Tara Munch

"No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist I should have read Emerson before I moved to Germany. I have never in my life felt the lack of language so profoundly! I spent two years in Mongolia with the tiniest amount of Mongolian (I am ,however, fluent in Mongolian taxi) without feeling the frustration and embarrassment that is and will continue to be my lot in life until I learn German. When you lack the ability to communicate in the native language, you cannot fully participate in day-to-day life, understand the culture, or communicate with the people (obviously!). The language barrier can be anywhere from slightly frustrating ... read more

"No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist I should have read Emerson before I moved to Germany. I have never in my life felt the lack of language so profoundly! I spent two years in Mongolia with the tiniest amount of Mongolian (I am ,however, fluent in Mongolian taxi) without feeling the frustration and embarrassment that is and will continue to be my lot in life until I learn German. When you lack the ability to communicate in the native language, you cannot fully participate in day-to-day life, understand the culture, or communicate with the people (obviously!). The language barrier can be anywhere from slightly frustrating ... read more

Here ' s a tip for all you ladies as you are traveling. Make sure that your bag doesn't have a huge hole in it before you head off for a full day of European adventures. You might just lose your keys. Yes, the curse of Tara being locked out of her apartment has struck Germany as well. Let me just go over both the high and low points of the adventure. I was getting ready to leave a friend ' s house (late at night it should be noted) and in the midst of packing up all my things I sensibly decided to check and make sure that I had my keys. I don ' t normally do this but luck was on my side for once . Not because I actually had my keys ... read more

We take a break from our regularly scheduled Mongolia Blog to go hunting... "Who am I anyway? Am I my resume? That is a picture of a person I don't know. What does he want from me? What should I try to be? So many faces all around and here we go, I need this job Oh God, I need this show." I was in London this week but the only way that I knew that is because people kept mentioning it. I wasn’t there for London (this time) I was there for the Search Associates London- January Recruitment Fair 2010. In December I gave my school in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia notice that I would not be returning in August for another teaching year. You can probably figure out the implications of that on your own but ... read more

I wonder about the people that I meet or walk by or attempt to talk to in the course of a day. The edges of their lives just barely touching mine. People that I remember and think about but don t really know. The woman who checks me out at the grocery store, the man I pass on the street walking home, or the man I see living in the steam pipes across the street. Who are they? What is their story? Even when we talk I don ' t always know and the connection doesn't always last. For example, my next door neighbor came to my door the other night. I don ' t generally get unexpected visitors , and since all the doors of the apartments in my building are clustered together , at ... read more

I am in a new apartment this year. This is cause for celebration. Actually I moved at the end of last school year. It is much nicer than my old apartment and close enough to the school that I can walk which is great because that means that I don’t have to deal with Mongolian traffic five days a week. It takes about ten minutes to walk school even though it looks as if they are right next to each other. I will probably be sad about this in the winter when it is nasty cold but I keep telling myself that I managed in Alaska and I can manage here. My landlord speaks English. This is a good thing because about a week after I moved into my new apartment the hot water turned off. ... read more

This blog is belated. You can tell that it is belated because the last one that I wrote was in April. Seriously April?! What is wrong with me? Okay, new goal for this school year. One blog a week. It may not actually happen but I am setting this as my goal anyway. Let me assure you that in the time that I wasn’t writing thing were actually happening. Not all of them were interesting but still… Anyhow… on to Peru! As you can probably tell from the title of this blog my Spanish (while pretty darn bad) is much much better than my Mongolian. The flight to Peru was much shorter than I thought it would be. Just short of seven hours from Newark. The plane was also not the monster that I have become ... read more