Intestinal Fortitude: An essay in Notre Dame Magazine
I wrote this essay a month after we arrived in Laos, way back in 2010. It was bought that same year by Notre Dame Magazine. They finally printed it in their spring 2013 issue, which came out just a week before I left Luang Prabang. The piece was originally titled The Hungry Months and the editors renamed it Intestinal Fortitude. I’ve included the beginning here for you (to read the whole piece jump on over to Notre Dame Magazine). Below the excerpt I’ve added some photos from that trip to Viengkham. Looking at those shots now is a bit surreal. It hasn’t yet been three years...
Read MoreFarewell, Luang Prabang
Ever since I published my post discussing how I hadn’t taken time yet to think about farewelling Luang Prabang, Mike has been bugging encouraging me to write a goodbye post on things I’ll miss about this little fairytale town. He even wrote his own list to show me how it’s done, titled the document “I like LPB”, and put it in our shared Dropbox folder. Mike’s list has 36 items on it. I haven’t read them yet, because I figured that might be cheating. I thought briefly about just posting his list and being done with it, but regretfully decided that was also probably cheating. So...
Read MoreTimeless Choices
Christmas was just a couple of weeks ago, right? I remember thinking that I needed to write a post on books I’d loved in 2012, set some creative goals for 2013, and find a great birthday present for Mike to make up for the fact that my Christmas presents consisted of some basil seeds, my old broken kindle, and a child’s toy with a bite taken out it. But now it’s April. I still need to do all of that, and Mike’s birthday was in the beginning of March. I’m taking a deep, soothing breath and telling myself that this is to be expected when you live in a small town whose slogan is...
Read MoreLeaving On A Jet Plane
The same weekend that Love At The Speed Of Email launched, way back in June last year, Mike and I learned that we’d be leaving Luang Prabang in April 2013. Mike’s position is being handed over to a Lao national staff member, which is good. Working yourself out of a job is exactly what you want to do in international development work, and Mike’s great at that sort of capacity building. So this is a good thing, and we always knew we wouldn’t be here long term. And, yet. There’s a difference between knowing you won’t be somewhere long term – that you might be moving in “oh, a...
Read MoreWhat does busy look like?
You might have noticed that my personal blogging has dropped of rather precipitously during the last couple of months. There are a couple of reasons for that, but one of them is that I’ve been busy. I know, that B word. I don’t like that B word very much. When I find myself using that word when people ask me how I am, I also tend to find myself feeling rushed and hurried, as if I’m galloping through life two steps behind a very long to-do list. I find myself losing sight of the bigger picture, the why behind all of the items on that list. I get confused about which to dos are important...
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