Articles tagged with: mine
Guinea 041
Wednesday, January 24 7:00 a.m.
I realize looking back that I didn’t write very much in Dalaba even though I was there for six nights. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that my rhythm was disrupted. I was accustomed to going to bed fairly early, waking up early (and well rested), then carving out a couple morning hours for writing. But the …
Guinea 022
Saturday, December 30 8:00 a.m.
I came across Ali around 6:30 last night sitting in the chair of honor in the semi dark outside his house. He said that he had fallen sick to his stomach and so hadn’t been able to have dinner with me. It was a particularly believable tale because I had just spent much of the day myself trapped near a toilet. …
024 – Asa Belobelo – Eat Fish
Zebachew invited me to go with him to an azmari beat or traditional Ethiopian music house. I knew even before I came to Ethiopia that one night would find me at an azmari beat. It’s one of those traditional things that is mentioned in every book. For that reason I wasn’t exactly excited about it. I suspected that it might be at one extreme a …
014 – You You
When Dawit stood me up on the trip to the market, I took the plunge and unleashed the powers of my “Route 66” mountain bike with its Rhino rims, Python tires, Snakebite tubes and 24 speed LX gears on the city. I simply chose a direction and went. The layout of Addis was still a mystery. I find if my first day in a new …
008 – The Palm Hotel
The front of the Palm was in fact a lively bar. Behind it was a dingy room with wobbly tables and equally wobbly chairs. They called it a restaurant, but it had none of the trappings of even a greasy spoon. Just outside the rear door to this room was a large trough where customers washed their hands before and after meals. The saddest and …
Korea 016 – The Subway War
I enjoyed going to Kyongbokkung. It was one of the larger stops and had been designed to double as an art gallery. There were often interesting displays of painting, photography or sculpture gracing the walls. In the mornings, however, I had little time to linger and joined the legions of commuters shuffling down into the tunnels of the subway system. A quick three stops brought …
Korea 015 – My Morning Routine
The days at the Munwha drifted surreally by, the change from one to the next barely noticed in my exhausted state. Getting ready at 5:30 in the morning in cold darkness was always a struggle. The night before, I could have made everything ready, but the call of a cold beer and conversation after my last class at the local hof was always stronger. The …
Korea 002 – Arrival
ARRIVAL
When I saw Seoul from the air, my heart sank. It sprawled snow covered for miles in all directions, a crush of aggressively square buildings without a tree in sight to break up the monotony. From the crowded airport bus, I could see nothing at all except the occasional light in the darkness. The outside of the windows were sheeted in ice from the storm, …