Category Archives: USA

Return to New Orleans.

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Written Sunday, December 27 – New Orleans, LA

We woke up this morning bright and early, and headed out for one last breakfast. The first thing I noticed was that everyone was dressed quite differently – instead of flowery beach wear or white sheer shirts and dresses, people had much more workaday clothing and sweaters on as they ate eggs and oatmeal. When you disembark, you can either opt to put out your luggage early in the morning or before you sleep with colored tags, or you can disembark any time in the morning as long as you can carry all your bags. (This option is called “Easy Walk-off Disembarkation,” I kid you not.) I used to be one of those people who packed gigantic bags that I could fit in. Now that I’m a seasoned traveler, I have a lot more scorn if you couldn’t fit everything you need into a carry-on bag. After all, Steve and I have gone for week-long, month-long, and even year-long vacations using just a carry on! All right, I’m getting down from the soapbox.

We emerged into the humidity and heat that is New Orleans after a short disembarkation, and walked off to our hotel near the French Quarter. Our room wasn’t anywhere near ready, of course, at 9 am, so instead, we simply put our luggage away and set off to explore the French Quarter. Our first real stop was the St. Louis Cathedral, which is a prime landmark. It’s a beautiful cathedral, initially built by the Spanish and carried on by the French, and the seat of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. It’s the oldest cathedral in continuous use in the US, and we didn’t end up walking around very much because there was a mass and then a christening in progress. I took a few pictures, and we milled about Jackson Square checking out the flowers and the crowds. We had only been drifting around for about half an hour before we ran into two of the same couples we had enjoyed dinner with last night. We knew one pair was going to hang out in New Orleans for a few days, but the other pair had a flight around 9 pm, so we ended up hanging out for the rest of the day. Continue reading Return to New Orleans. →

Setting sail from New Orleans.

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Written Sunday, December 20 – Travel Day + New Orleans, LA

The beginning of our trip was a bit rocky. My plane out of GSP was delayed twice, to the point that I was worrying about missing my connection. Fortunately, I was able to switch over to another plane to CLT and catch my connection to New Orleans (MSY). It was a tumultuous morning! I met my mom at her gate, since I arrived slightly before her, and we caught a taxi to the Port of New Orleans, which is downtown.

Our first time in New Orleans, and I have a headful of preconceptions built around Katrina, the Superdome, stories from friends who have been, and the French Quarter. We drive downtown past some epic graveyards and into downtown New Orleans, which is very orderly and straight, streets radiating north from the Mississippi River. I saw a line already forming outside Mother’s Restaurant, which I understand is one of New Orleans’s mainstays, and also glimpse some of the lovely historic buildings along the way. I’m looking forward to exploring it when we come back!

It took us a lot of queuing and scraping around to get to the cruise, but finally, we manage it! We’re sailing on the Norwegian Dawn for seven days. When we took our first cruise four or five years ago, we also took Norwegian, and I have the vague impression it’s a little bit better than Carnival, which we did last year. It’s a seven-day cruise to Mexico and the Central Americas. My mom has been to Cozumel before, but neither of us have really done Costa Maya, Belize City, and Roatan, Honduras, which are the other destinations. Generally, we’re probably just going to do a lot of snorkeling! Continue reading Setting sail from New Orleans. →

Winter travel beckons…

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November is when North Carolina’s climate deepens into autumn. On the edge of winter, the weather is chilled, but often brightened and warmed by sunshine. The other night, I ventured outside to walk the dog, and saw my breath in the air for the first time! Most days, I wear long-sleeved shirts and a jacket to bike to school. This is a long, long way away from Taiwan this summer. When we returned to North Carolina, I was thankful for every day of low humidity that we were given, and felt I could genuinely feel the difference with every lungful of air I took.

Though it’s not quite wintertime yet, winter travel is on the horizon. Like last winter, my mother and I are once more heading south. We’re opting for another cruise, the relative convenience of being able to just jump on a boat and go where they take us being too much to forsake! This year, we will take a cruise leaving from New Orleans on December 20, and make stops at Cozumel and Costa Maya, both in Mexico, Belize City, Belize, and Roatan, Honduras. We’ll head back to New Orleans on December 27, and spend the next few days exploring the city, before heading back. I’m pretty excited about it all. Next year, I have a strong suspicion my mom will be visiting us in Southeast Asia for the holidays… Steve and I would love to go back to Thailand!

Before that, there’s a lot more to do, unfortunately. I have a master’s thesis proposal to defend, a final presentation, a final paper, and a final exam. Oh, and Thanksgiving and all that stuff too. Well, here’s to dreaming about travel…

“Why do you speak Chinese so well?”

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Other than “Where are you from?”, this is the question I’ve been asked most frequently in Taiwan. I’ve met dozens of people in both Taichung and Taipei this summer, and invariably within a few minutes of meeting me, they either say, “Oh, wow, you speak Chinese really well,” or “How come you speak Chinese so fluently?” Here is the long version.

