No, I tell anyone who asks, I'm not afraid to come to Juarez. Not even last year around this time when the murdering was at it's height. I just never really had a reason to come. I guess I could have gone exploring, but I admit, I had paranoia instilled in me by the locals. It's dangerous, stay away. I had made a few brief visits, never staying longer than a few hours, but I could never quite venture over there alone. I wasn't scared. I think I was just doing what I was told and not giving much thought to what I really wanted. True, it's about the deadliest city in Mexico, and by all international standards, that has to be pretty bad, even with the recent military influx, which the locals admit helps. But ... read more

We step onto a platform. Not a train station, but an empty wooden platform. The only sign of human life is a hotel about a five-minute walk away. We head for the hotel to see if that’s where we buy tickets for the next train. The valet tells us we just have to go back and wait for the next train. We return to the platform. Leslie is becoming increasingly upset, but I am relatively calm. “Okay, we’re going to need to change our flight to a later flight.” “I can call home and get the customer service number for Orbitz,” Leslie says. She checks the time. “Oh, my God, it’s four in the morning in Missouri. I’ll call and ask my mom to get it.” “I’ll try to find a number for Air Portugal on ... read more

We do not go out after dinner. “I need to sleep tonight.” I tell Leslie. “I’m going to take a sleeping pill, so you have to get up first thing in the morning and call the ticket office again. They have an English-speaking operator. You just press the right number or something.” “Okay, I can do that. So you want me to just check on the prices then?” “Yes, ask about the price for each ticket and for each leg of the travel and about changing stations in Madrid.” I am dead asleep when I hear Leslie’s alarm go off. She crawls out of bed with her phone. I wake up again as she climbs back into bed after her call. Everything must be taken care of. We both wake up about an hour later. “So ... read more

“You know, Leslie,” I suggest during our never-ending twelve-hour train ride. “When we get to Barcelona, we should look into buying plane tickets to Lisbon instead of taking a train. Sometimes, you can find plane tickets really cheap.” “I read that in Spain, travel by train is really cheap, so we can probably find cheap train tickets.” “Yeah, but it might be worth it to pay a little extra because it might save us an entire day of travel. Lisbon is pretty far from Barcelona.” “But the book said train travel is cheap in Spain, and I’m on a budget.” This is Leslie-speak for I’m going to save all my money to shop for hip, trendy and vintage garments when we get to London, even if it means I must ride a train to the ends ... read more

Leslie and I walk back to our hostel the first night in Nice. “I think I’m getting sick,” I say. “You think so? How?” It is damp in Nice. Overcast, cool and humid. A typical September. I’ve been stress for the last two weeks, but I hope it is just the weather. “You can’t get sick on our trip. It’s only the second day.” Leslie is my complimentary opposite in nearly every way. Physically, she is about my same size, but has no curves. She has striking facial features, dramatic blue eyes, white as a sheet and thick, brown, straight hair. She believes in logic and cold, hard facts and lacks any smidge intuition. She lives to be a tourist and has no interest in blending in. She spends the next day dragging me in my ... read more

I sipped a glass of red wine and chatted with the students, who were eager to get to know the new girl. There were a couple of Kazaks and Russians, some Lebanese and Syrians, one overly cocky half Italian half French guy, the adorably innocent twenty-two year old Iraqi secretary, and several Iranians who tended to follow their introductions with, “But don’t worry. I love Americans.” Regardless of their nationalities, nearly all were children. Most were eighteen or nineteen year old acting students, and very few reached into their early twenties. Most were on their own for the first time and convinced that NYFA was a sure way to get a call any moment from a casting agent in Hollywood. I wanted to root them all on in their endeavors, but mostly I just felt a ... read more

I couldn’t believe it. For the last four years I had had two claims to fame. One was seeing Brad Pitt at the University of Missouri Columbia supporting a filmmaker who had made a documentary about John Kerry during his run for president in 2004. The other was the same year when Spike Lee visited and spoke about his education and early years in the filmmaking industry. What stood out to me most at that time was his commitment to encouraging and mentoring young, unknown talent. His most impressive move came when someone asked how one could get a script made into a film. This is when Spike Lee gave entire audience his office fax number and encouraged us to fax him our unsolicited scripts. I had scoured the Internet and nagged professors about how to ... read more

I must have landed in Abu Dhabi about the same time as Spike Lee. Maybe we were even on the same plane. I wouldn’t have noticed anyway. I was too busy gawking out the window at the dazzling display of the yellow luminosity with intermittently dispersed white radiance, all lined to perfection in an endless grid that seemed to simultaneously define and insult modern art on an astronomical scale. I stared down at the world’s new playground for the rich, not wanting to move from my seat and cursing myself for storing both my camera and my tampons in the overhead compartment. My jaw hung open slightly, as it does from time to time when I’m either thinking very intently or daydreaming without any conscious sense of reality. I sealed my mouth and looked covertly to ... read more