After seven years living amongst our neighbors to the south, I have recently returned “home” to the US of A. I say “home” because I’m a West Coast kid and now I live in Baltimore, which is nothing like the West Coast. Honestly, I culture-shocked less moving from California to Mexico City. And also, because […]
Mexico
You’ve never heard a kid scream until you’ve heard one who knows his daddy is no longer in control. When the earthquake struck, I had my headphones in. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t working, I was starting to zone out a bit. Some days I’m more productive than others and this was not a productive […]
Having a child changes a man. Perhaps not as much as it changes a woman but a fair bit. A friend of mine recently had his first kid and decided to take up hunting. He’s a successful nurse in a big-time hospital but somewhere deep inside him, he wanted to know he could provide meat […]
I know this guy. He’s a good guy – hard working, wants to do right by his wife and kid – but somehow he’s found himself in an unusual position in the debate over US/Mexico immigration. This fellow adores his home country but also has a healthy sense of wanderlust. Yes he loves his countrymen and his family […]
Living in a foreign country can be exhilarating. Every time you step out your front door you are exploring a strange and exciting land. It’s like you are always on vacation. Likewise, reporting in a foreign country can be amazing as you get to dig into another culture in a way that no one else […]
I’ve been traveling a lot recently. I spent the month of August in China and Vienam, I went to Sweden in October, and of course I’ve been bouncing between my home in Mexico City and the good ol’ US of A. And you know what all this travel has gotten me thinking about? Institutions. I assume […]
The other day I was walking home and I noticed that the local herbal remedy place in the neighborhood had closed down. It was a cheery place, with pictures of flowers on the windows, and often a pretty girl outside to lure in customers. It may have been a tad corporate-looking but I never really […]
Joey Pakes was swimming in a cave in Mexico on July 4, 2008 when she spotted her first remipede. Pakes, a graduate student in biology at UC Berkeley, had seen pictures of these aquatic centipede-like creatures before. But when she encountered one in the wild, the experience was completely different. “They’re such graceful animals,” she recalls. “It […]