I was born in Beijing, and grew up speaking and reading Mandarin Chinese as my first language. My parents, both academics, had many books around the house, and I was a voracious reader from the start. A very memorable photo shows me at age five poring over a dictionary of Greek mythology while holding a dripping chocolate ice cream cone. I went to kindergarten in Beijing, and afterwards, took the exam to go to elementary school. And yes, there was an exam for elementary school, and I remember clearly that one portion was to add together two-digit numbers mentally (for example, 18 and 35) and tell the proctor the answer.  Continue reading “Why do you speak Chinese so well?” →

Journey to the east!!

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In just about another week, our travels are about to start up again! On May 4, we leave Durham, North Carolina, where we’ve lived for the past eight months, and on May 7, we board a flight for Taiwan once more. To our immense delight, I found a very promising summer internship in Taichung, Taiwan, for a national social service organization. That means Steve and I are gearing up for another few whirlwind months of travel in Asia!!

This summer is going to be quite a different animal from our World Tour, which occupied us for eleven months and almost as many countries. I have a ten-week internship which will keep me largely occupied in Taichung. On the other hand, as a part of my internship, I will be visiting local branches and sites across the island for a few weeks. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to check out different cities and towns in this way, maybe some places we’ve been, but maybe some new and different places too! In late July, we’ll have a few weeks to spend in our favorite places (probably Kaohsiung and Taipei) before flying to Hong Kong for nearly a week in early August, and then it’s back to the States.

I hope to spend some time blogging about the new challenges of traveling and living in Taichung. It seems again a different city from Taipei, which is large and metropolitan, Tainan, which is picturesque and historical, and Kaohsiung, which was industrial but has now reinvented itself as a very livable place and the center of southern Taiwan. From what we’ve gleaned, Taichung is more industrial and gritty, and we look forward to trying it out. Working for an organization is going to be much different than just traveling around Taiwan as well. I’m looking forward to working with the youth capacity-building program at this organization, which should really be pretty interesting. I anticipate the language and cultural barriers to be the most imposing part. While I have pretty much full conversational fluency in Mandarin, I do fall apart and splutter when faced with the challenges of technical and professional language. How do I even talk about policy analysis in Chinese? What are the vocabulary words? I barely remember the words for microeconomics and statistics! It’s going to be a challenge, to say the least.

Meanwhile, Steve and I are preparing the apartment for our subletter, starting to pack away the things we need, and oh, yes, I am also finishing my finals for spring semester. It’s going to be a busy few weeks and a very busy summer! Stay tuned for more details.

Connie

Completing the circumnavacation.

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In case you were wondering, yes, Steve and I are still traveling. And yes, we’re really tired. And yes, it’s about to be over very soon.

About a week ago, Steve and I said goodbye to Steve’s parents in Greenville and lit out for Charleston by the sea for three days. We hung out with many friends, worked some sand into our luggage, and had some spanking good barbecue (along with the most deliciously creamy and tangy coleslaw I’ve ever had in my life) before driving back up north. We stopped in Columbia, in the middle of the state, where Steve went to college for lunch. I had the distinct pleasure of sampling the bibimbap at Blue Cactus, a Korean joint, where Steve used to walk in and ask for “the regular”. We picked up some coffee (Steve) and an iced chai latte (me) at Immaculate Consumption, and were back to Greenville by the end of the day. Saying goodbye to Stella at the airport the next day was so hard! Karen drove us to the airport and brought her along in the car, and she wanted to follow us so badly! Luckily, we’ll see her again really soon.

Continue reading Completing the circumnavacation. →

South Carolina summer.

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It is a sleepy mid-afternoon in Greenville, South Carolina. The air is thick and warm in the screened back patio, like honey, and in the woods behind the house, insects are starting the eternal hum and drone that will forever sound like summer to me. The dogs were with me on the back porch, lying in the sunshine, but have now decided to retreat into the house and lounge about there instead. This is our treat, after so many hectic days of travel, to wake up and not have anything in particular to do, to eat anything we want and to get an offer to drive us to Bruegger’s or Trader Joe’s. And to stay in a wonderful house which has a backyard and a wealth of air-conditioning. (Really, people in Europe have an inexplicable grudge against A/C and fans.) Steve’s parents Rich and Karen gave us the kindest, most enthusiastic welcome home last Tuesday which was just fabulous. We even got some banners with Stella’s face on them!

And of course, the dogs. Rich and Karen’s charges (better known as the Dogs of Woodstone) are Chudleigh (their grave, older golden retriever), Taco (Steve’s brother’s 3 year-old quiet but rambunctious Chow mix), and of course, our Stella (3 year-old irrepressibly cute and sassy corgi mix). I have been speculating this whole trip about whether Stella will remember us. The answer is: yes! It just took a little while. When we first got back a week ago, Stella barked around and sniffed us and licked us and was quite enthusiastic, but simmered down quickly. Within a few days, however, she came to find us at night and stopped sleeping at the foot of Steve’s parents’ bed! She’s most certainly readapted to having us around, and it is beautiful. I’ve really missed having this dog around, though both Steve and I know she is the most spoiled thing in existence. Expect the reappearance of Stella photos on the Flickr! Continue reading South Carolina summer. →

Flying home.

