“I lived in the US for 20 years,” our Argentinian friend Kitty told us in perfect English, “but still, I never felt comfortable when I had to talk on the phone.” Well, I won’t make “talking on the phone” a short-term goal for my Spanish learning anytime soon, I thought. Little did I know, life…

After twenty uninterrupted minutes reading my book, I looked around the empty room. The pilgrims who’d arrived earlier in the afternoon had finished their laundry and showers and were either resting upstairs or in town eating or grocery shopping. I peeked out the window. No backpack laden pilgrims were traipsing up the hill toward our…

In 2012, over the course of my 37 days on the Camino de Santiago, generosity knew no bounds. This network of thousand-year-old pilgrimage trails is walked by hundreds of thousands of people each year and, in reality, is a moving community of people helping people. Unable to find my way out of a large city…

Bob and I met in 2011 during a Scottish cooking class at the John C. Campbell Folk School. I never intended to take a course in Scottish cooking–and, in fact, had no idea what kinds of things one would even make in a Scottish cooking class–but that is a story for another day. Weeks later,…