Down the Wrabbit Hole: Liebster Blog Award Recipient

Writing this blog is a labor of love for me. My posts are like diary entries about the most exciting, enchanting, or exhilarating moments in my life. Writing these entries is cathartic, and re-reading them down the road akin to visiting an old friend.

I don't monetize my blog. (That is, as of January 2013 - that may change, who knows? Right now, I don't think I have enough traffic to make minimization worth my while...) I don't ask for PayPal donations, or petition sponsors to send me free stuff. Any magazine articles I write are from the heart and don't benefit my wallet. I'm not in this for the "goods". I do this because I love to travel, and I want to share my stories with like-minded people.

Travel & Escape TV Host Audition: Vote for Me!

I love teaching. I truly, truly do. You could say it is my calling.

But how cool would it be to moonlight as a TV travel host? (Or even better, begin a second career as a TV travel host?) This is a rhetorical question, because we all know the instant answer is, "AMAZING!" I am now hoping to find out. I have sent in an audition spot to the travel channel Travel and Escape with wildly hopeful ambitions to become their newest host for the show "My Top 10".

Journey to Antiquity: The Village of Assisi, Italy

If it weren't for the Black Plague, the lack of hygiene, the gigantic discrepancies between rich and poor, and the non-existence of most modern-day technologies, I think I would have fared very well during the medieval ages. The poetry was pretty good. Dresses were nice, if you were part of the nobility. I wouldn't have minded a knight in shining armor or two, as well.

Backyard Bucket List: A Hunter's Haven in Calgary, Alberta

I am not a hunter. Please let me emphasize this before I begin my post. I love cute animals, and when I was young, I wished I was Sleeping Beauty so that all the animals of the forest would follow me around and sing with me. I wanted birds to help bake my birthday cake, just like in the cartoon. Of course, I now realize the cake would be riddled with chunks of bird droppings and dusted with a light coating of feathers and parasites, but back then, it was my dream.

Tuscan Terra Cotta: The Fima Pottery Factory

In the Italian province of Perugia, in the hilly Umbria region, near the famous village of Assisi and its Basilica Papale di San Francesco, lies a quaint and unassuming pottery factory. Located on the edge of a village, the Fima Pottery Factory is nothing really spectacular to look at from the outside. Inside, however, is a totally different story.