The first thing I did this morning was check my email. I am now a homeowner. My friend signed the closing documents for me yesterday and I am now the proud owner of a super fabulous little house in Tucson, Arizona. This trip is exciting and great and amazing, but I am way more excited about my house than I am about this trip. I am very weary of all the people and pollution and rubbish in the streets of India. But, I am still in India, so on with the show! After a celebratory breakfast across the street at Cafe Edelweiss, which was excellent and cheap, we went back to the room for a while and took care of some things as we were in no particular hurry today, and then we ventured off to ... read more

This morning started with me fixing the toilet. The tank didn't refill last night, so this morning I decided to turn on the water and see what happened. The tank filled. The fixture leaked significantly, but since I was taking a shower and there were no doors on the shower anyway (almost all showers are like this in India) I figured a leaky fixture didn't really matter. I'd rather have a toilet that flushes. But that's the only problem in this hotel. They delivered coffee to our room this morning and we took two bottles of water and they didn't charge us for any of it. I know they wanted a good review on airbnb.com, but even if they charged us, I would've given them a good review. Hotel Jeet Villa is inexpensive and good! And ... read more

I dreaded today's long drive to Khuri Village, near Jaisalmer, but the road was actually really good and we didn't see any dead camels. We did, however, see a lot of live animals on the road- goats, sheep, cows, a deer, and camels, of course. Who knew India had so many camels? Rajasthan certainly does. And on the road there are very few cars, but a lot of big trucks transporting just about anything you can imagine. And we saw a lot of people just standing around, young men mostly. Standing around in villages, at intersections, in the middle of nowhere. Just waiting. For what? Work? A bus? Life? It's sad. But many countries I have visited have young men standing around doing nothing - Vietnam, Cambodia, Jordan, Turkey especially. So many people with no work. ... read more

Second day in India and we are feeling good. Quite happy to leave Hotel Ashiana, but we knew we still had a day left in Delhi at the end of our trip to see more sights and go shopping, so we were ready to hit the road to Mandawa. It was going to be a long drive and Annette and I didn't have breakfast or more importantly, coffee! On the way out of Delhi, we told Hardev we wanted coffee after we passed a Costa Coffee and Coffee Day Cafe, India's impressive version of a western cafe, at Connaught Place. We're not sure what he didn't understand, but he didn't stop. For a long time. We would soon learn that once we were on the road with Hardev, we didn't stop until we hit a Midway ... read more

I went to Turkey to live there. For a long time. Maybe even a lifetime. And that didn't work out. I'm back in Kuwait now, teaching English at a university. But some people have asked me to write about my life in Selçuk, near Izmir and Kusadasi on the Aegean Sea, even though it wasn't technically a holiday. But, I wasn't working, so it sort of ended up being a holiday after all. Originally I wanted to open a business there with my then boyfriend, who is a carpet dealer working for his pony-tailed brother in Selcuk, but after a few months, I figured out that wasn't at all what I wanted. So in December I decided to go back to teaching internationally and started looking for jobs, knowing that a couple more years of teaching ... read more