I turned 30 on Sunday. Wasn’t that big of a deal in the end. It’s sort of mad to think that I worried so grandly about it for like, ten years – and regularly made a right mess of things because of this mad looming fear of being Too Old for Stuff – and then it just happened regardless and it’s basically fine.
Continue readingAt Home | Chrysalis
Another writing. Go!
Continue readingAt Home | NUT HATCH!
Another speedy one. Not because I have a lesson. I do have lessons but they start at 12 today because I like to take Monday mornings to do creative stuff. Like this!
Continue readingAt Home | The Big 3-0
Wag’wan.
Only got 30 minutes to write this before my next class starts. I’ve been working like a nutter for the last two months, teaching English, and on the side I’m trying to get my novel published – editing it, sending it to folks – and I’m also trying to get in shape, and I’m also trying to do social life stuff, and I’m also trying to eat a balanced healthy diet, and I’m also trying to get enough sleep, and—
Continue readingAt Home | A Charming New Vocation
Dear reader,
Since we last met, I have been reborn – reborn from the ashes of post-travel depression. Like a phoenix! A clumsy, somewhat dirty phoenix yes – but a phoenix!
I teach English now, part time. I teach it to people far away via ‘the internet’. Here: let me tell you all about it.
Continue readingColombia | Homeward Bound
I spent three weeks in Cali, in total. I didn’t leave for home on the 5th of February as planned; for reasons I can’t be bothered to get into (I’m a knob), I moved my flight home back a week, to the 12th of February out of Bogota.
Continue readingColombia | Dancehall
I was nervous to visit Cali for a bunch of reasons.
Continue readingColombia | Darkness
When evening fell on our first day in the jungle, it was time for the night hike.
Continue readingColombia | Into The Jungle
Our little boat moored one hour upriver from Leticia. The opposite bank of the river is Peru, and that’s where we climbed ashore. From the boat, we had to climb a muddy series of ladders to get up the bank. Alain (the Goblin) told us this was because the river, in its eternal ebbs and flows, was currently eroding this bank and depositing the silt on the other side; one collapses, the other widens into a new sandbar. With heavy rains recently, each day new great chunks of the bank were crumbling into the river, taking with them entire trees, and eventually, people’s homes.
Continue readingColombia | Tales From The River
I was nervous when I woke up. I lay on my bunk and thought about the ten thousand things that might go awry in the jungle. Bites, parasites, broken bones, falling branches, plus a thousand other horrors I couldn’t even fully form drifted through my mind. When I’m scared I always tell myself the same thing: this is what an adventure feels like. This is part of it. You can never be sure of what will happen. Do it anyway.
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