

Even though I used to be a full-time middle school teacher myself, I forget how gruelling it can be to stand in front of five different twitchy, 30-people crowds and do your deal over and over and over again.

It's hard work being a teacher and even though I mastered the art of voice projection during my own years in the classroom, my vocal chords have forgotten all about being worked for hours on end!

The funniest moment of the day came while I was talking about the fact that Vietnam's biggest city has two names: Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City.

One smart aleck boy on the fringes of the darkened room smiled as only an 8th grade boy can do and said, "Hoochi."

But he didn't whisper softly enough. I heard him (teacher ears come in handy).

"Not Hoochi!" I said loud and proud to a chorus of laughter. "Ho. Chi."

That's one group of kids that won't forget the name of Vietnam's biggest city.

Photo: An alter to Ho Chi Minh himself at the Cu-Chi Tunnels.

Hey Girls! Pee Standing Up!

Ladies, you know how it is. You have to go really, really bad and there's not a toilet in sight. Or there is, but it's nasty, raunchy and downright gross. What's girl to do?

Squat, right? But what if you haven't been keeping up with those visits to the gym?

You've never really wished you were a guy, but dang! Sometimes, don't you wish you could pee standing up?

Now you can!

Yesterday I had coffee with Jamie Holland, the spokeswoman for P-Mate, a little cardboard device that lets women pee standing up.

If you're a traveler willing to seek off-the-grid spots, chances are you've run across some pretty unusual bathroom situations, like this photo -- a Japanese bathroom submitted by a P-Mate user to the Pee Standing Up Blog.

Taking my own travel experiences into account, I can remember several times when a P-Mate would have made it easier to maneuver a hole-in-the-ground toilet.

But really, how easy is it to use?

Well, after my 16-ounce latte, I had enough liquid in me to find out. I arrived home from our interview bursting at the seams. "Wanna watch me pee standing up?" I called out to Quang as I sprinted past him to the bathroom with a P-Mate in hand.

"What?" he yelled. "No way!"

He didn't make it off the couch to come and watch, which was probably a good thing. As I'd never used a pee-standing-up device before, I was nervous about my aim. His watchful eyes might have caused me problems.

But I did it! I peed standing up! With the P-Mate, it was easy. And clean! Turns out, there is nothing wrong with my aim!

Too bad the snow in these parts is almost gone. With a P-Mate in hand, I'd be able to write my name in the snow. Oh well. I guess I'll just settle for the pack of P-Mates Jamie gave me and the knowledge that I can bring them with me the next time I venture off the grid.

Check out this P-Mate promotional video. It's sure to bring a smile!

Teaching Travel Writing

I spent Saturday talking about travel writing at a local writer's festival, which was hosted by the Bloomington Center for the Arts, an area arts organization.

I taught two classes back-to-back. In the first, I spoke to about 20 people. The second class was a smaller group, just seven attendees.

It was energizing to talk about something I love to interested listeners.

And I was reminded that I'm teaching another travel writing class in the upcoming months -- this one, however, just for kids.

In July I'm teaching a week-long travel writing class in the Youth Summer Program at the Loft, the nation's largest literary center, which is located right here in the Twin Cities.

Thanks to Steve Peterson for the photo!

An American in Iceland

This week, I got to hear Minnesota author and travel writer Bill Holm speak.

He's a fascinating character and a man of many talents. Not only did he read from his latest travel memoir, The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland, but he also played the piano -- well.

Holm's ancestral roots are in Iceland and some years ago he put down actual roots there. He purchased a bitty little house that he described as "...a series of magical windows with a few simple boards to hold them up..."

Those magical windows of his offer up views of the west. If he could just see far enough, he could see all the way to America.

And it is from this great distance that he is better able to see America for what it is. Only by stepping outside it and staying away from it, he argues, has he been able to understand his country.

Here is a bit of what he writes in The Windows of Brimnes:

After a while, the United States is simply too much: too much religion and not enough gods, too much news and not enough wisdom, too many weapons of mass destruction - or, for that matter, private destruction (why search so far away when they live right under our noses?), too much entertainment and not enough beauty, too much electricity and not enough light, too much lumber and not enough forests, too much real estate and not enough earth, too many books and not enough readers, too many runners and not enough strollers, too many freeways, too many cars, too many malls, too many prisons, too much security but not enough civility, too many humans but not enough eagles. And the worst excess of all: too many wars, too much misery and brutality - reflected as much in our own eyes as in those of our enemies.

I enjoyed listening to Holm's voice (and his keyboard stylings) and went online to check out his web site.

Turns out, he's leading a writers' workshop in Iceland this May.

If Iceland and writing call to you, and you've got some free time in May, perhaps you should check it out.

Photos from Bill Holm's web site.