Karibu means “you’re welcome” in Swahili, the language shared by many countries of East Africa. As tourists in Tanzania, we were continuously greeted with this word, even before we said “thank you”. However, unlike the suggestive and perhaps slightly snarky “you’re welcome” one might say, for example, to a child who has forgotten to say […]
The following post was written by Libbey as part of her Kindergarten writing curriculum (spelling was corrected by her teacher): Yesterday I visited the Maasai. The Maasais killed a goat. It was cool. The Maasais sleep on cow skin. It was really dark in their room. They shell beans by whacking a stick on the […]
Since our departure from California in early June, we have not yet experienced any major American holidays abroad until now. We celebrated the 4th of July in NYC (where better?) and several family birthdays en route (Rowena the night before we left, Libbey in NYC, Rainier in the Bernese Oberland, and Shefler in Lucerne), but […]
We had such great hopes for Paris. Those of the seven of us who are less enamored of the whistle-stop-style tour (i.e., if it’s Tuesday, this must be Brussels) have been eager for our longer tenure here, a whole month! We rocketed through the Pacific Northwest and western Canada, spending at most two nights anywhere. […]
There is an iconic figure, at least to the American mind, that is some conflation of Mary Poppins, Jane Eyre, Maria from Sound of Music (OK, I know she wasn’t British, but Julie Andrews!), and countless Victorian novels. It is the British Nanny. Those who know me well know that I love both Victorian literature […]
