Several questions keep popping up when people learn of my upcoming adventure, a month-long trip to Chile in March. Here are three of them.
“Why?”
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Most of my adult life was spent in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There I taught university-level English, freelanced as a nonfiction writer, married, raised two daughters, and got to know the island and islanders with an intimacy for which I will always feel blessed. During my years there, I wanted to visit South America, not so much as a tourist but as someone who could become, ever so briefly, a part of the place. However, way led onto way, and the opportunity didn’t present itself until my husband and I relocated to Spokane, Washington.
Here in Spokane, the one job I found was part-time and temporary, so I dusted off a partially completed manuscript, begun twenty years earlier, joined a fiction writers group, and completed the novel, set primarily in Puerto Rico during World War II. The logical next step, getting it published, has proved far more difficult than writing it. To boost flagging spirits, I began a second novel and decided to set it in another exotic locale, one which I would just have to visit …
“Why Chile?”
It is in South America, it is a safe place for a woman traveling alone, and it has a breathtaking diversity of landscapes and communities. What more could any traveler/writer want?
“Alone?!”
Reactions to the fact that I, an older woman, will be traveling alone to Chile have ranged from skepticism (this, ironically, from a travel agent) to delight (a Chilean friend here in Spokane). Even the computer has weighed in, popping up an ad recommending tour-group travel to Chile for those aged fifty and up. In point of fact, I won’t be entirely alone. My older daughter Astrid will abandon husband and work in San Diego and join me for a week, my younger daughter Elise will cheer me on from her too-busy-to-travel job in Manhattan, and my husband John, remaining in Spokane to care for his ailing 94-year-old father, will somewhat nervously await my return.
For the record, most people think I am very brave and adventurous …
Hola de nuevo,
Para continuar:
1. Regulta que no es posible usar accentos
2. Tu blog es la primera que he leido, aunque en el pasado otros me habian pedido de seguirles en sus aventuras mundiales.
3. Me encanta ! Te deseo toda suerte en tu mes en el pais delgado.
En cuanto estes de vuelta al norte, habra que organizar una reunion especial en Forza para charlar contigo.
Adelante !
Gracias, gracias! Tendre muchos cuentos contar…