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Tomorrow is our last day in the UK, and also our last real day of travel outside the US. I’m trying to take a moment from our hectic schedule and clamorous inboxes to think about what’s going on. We’ve been traveling nonstop, barely sleeping in the same place for more than two nights, since we left Normandy, and I have several entries half-written in a Word document just waiting to be posted about our time so far in Stoke-On-Trent, Cambridge, and of course London. (Oh, and Paris too, can’t forget about that.)

Time however waits for no one to digest, contemplate, reflect, and move on from these experiences! As we reach the end of this trip, each day has become more filled and hectic than the last, right up until Tuesday, July 22, when we will board a plane to Barcelona, and then Charlotte, North Carolina. I must be grateful that the flight will not take us over any war zones, civil or international, to my knowledge.

What will it feel like to be back in the US again? I don’t know. I have been excited to return for weeks and months, thinking about our dog, our friends and family, and everything familiar we are aching and yearning to see. I have been excited about moving to a new place, a new community, starting my graduate degree and learning things again. But at the same time, I think things that Steve and I have come to love about living abroad and dislike about living in the US will come into sharper relief, illuminated by our experiences of different ways of life. I’ve been very impressed with how many people around the world have been easy to talk to, kind and generous of spirit. I have enjoyed the benefits of different systems of taxation, healthcare, social welfare, service and hospitality, transportation, immigration, and the list goes on! Some of those things the US do very well; some of those things I wish they would really change. On a more mundane level, I’m going to be stunned again at how much things cost (cheap compared to Europe, expensive compared to Asia!), how many people drive, how much food I’m getting in a serving, how far away things are, and how incredibly easy it will be to do or buy anything I want. Steve meanwhile has made ominous predictions about how long we may be detained at immigration. Though neither of us have ever been seriously interrogated about our journeys outside the US, the longest conversations we have with immigration officials is undoubtedly with US customs when we come back into the country. Nobody anywhere else (with one or two exceptions) cares; at most, we get asked two questions about how long we are visiting, and less than a minute later, are stamped and sent on our merry way.

Truth be told, I am a little scared about going back home. During the past eleven months, we have traveled to broaden our horizons and become acquainted with more worlds besides ours, and we don’t want to return to find ourselves constrained and caged. For me at least, I’ve traveled to gain a deeper appreciation for everything we have, and I don’t want to go back to using resources and spending money the way we did before. We’ve traveled to get away from the same old same old grind of jobs and weekends, but what does that mean if we’re heading back? Essentially, I am unsure how exactly we’ll be synthesizing the elements of our travel life, which we mostly loved, with our life back in the States.

I won’t stop writing for the moment, however, as we have a bit of travel left to do back in the US. After we arrive back in the States, we will stay with Steve’s parents in South Carolina, then visit my parents in Boston, before going to Chicago and reuniting with our friends there. Finally, we’ll drive to Durham through Cincinnati with all our worldly belongings and settle somewhere before I start school in mid-August. There’s still some travel left for our circumnavacators! And of course, one more day in London. I’ll write again soon.

Connie

Train Delays and the People of America.

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Steve and I woke up this morning to the flat, red Arizona desert, lit up by the sunrise. It’s a different land out here. I know I’ve already talked about how much I love this trip, but the decision to go by train really gave us a little time to transition away from our lives in Chicago. I’ve had time to mentally put away thoughts about friends, jobs, career interests, etc. over these two thousand miles, and at the same time, start doing things I’ve been hoping to do for a long time, i.e. start rereading the new translation of The Second Sex, learning about economics from a bootleg copy of Mankiw’s Essentials of Economics (thanks, Heta!), and begin doing some photography and writing. It’s given us more time to say goodbye and to begin figuring out our new chapter.

Sunrise over the red desert of Arizona.

Continue reading Train Delays and the People of America. →

On the train!

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Hello world!

We are posting from a smartphone , so excuse the brevity.  First, I must say that I have always adored train travel from a young age.  Hearing trains go by in the night always gave me a feeling of wanderlust (which is a great word, by the way). It only seemed natural that we would begin our long journey with a train trip. It has been barely for hours since our train, the Southwest Chief, rolled sedately out of Chicago this afternoon. Already, I feel like I’m in a different world. We have been gazing at western Illinois and Iowa, many green and undulating fields flashing by. We also just enjoyed a quiet dinner opposite a Suzuki piano teacher from Lawrence, Kansas, and sipped tea while talking about WWOOFing.

We took the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Continue reading On the train! →