Gift Idea for World Traveler

The holiday shopping season is upon us, which means we're scrambling for great gift ideas for those we love.

If you've got a world traveler or an altruistic friend or family member on your list, consider hoping over to the Unicef site. There you'll find Unicef gift ideas.

Buy soccer balls for kids in refugee camps, or picture books for displaced children, or water sanitation supplies for rural villages, or mosquito nets for families in tropical climates. There's a gift to fit any budget.

Then, Unicef's web site will take you through a process where you can specially order a greeting card that tells your loved one which Unicef gift you purchased in their name.

Photo from Unicef site.

How to Travel with Your Spouse

My story about how to travel with your wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend or life partner has been posted at GoNomad.

If you'd like to check it out, here's a link:

Love the One You're With: How to Travel without Killing Each Other

Honeymoon From Hell in Marie Claire Mag

In flipping through the December issue of Marie Claire Magazine, I came across an article called My Marriage Fell Apart...On Our Honeymoon!

With a title like that, how could I not be intrigued? Of course I read on.

It was a personal essay about how this couple had gone on a four month backpacking trip through South America after getting married and how the trip drove them apart. They learned they couldn't travel together.

Considering the title of the essay, I expected the essay to end in divorce -- but it didn't. They stayed married and agreed not to travel with one another any more.

That was the solution?

I felt so displaced when I got to the end of the story that it fired me up. Long-term budget travel had the exact opposite effect on my marriage. Sure, we fought along the road, but we didn't split up and our experiences convinced us that we're all-around good partners, at home or abroad.

And so, instead of writing a letter to the editor about how much I disliked this article, I decided to do something better: write an article about how to successfully travel with your significant other.

It will soon be posted at GoNomad. I'll let you all know when it goes live.

Bevy of November Articles

I had a whole crop of articles come out this month. Since I'd written a number of them several months ago, it was a surprise to watch them all pile up and realize how busy I'd been.

There was the story I wrote about fair trade sugar, and another about a Minnesota man who has taken a position within the Obama Administration. And then there are a handful of others.

Like the one I wrote about a tattoo artist. Or another about a man who installed a geo-thermal heat pump in his house. Or tips for organizing your kitchen pre-holiday madness. Or where to find interesting and yummy coffee drinks in town.

Or this one, about an area man so addicted to bargain shopping that he left his job and started a web site devoted to bringing customers great deals.

If you'd like to read about Brian Larson of Razor Dog! Deals, click through to my article here:

Bargain Hunter

Does My Head Look Big in This?

If you've been following my blog over the past couple months, you may have noticed I've been on a young adult literature kick.

Because of my interest in travel and other cultures, the books I've been gravitating to stick to these themes. I've also been able to read through them more quickly as they are often shorter than adult novels.

But that's not to say they don't tackle heavy ideas. For example, I just finished reading a book called Does My Head Look Big in This written by Randa Abdel-Fatta.

The book takes place in suburban Melbourne (the author is Australian) and is about a high school gal dealing with some critical identity issues. Even though she is Australian, she is also Palestinian and Muslim. She attends a hoity-toity private school with a strict uniform policy and she has recently decided that she wants to wear a hijab, or head-scarf.

Will she be able to manage all the typical social pressures any normal high school girl must deal with while also managing the stereotypes and questions that come with the hijab? You'll have to read the book to find out.

This is Abdel-Fatta's first book, and I could kind of tell. Sometimes the main character got too preachy and high-strung. However, that wouldn't stop me from recommending it to a teen reader.

It does offer an interesting cultural perspective. The United States isn't the only country in the world where people deal with hyphenated ethnic labels, and this book clearly illustrates that. Plus, even for me, an adult reader, it was interesting to encounter the thoughts and feelings that a Muslim woman might go through in decided whether or not to don the hijab.

Wise Words from a Fortune Cookie

Fair Trade Sugar Cooperatives

This month, an article I wrote about fair trade and organic sugar was published.

It was an interesting story for me to research as I spent my college years in Moorhead, Minnesota where, each fall, sugar beets are burned to produce sugar. The stench of the burning sugar beets would fill the town's air with a distinct, unpleasant aroma. Because of that experience, I found it interesting to learn more about where sugar comes from.

This story, though, concentrated mostly on imported, fair-trade sugar.

If you're interested in learning more about the topic, you can read my article here:

Fair Trade Sugar Cooperatives Sustain Communities

Photo (c) Wholesome Sweetners

Hello Kitty is 35 !!!!

Hello Kitty turned 35 years-old this month! Yikes! She's younger than me!

A friend sent me a link to an article in the LA Times about Hello Kitty that details this famous Japanese cat's creation and her ascent to global domination.

I had no idea Hello Kitty was on the verge of such a momentous birthday when I decided to review a book of Hello Kitty haiku on Haiku By Two, my haiku blog.

And thanks to my haiku'ing partner, Alison, I now know all about a blog called Hello Kitty Hell.

It's a funny read written by a man who's wife collects Hello Kitty do-dads and gizmos, which she then resells somewhere online. Her Hello Kitty stuff has taken over their house, causing him to live, therefore, in Hello Kitty Hell.

Sofi Mendoza's Guide to Getting Lost in Mexico

I've traveled off-the-beaten-path in Mexico, so I was curious when I came across this young adult novel called Sofi Mendoza's Guide to Getting Lost in Mexico.

