Thinking Travel

photo by Dee Q8

Let’s see, in 2008 I…

• traveled to Costa Rica, Turkey, Venezuela, Jamaica, and Spain.
• traveled with Aaron twice (Costa Rica & Spain) and Shannon once (Turkey).
• developed and delivered several new intercultural workshops and a plenary to fantastic audiences.
• visited all of my families this year over the Christmas holiday.
• reconnected with old friends on Facebook.
• stopped lurking so much online, actually reached out to some people, started Twittering.
• went to SIIC and IDI training.
• celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary with Aaron.
• worked on our house.
• coached Otto into being a lap cat.
• saw the Cure and REM in concert.
• started CulturallyTeaching.com, a blog project exploring culture and education around the world.

I could go on. But you get the idea. Sure, there were some really sucky things that happened in 2008. But mostly, it was a really great year.

Now, onward to 2009. Even better things are ahead.

Photo by hummyhummy

I’ve been back from my Costa Rica/Spain/South Carolina travel-o-rama for two weeks now and am finally getting organized at work, at home, and in the blogosphere.

As I type, my Spain photos are being uploaded to my computer so I can organize and upload them to Flickr. I’m also writing several blog posts about our experiences in Spain. Stay tuned.

Photo by Alessandro Pucci

I’m also working working working on my new blog adventure CulturallyTeaching! I’m so excited to finally launch the site. I’ve harbored the blog concept for several years and am finally getting my act together to get it going. Monday is launch day!

In October I went to San Jose, Costa Rica to give two intercultural workshops at the Tri-Association conference for international schools (the session participants were awesome, BTW).

Tuesday, October 14

While I was there, I visited a public elementary school in rural Cartago with a colleague from our Costa Rica office. I love visiting schools in other countries and was honored to have the opportunity to spend the morning with a class of kindergarten kids and their teacher.

Here are some photos from my visit:

The front of the school

Me with teachers in the library

Handing out pumpkins to color after talking and reading a book about Halloween

For more school photos visit my Flickr!

Photo by africankelly

Well, we’re back. We’re home. We’re sitting on the couch watching TV (election results!) while surfing on our laptops. It hasn’t even been a week and we’re back to doing the same old thing.

This is what we were doing last Tuesday in Madrid:

• drinking cafe con leche at a local bar
• buying an umbrella at El Corte Ingles to protect us from the all-day downpour
• eating pastries filled with chocolate in a bakery at the Puerta del Sol
• touring the fancy rooms and the way-cool armory at the Palace
• eating the menu del dia at a cozy restaurant near the Plaza Mayor
• riding a city bus to the outskirts of Madrid just to look around
• watching a Scottish bagpipe group march through Puerta del Sol (they were raising money)
• eating late-night tapas while wishing we could stay in Madrid

There’s just no comparison. Last Tuesday was way more fun than today.

We had an awsome time in Spain and my trip to Costa Rica was also fabulous. I’ve got a lot to write about so I’m going to try to write several short posts over the next few weeks. Stay tuned…

photo by Adactio

By the time you read this I’ll be in Madrid. Hopefully enjoying a nice cafe con leche and a tortilla.

I’m trying out a new journaling technique on this trip. Two, actually.

The first one is a postcard journal. I’m going to buy postcards and make my journaling notes on them. When I get back home I’ll bind them together.

The second one is a photo journal of all of the food I eat and the cafe con leche I drink. I’m going to take a photo of everything I eat on this trip.

I’ll show you the finished products when I’m get home. Until then, I’m going to enjoy Madrid and Granada!

photo by I'll Never Grow Up

I’m back in the U.S. for exactly one night. I just flew in from Costa Rica and will soon meet Aaron and fly to Madrid.

Funny, I was freaked out about flying to Costa Rica during the rainiest month of the rainy season. But the weather was perfect flying in and out of the San Jose airport. It was in ATL that we had rainy, windy conditions. Nevertheless, we landed on time.

Then my ATL airport adventure began.

Even though ATL was my final destination, I still had to go through airport security.

Then I got on the airport shuttle and made my way to another terminal so I could find some dinner to take to my hotel. After walking all over terminal A, I found something. (This was a good thing since my hotel is who knows where and there’s absolutely nothing near us and they only serve breakfast here.)

Then I walked all over terminal A and T and the baggage claim looking for the hotel shuttles. Once I was hot and sweaty and the plastic bag carrying my dinner had cut off all circulation to my right hand, I finally figured out that at ATL, “Shared Rides” means “Hotel Shuttle.” And that you have to exit the terminal through a hard-to-see side exit.

