I've been busy ... here's a post by and (marginally humilitating) video of me on National Geographic TRAVELER's blog: http://intelligenttravel.typepad.com/it/2008/08/costa-rica-zip.html#more
Posts
Picking Up Where I Left Off in Chapter 6 Speaking of race and difference and the resentment they needlessly yet inevitably enable, anthropologists like myself are taught to say and to be able to explain the fact that the concept of race has no biological reality, no gene-based salience. In fact, if you analyze the genetic make-up of people living in Africa today and compare it to that of those people living beyond humanity’s first home, you’ll find that there’s more genetic diversity inside Africa than anywhere beyond it. Fascinating. These findings have to do with early human migrations out of Africa. More people stayed than originally left but those who left and went on to people the far corners of our earth reproduced amongst themselves for many generations. You can learn more about this concept if you go online and check out the American Anthropological Association’s website or ask an anthropologist. Believe me, it’s true. Okay, once we accept that “race” has not biological releva...
6. Language Back to seventh grade at Saucon Valley Middle School: It was time to choose what foreign language I would learn. The decision was simple for me. It involved thinking what other language, besides English, I heard around me. Spanish. That's all. So, I thought, I should learn Spanish. This simple decision has taken me to many places and brought many new people and ideas to me that I'm so happy I chose wisely. Perhaps I'd say the same thing had I selected French or German but I can pretty confidently say no. Yes, if I had studied German I would have lived abroad in Germany and had adventures, indulging in too many drunken nights and visiting too many medieval castles as I did in Spain but beyond that year, coming back to a United States, where would German have taken me? My knowledge of Spanish and the window it provides me into Spanish and Hispanic culture in the United States informs how I understand our conflicted and perhaps hypocritical nation, divided as we ar...
5. To Madrid, September 1996
Out of Penn my third year, I flew to Spain. I think I shared a row on the plane with a Spanish jai lai player. We talked all night. I arrived at Madrid's Barajas Airport exhausted but elated. I was on my own in a new country; I was 19. I expected to see other students heading to our program's appointed meeting spot, a University of Madrid dormitory I would come to call “the bunker,” and readily identified one donning a University of Michigan sweatshirt. I approached her, introduced myself, and with Kristie from Battle Creek, Michigan, grabbed a cab off to the center of Madrid. We chatted with the cab driver while en route. I was wary we'd be ripped off as I had been warned by guidebooks. But, I think we fared quite well. I was pretty shy with my Spanish but Kristie did her best and talked to the driver about her father, who worked at the General Mills cereal plant. Our discussion revolved around Cheerios. After about a half an hour, we arrived at the bunker. We took the ski...