The book, which I was wary of at first because it started off with some sexy, getting-drunk party scenes (it's a book for teens), turned out to be a good read.

It's about a high school girl named Sofi Mendoza who lives in LA. Her friends come up with this plan to tell all their parents they are sleeping over at each other's houses when really they are going to cross the border into Mexico and go to a party at a friend's weekend house in Rosarita.

What Sofi doesn't know is that she's not a U.S. citizen. She makes it into Mexico just fine, but when it's time to come home, she gets stopped by border patrol. She isn't allowed back into the United States and that's when her whole world gets turned upside down.

Via phone calls back to her mom and dad, she gets directed to relatives in Tijuana who she has never met. She must stay with them until her visa/residency/passport situation gets straightened out.

In the end, while I did think some of the boy-meets-girl themes were a bit too over-the-top and racy, as a whole, the descriptions of Tijuana and rural Mexico struck me as right. Plus, the observations Sofi makes about life between the two cultures and countries, and the lessons she learns about education, opportunity and family were wise and true.

Learn more about the author, Malin Alegria.

The Closest I'll Get to Barak Obama

This might be the closest I'll ever get to Barak Obama.

In July I interviewed a man named Bud Philbrook who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. My finished article about him was finally published a couple weeks ago in Hamline Magazine, the alumni magazine for Hamline University.

Philbrook earned his law degree from Hamline and is currently serving the Obama Administration as the deputy under secretary for farm and foreign agricultural services.

His title is a mouthful which means, in his own words, that his job is "to promote United States agricultural exports and to help fight world hunger."

Philbrook was nominated for his position because he has a wealth of experience dealing with global cultures and developing nations. Twenty-five years ago, he and his wife founded an organization called Global Volunteers.

While it's currently a popular choice for travelers to spend their vacations volunteering, Global Volunteers was at the forefront of this trend.

During our interview, Philbrook spent a lot of time talking about the injustice of malnutrition when it comes to children. Children who are not properly nourished, no matter where they live, don't usually do well in school.

In my opinion, one of the most striking things he said in the course of our interview was this:

"Children who don't do well in school don't grow up to be Mozart, Mandela or Confucius because their brains aren't fully developed. They can't recognize their God-given potential and because of that they can't help improve the human condition."

If you'd like to read the whole article, you can see it here:

Mr. Philbrook Goes to Washington

Photo from Hamline Magazine.

As Seen in National Geographic

Be sure and pick up a copy of the November/December 2009 issue of National Geographic Traveler Magazine.

Turn to page 104 and you'll find a photo taken by me!

The picture is one I took during an air boat tour of the Atchafalaya Swamp in Louisiana last summer. It is in the magazine in support of an article about the town of Breaux Bridge.

The publication of this picture was a total surprise. I hadn't submitted it to the magazine or anything. A few months back I got an email from a photo intern at the magazine. She'd seen the picture on my blog and wanted to know if National Geographic could purchase it. Of course!

Here's the blog post she saw.

Sudanese Lost Boy Finds Home in Minnesota

Lately, I've been on a young adult literature kick.

Years ago, when I taught 8th grade, I used to read a lot of YA books, but since leaving the classroom behind, I'd kind of forgotten about the genre. But not anymore. I'm back into young adult and children's literature with a vengeance.

A friend, a former teacher herself, recommended I read Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate.

I'm so happy I did. It's a gentle, touching novel about a young Sudanese boy who immigrates to America.

He arrives alone. His father and brother were killed in his country's brutal civil war and his mother is missing, unaccounted for. He is placed in Minnesota to live with an aunt and a cousin already here.

The story is told all in poems. The language is precise and poignant and sparse. It's just lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

I can't recommend this book enough. If you've got a young person in your life -- say middle school -- and you want to expose them to thoughtful prose and other cultures, this book is a winner.

Great Travel Writing Always Surprises

I'm always in the mood for a great travel read, and of course I have my favorite travel writers -- Rolf Potts and Bill Bryson are at the top of my list.

And I love it when really good travel pieces show up in places I don't expect. For example, I recently read a great travel essay in Golf Magazine.

Now, I'm not much of a golfer. In fact, I'm not a golfer by any stretch of the imagination. But I picked up the piece, called Adios Fidel Hello Tiger, because it featured a rather large photo of Che Guevara golfing.

I was alerted to the piece by a follower of my other blog, Che Spotting, which showcases pictures of Che from all over the globe submitted by travelers. It's a sort of Where's Waldo web site, except the travelers are looking for Che not Waldo.

Anyway, the Golf Magazine article was a very well written piece about the state of golf in Cuba. Currently, there are only two golf courses in the country. Foreign investors, however, would love to up that number.

But of course (as the author even said in the story) no article about Cuba can discuss the future without discussing the past, and so first he chronicles the history of the island's golf courses.

There actually used to be a whole bunch, and the PGA even held tournaments there, but then Fidel played a round against Che, lost and got so mad he bulldozed all the courses except one.

Anyway...if you're interested in golf, Cuba or travel writing and have got some time to check out the essay, I recommend it.

Inclusive Junk Mail Part 10

It's been a few months since we've gotten any Korean mail in our box.

Never fear, though, the junk mail gods have not forgotten about us.

Just last week, we got more inclusive junk mail.

If you're new to the story of the Korean/Chinese/Vietnamese mail that keeps showing up in our mail box, you can read more about it here.