Most travelers go to Malta for the gorgeous weather or the history. Because of its strategic location in the Mediterranean, the island has been taken over by one group after another. History forms literal layers that you can see almost everywhere you look. And among those layers are lots of coins. If you’re interested in… [Read More]
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Refugee Community Connection is helping new Chicagoans
Recently, I decided to write a bit about things that are really getting worked up—in a good way—and one of these is Refugee Community Connection. It’s a grass-roots mutual aid society operating in Chicago, started by a group of people who wanted to provide assistance to people arriving in Chicago under the State Department’s Special… [Read More]
Indonesia: Beauty is a Wound
Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan is a magical-realist centered on Indonesia in the years after Suharto’s fall in 1998. It opens with the main character emerging from her grave to check up on what’s happened to her daughters and grandchildren, and it’s not pretty. The family is dealing with a lot of drama,… [Read More]
Recapping Velvet: Season 1, Episode 12, “The Visitor”
Warning: there are many, many spoilers about the Spanish drama Velvet ahead. You can see it on Netflix. At the end of Episode 11, Don Emilio was on the floor of the shop. It turns out that he is alive, and the doctor orders him to stay in bed for a week. His situation is… [Read More]
Cyprus: The Island of Missing Trees
I’m working through my global books project and realizing that this could turn into a lifetime of work! For the island nation of Cyprus, I read The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak. Cyprus is an island nation located in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Like many nations in that part of the world, it… [Read More]
