Blogs from Greenville, North Carolina, United States, North America

We are 2 days away from leaving on our trip and we are getting excited. We have our suitcases mostly packed, and are wrapping up arrangements for taking care of our affairs at home.... read more

I don’t sleep at night. I’m sure it’s getting annoying for the rest of my family—looking at my sunken in eye-sockets and putting up with my cranky, sleep deprived moods during the day—but I simply cannot turn off my brain when I close my eyes at night. I do not know what the next few months hold for me, and it’s absolutely driving me crazy. It is literally keeping me up nights. When I lay down, every wonder, concern, excitement, question, and anxiety surfaces. Every thought I could possibly have about a trip to Europe pops into my head in quick succession and before I know it, it’s several hours later and all I’ve done is create more questions for myself. It’s frustrating in a way, to be totally clueless. But it’s also exhilarating… the possibilities ... read more

As I rode south of Scotland Neck, North Carolina, I began seeing a new structure among the barns of many farms. Standing two stories tall and measuring perhaps 20x20 feet with no windows and a single door, I kept wondering to myself what they were. Many of these buildings were sided in wood, but some of them were covered in sheet metal. All of them though looked as though they hadn't been used in years. Doors and siding were falling off, and in some cases the roofs were rusting through. I finally stopped and asked about them, and I was informed that the unusual buildings were tobacco drying sheds. In that context it made sense why they stood in disuse, for I had yet to see a single field planted with tobacco. In fact, I had ... read more