Home is where my bed is

For the Fourth of July weekend we were lucky enough to be invited to Cambridge, Maryland, which is located on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Our friend’s grandmother lives there and her uncle has a boat there, so we spent two fun days waterskiing, tubing, eating, and chatting. I thought it was a really nice place and I loved being on the water (I always say that lack of water to swim in is my main complaint with DC.) Plus grandma was a lot of fun – she was absolutely thrilled to fix us Piña Coladas before dinner!

The plan was for boyfriend and me to stay at a Bed and Breakfast not far away from grandma’s house. It sounded like a good plan, and the BB was really beautiful – the house is from 1740 and has lots of flowers outside. However, things did not go according to plan…

Continue reading "Cambridge, Maryland: Fourth of July" »

I have a blog friend with a very cool blog: Jesus Was Not A Republican. I very much enjoy her writings, but she also has another very cool thing going for her: she makes the most beautiful and innovative arts and crafts with Guatemalan textiles and materials. She has been living in Guatemala since spring 2007 and has done a wonderful job at immersing herself in the culture and has a wealth of knowledge on traditional Guatemalan clothing, for instance. She can identify huipiles (the beautiful blouses that Guatemalan indigenous women wear) from different regions, towns, and villages. She has become fluent in Spanish and has also done some great work helping migrant farm worker communities.

Erin has a crafts blog where you can see her art and also learn more about Guatemalan handicrafts, La Chapina Huipil Crafts. (Guatemalans often refer to themselves as chapines (plural), or chapin for a man and chapina for a woman.)

The best part, however, is that you can buy her beautiful products at her Etsy shop. (Etsy is a marketplace for hand made arts and crafts, where you buy directly from the seller.) Some of you commented that you really liked the couple I posted about earlier, so here is your chance to look at some really great art from Guatemala. In addition, if you yourself like to create, Erin also sells very unique materials, such as pieces of huipiles, that can be made into beautiful pieces. Enjoy!

(And sorry for not writing lately - my arms are hurting so I am trying to stay away from the computer!)

I feel bad that I haven't written more about Suriname, but honestly, I don't have that much to say! I also didn't take a lot of photos. So I figured I'd post a couple of photos of some things I bought in Guatemala back in April.

I love this couple! The photo doesn't do them justice but they look really great in real life.

These are some place mats woven in beautiful colors:

Dear Small Country, I am a traveler and love to explore new places. Some of my favorite places are Small Countries: Nicaragua, Panama, Turks and Caicos... Small Countries can have a lot to offer and I appreciate the impact (sustainable) tourism can have. However, sometimes Small Countries suffer from Short Man (or Napoleon) Syndrome. This means that they feel a strong need to prove that they are strong and powerful even if they are Small. And they usually do this by imposing lots of regulations.

Dearest Small Country, why do you make me show my passport and ticket three times before security - even if I am just in transit? (I appreciate the need to employ people, but this is not making tourism any easier.) Why do you spend valuable minutes (minutes I could have spent shopping in YOUR tax free stores) handwriting notations in my passport, and checking whether I need a transit visa - just for a layover? Why do I have to fill out entry forms and departure forms just for transit? (During my round trip I did four entry forms and three exit forms, even though I was only staying in one country.) And why did you take my mini-bottle of rum, even though it was in a sealed bag and just slightly over three ounces?

Dear pretty Small Country, if you want more tourists, and more tourism, please make it a little bit easier to enter. I am not here to steal your jobs, just trying to catch a connecting flight, you know.

Sincerely Yours,

@

Thanks for all the nice comments! Isn't it fun to learn about a country most people haven't heard of? I feel very privileged that I had the opportunity to go - and I love all the stamps in my passport! I will say, however, if they are going to attract more tourism, they need more flights! You can go to Amsterdam every day, I think, with either Suriname Airways or KLM, but to go to North America (and in that I am including Central America and the Caribbean) you have to fly through Port of Spain, Trinidad, and there are only 4 flights a week, each way. Then again, I guess a country of 450,000 people can't sustain it. They do have a lot to offer in the eco-tourism, biodiversity arena though.

I have a few more pictures but with working and the rain it was hard to take pictures. I'll post some later. (By the way, the ruins from the first photo is an old fort by the river. And the statue in the other picture is of an (East) Indian man and woman, symbolizing the first East Indians to arrive in Suriname.)