Archives
From the town of Benson, AZ, the looming size of Cochise Stronghold strikes you in the face for the first time. And you’re still about 30 miles away. From then on, as you pummel down the highway, barely able to control your excitement to finally grip Southern Arizona granite with your fingertips and toes, the Stronghold draws you in slowly, like a moth attracted to the limelight of a headlamp. Cochise Stronghold… Read More
December 20th-22, 2021 Joshua Tree National Park sits due east, about two and half hours, of Long Beach, CA, on the ancestral lands of many different indigenous tribes, including the Serrano, Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, and Mojave peoples. Because it’s so close to home, Whitney and I decided to drop Dottie off at her grandparent’s house. For anyone who has experienced how Dottie travels in the car, you understand full well why we opted… Read More
December 18th, 2021 The glittering white sand dunes made themselves apparent as we rumbled down the mountain pass on highway 82 from Cloudcroft, New Mexico. There was an urge to stop and take a picture of the landscape. The remaining mountains that stood in the foreground and the flat, dry desert with its milky center marking the dunes surely would have been a memorable photo, but we rolled on anyway, wanting more… Read More
As my birthday approaches during the current pandemic, I am spending time reflecting on what it means to not necessarily feel special at this time. Me, like so many others, are experiencing what it feels like to have a meaningful event get put on hold, or worse, completely washed over. Others are postponing the weddings they’ve been planning for years while some high school and college graduates experience the anti-climatic culmination of… Read More
In Peru, one of the most common ways to say goodbye to someone is “cuidate“. For a group of people, it would be “cuidense“. It comes from the verb cuidarse which means to take care of or to look after. After a while, I found myself saying this a lot. I would even step it up a notch and say “cuidate mucho” which doesn’t really make sense in English. You probably wouldn’t… Read More
My two years in Peru were surrounded by mountains. I lived in the Andes. Between the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra. It was epically beautiful to have such towering mountains on all sides of me every single day. They were always the highest things. The sun and moon would always set and rise behind them. My horizon was greatly diminished in distance because of how close I was living to the… Read More
Another thing I have noticed since I’ve been back in the US is that some of my eating habits have changed. The most obvious to me is my concern for not wasting food. While living in Peru I learned not to say no to someone who is offering you food. Along with that, it is very important to finish everything on your plate. Receiving food and being grateful for it is really… Read More
Adjusting back to the pace of Los Angeles has been interesting. For the most part, I do a lot of bicycle riding. I work on my bike as a courier, and when I go to my nanny job, I commute on bicycle. However there are some times when I need to drive. This mostly is when I am commuting to the farther reaches of Los Angeles or leaving the city completely. Since… Read More
Readjusting back into the United States has been an interesting process. What I have discovered is that once you’ve lived in a different culture for long enough, culture shock impacts you once again when you shift back to your home country. Culture shock works in both directions. This post isn’t necessarily about the moments of culture shock I’ve experienced since I’ve been back in the United States. Although that would be pretty… Read More
Teddy Dondanville 