Even though I’ve called Chicago “home” for nearly the last ten years, when it comes to the holidays, going home always means going back to Minnesota, where my parents and brother still reside (although no one still lives in White Bear Lake, the town where I grew up).  At some point I imagine that

I’ve read quite a few blog posts in recent months about people’s “bucket lists” – a collection of things they want to do before they die.  I hadn’t thought of writing a list of my own, but then last week I discovered I already did – ten years ago. I was going through old files

Hi, my name is Katie and I am a guidebook junkie. I own enough guidebooks to fill the travel section of an airport bookstore.  They sit on a shelf in my closet, meticulously arranged in alphabetical order, starting with a Lonely Planet guide to Africa and ending with a Rough Guide to the USA.  Some

Someone once said that we will regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do. My decision not to study abroad in college is one of those things. I grew up with a fascination about the world.  One of my prized possessions was my globe and I spent hours spinning it around,

This morning we were up fairly early (again!) – 6:30 a.m. or so.  We were getting picked up for our city tour at 9:15 so we just took our time getting ready, packing, checking e-mail and eating breakfast. The city tour was ok.  It was a bilingual tour for the large part with kelsey and

We had time to kill this morning before our flight to Lima so we visited the Casa Moral, one of Arequipa’s famed colonial houses.  We also did some shopping in a market area called Fundo del Fiego.  Kelsey bought a cute mirror that unfortunately the shopkeeper could not figure out how to wrap it up