So then I follow the other confused passengers, many who are only carrying small carry-on bags and one of those free bags of toiletries they give you when they cancel your flight and you have to spend the night without your luggage. We walk across the street, down the sidewalk, turn right, walk down another sidewalk and finally find the hotel shuttle pick-up area.

It was chaos. There are more shuttles than parking spaces, so each shuttle parks when there’s an open spot. The driver jumps out of the van, yells “Hiiiiiiiilton Hoooooootel!” and then drives away.

I look for the Courtyard by Marriot shuttle. After about 10 minutes I find a Marriot Shuttle. Yeah! Oh. No yeah. As I board the shuttle I’m told that they don’t go to my Marriot. Oookay…

Then, about 5 minutes later, I find a Courtyard shuttle. Great! Oh. Not great. This one only goes to the Courtyard by Marriot South. I’m in North. Then the driver tells me that I have to take the Renaissance Hotel Shuttle. Oookay…yeah, that makes sense.

The funny thing is that the Renaissance shuttle was the first one I saw. But it didn’t occur to me to get on that once since I was going to the Courtyard.

Anyway, finally, after something like 25 minutes I get on a shuttle and am driven 7 minutes to my hotel by a really friendly driver. This guy said hello to everyone, helped an older woman on and off the shuttle, and even went a little out of the way to take a guy to the Fed-Ex airport. He was awesome.

I’m now at the hotel, finishing some work and getting ready to GO ON VACATION! Woo hoo!

Photo by Elsie esq.

Hello from 37,000 feet. As I write, we are flying up the western coast of Florida on our way to Atlanta. I spent the week in San José , Costa Rica for work and am now on my way to Madrid to attend the Global SIETAR Congress and vacation for a few days.

Five things I did while in San José:

1. Gave three intercultural workshoplettes (short workshops), two at the Tri-Association conference and one at the Anglo-American Bilingual School. The participants were awesome.
2. Visited a rural elementary school in Cartago with a colleague who used to work there. We spent time with a Kindergarten class talking about Halloween.
3. Celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with my Canadian, Costa Rican, and U.S. colleagues.
4. Got soaked while walking back to my fancy-schmancy hotel from the mall that was across the street. When I say soaked, I mean I looked like I’d showered with my clothes on.
5. Got up very early every day. But it wasn’t bad at all because it’s light at 6am (because it gets dark at 6pm) and the hotel had Britt coffee pods in my room.

Five things I learned while in San José:

1. If you go to Costa Rica during the rainy season (October is the rainiest month) bring or buy the biggest umbrella you can. Because if you don’t, you’ll get soaked. I speak from experience.
2. Ask if your hotel offers breakfast with the room price, even if they don’t offer the information. Don’t wait until your last day in a nice hotel with an excellent buffet to find out that you can have more than black coffee in the morning. Again, I speak from experience.
3. Why is it that whenever I give a workshop that includes taking about the “cultural iceberg” the movie Titanic is on the night before? This has happened more than once. And I always seem to get in on the part when the ship hits the iceberg.
4. There is an excellent Asian restaurant in San José.
5. The Intercontinental Real has the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in. Seriously.

Things are good.

I’m in Costa Rica.
I’m staying in a nice hotel.
I have colleagues who make me feel welcome in their country.
I gave a presentation that 66 people attended (waaaaay more than I anticipated).
And I spent the evening at the U.S. Ambassador’s house.

Yeah, it was a pretty good day.

What I did over the weekend:

Friday. Even though I flew to Atlanta on a plane that was about the size of a Suburban,   the flight turned out to be quite ok and not scary. I might even go so far as to say that I enjoyed the flight.

Most of all I’m pleased to report that year’s flight to ATL was less eventful than last year’s…

Saturday. The workshop I co-facilitated went very well and I felt like I actually helped people. Later, a barista at the hotel cheerfully made (really good) lattes for a handful of customers, even though she’d already closed two hours earlier. That’s good customer service.

Sunday. Aaron and I went to Target and Trader Joe’s with coupons and grocery list in hand and left $200 poorer! We did a stock-up shop, bought fresh fruit, and have lunches for a couple weeks, but still…things are getting expensive.

All of the blogs I’ve recently discovered have turned out to have Portland, OR-residing authors. Or they’re originally from PDX. Or they’re moving to PDX.

And it’s happened several times that I’m looking at some random photo online and something in the photo makes me say to Aaron, “I bet these people are from Oregon” and 90% of the time I find out I’m correct.

Usually it’s the trees or the lighting that tips me off but sometimes it’s something about the people, even though I don’t quite know that it is.

Is the universe trying to tell me something?