I lived in Japan for one year, teaching ESL, traveled extensively throughout the country, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore. Recently I spent six months in Central America, studying Spanish, traveling and meeting with environmental, human rights and labor rights activists. Eschew tour groups and prefer to travel independently and free-wheeling, as I find the best adventures and richest experiences come from wandering off the tourist path and poking around in markets, striking up conversations with people on park benches and while riding in local transportation (whatever that might be!). This mode of traveling allows me to practice my photography skills and find great pieces of pottery along the way.

Books I could not put down
(in alphabetical order):

Fiction:
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
Don Quixote, Miguel Cervantes
Wild Swans, Jung Chang
The Annunciation, Ellen Gilchrist
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
Mason Dixon, Thomas Pynchon
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

Non-fiction:
Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America & the Caribbean, Edited by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez
The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggeman
Grassroots Postmodernism, Gustavo Esteva & Madhu Prakash
Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, John Lewis
Destined to Witness, Hans J. Massaquoi
Food Politics, Marion Nestle
Stolen Harvest, Vandana Shiva
Seeds of Deception, Jeffrey Smith
Globalization and its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz
Human Cost of Food: Farmworker’s Lives, Labor and Advocacy, Charles Dillard Thompson & Melinda Wiggins

Current bedside reading fare:
Mary, Queen of Scots, Margaret George
Feminism without Borders, Chandra Mohanty
The Jesus Movement: A Social History of the First Century, Eckard and Wolfgang Steggeman
The Moosewood Restaurant New Classics cookbook