8 06, 2015

Travel Missteps: The Expensive Scarf

By |June 8th, 2015|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

My first morning in Italy I was so excited. I had a brand new DSLR Camera and I felt like a Pro photographer. I got up early and went into the piazza near our hotel. There was a local market going just getting ready for their first customers. I wandered through it, taking photos here and there. A festive fish stall My sister found me and we wandered towards the edge and found a woman selling pashmina scarves. It was late December and I realized I had forgotten yet again to bring a scarf for the cold weather.

27 04, 2015

Travel Missteps: *Sigh* “American Right?”

By |April 27th, 2015|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments

Many people travel to countries where they don’t know the language. Prior to my trip to Italy I had traveled to England, France, Mexico, and Japan. In middle school and high school I had taken some Spanish, French, and Japanese classes, so I didn’t feel that lost language-wise when traveling to those countries. So Italy was a first for me, not knowing any of the language. After a long day of traveling, our group stopped into a roadside shop. It was like a mini-grocery market combined with a restaurant and a chocolate shop. I was tired and decided to buy

17 03, 2014

Travel Missteps: Left Over Right

By |March 17th, 2014|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

In 2004, I was spending a few weeks in Japan as a cultural ambassador with my town's Sister Cities delegation of two chaperones and 9 other students. Beyond experiencing the sites of Tokyo for a few days, we all wanted to get some souvenir shopping done before we headed to the smaller, non-touristy town which was our sister city. I had read in a guide book that a store in Tokyo called "Oriental Bazaar" had a great selection of many typical Japanese souvenirs at cheaper prices. So I guided the group there. It was perfect, they had so many great

17 02, 2014

Travel Missteps: Lost in Translation

By |February 17th, 2014|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

Watching painters in Paris made me want to join them. Today is my birthday!  And 12 years ago, I was spending my 16th birthday in Paris, France.  After a long day of exploring the city and visiting museums we were just too tired to head out again. And so we decided to put my high school French to the test, to order pizza by phone. I thought I was pretty well prepared, but when I called I first asked if anyone there spoke English...just in case I could make it easier. They asked me to repeat the question,

4 02, 2013

Travel Missteps: Not Lost on Translation

By |February 4th, 2013|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

I am in the center of the photo next to Chris and in the front left we have my host sister. In the summer of 2004 I participated in a student exchange through the Sister Cities program to Chino, Japan. I was the first person in 13 years of this exchange to speak some Japanese. This was great for me as I could talk to my host family and strangers and absorb more of the culture. For example, on our first day in Tokyo we went to a "one yen/one coin" store where everything was just 1 yen. We