How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization
Author: Franklin Foer
Who knew you could learn so much about globalization, economics and politics from soccer? Great read.
Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
Author: Julia Cameron
One possible path to re-discovering the creativity you never knew you had.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, New Edition
Author: Jared Diamond
An admirable crack at explaining why the world is the way it is by way of an anthropological macro-history. This book probably comes up the most in conversation as we travel.
The Cathedral Within: Transforming Your Life by Giving Something Back
Author: Bill Shore
Inspiring profiles of social entrepreneurs and projects we all can learn from and hopefully replicate to give back to community.
Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
Author: John Carlin
Although the storyline is built around the South African rugby team and the 1995 World Cup, this book is more about Nelson Mandela and how he was able to unite a divided country. Inspiring.
Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown
Author: Paul Theroux
The author re-visits Africa and re-assesses the place he once knew... and judges it once and for all. Well written, poignant observations of the thumbprints left by career politicians, aid workers, and everyday people.
Outliers: The Story of Success
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
A look at the internal and external factors of how extraordinary people got to be, well, extraordinary. One of those books that challenges assumptions and makes you think differently.
Shantaram: A Novel
Author: Gregory David Roberts
Administering first aid in a Bombay slum, selling fake passports and running guns to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Technically a novel, but closely linked to the Author's own experiences. Fantastic read.
We don’t know about you, but when we think Malaysia we think street food. And hawker centers (awful name, but that’s what they’re called) are where the action is for street food fanatics like us. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Panorama, Photography by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
10 Comments | 30 July 2010
“In your travels, did you ever feel like you were being followed?” a friend recently asked.
We looked up as if to page through our mind-file of creepy experiences: “No. At least we don’t think so.”
Even when we answered, our response struck me as supremely naïve. Although we aren’t terribly important in the geopolitical grand scheme of things, somebody somewhere must have taken more than a casual interest in our movements. After all, we’d been throughout the former Soviet Union – including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan — and to places like China and Burma.
Surely we had a tail somewhere along the way. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Perspectives, Travel by: Audrey Scott
20 Comments | 25 July 2010
Visit any European central square on a weekend, and along with the wedding parties in celebration and the locals in transit, you are likely to find tourists shutterbugging away. As evidence, we offer Vilnius’ Cathedral Square (Katedros aikštė). Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Panorama, Photography by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
5 Comments | 23 July 2010
As our rental car began to drift atop a layer of windblown sand, I grabbed hold, down-shifted and noticed the hills around me were swirled in a peppermint twist. All those Ruta 40 signs in Argentina finally delivered on an implied promise: you’ll be impressed, and what once captured your imagination will now claim your full attention. But it wasn’t the fabled Route 40 of Patagonia that would provide the exclamation point on our time in Argentina. It was a week-long road trip across the quebradas of Northwest Argentina, where chilies dry in the midday sun, llama comes served with wine pressed just down the road, and gauchos hold harvest festivals in the hills.
Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Argentina, South America, Travel, Videos by: Daniel Noll
18 Comments | 21 July 2010
“For safety reasons, we’ll need to go in groups of at least four to the cemetery,” our Spanish language teacher informed us.
“Why,” we wondered. “Are the dead coming back to life?” Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Panorama, Photography by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
15 Comments | 16 July 2010
So we’ve been running all over creation for the last three and half years and living abroad for almost ten. In May, before visiting the United States we told people we were “coming home for a visit.” More recently, we found that Central Europe (Prague, by way of Vienna and Bratislava) still feels like home.
In an email just yesterday, one of our friends in Uruguay asked: “Are you back home finally or at least in the U.S.?”
It was his confusion that tuned us into a more universal query: Where is home?
And more importantly, what is it? Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Travel by: Daniel Noll
62 Comments | 15 July 2010
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be in the middle of an ethnic minority market in China’s Yunnan Province? Even if you haven’t, we’re going to show you anyway. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Panorama, Photography by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
12 Comments | 9 July 2010
They were village women in braids, highland hats and tiny pumps. Some even had babies slung to their backs. But they all made their way about the makeshift soccer pitch at pace, kicking around a half-deflated ball. We — of hiking shoes, branded outdoor clothing and little to weigh us down – were getting our butts kicked.
We had just come from a mountaintop meeting between borrowers and loan officers from Espoir, an Ecuadoran microfinance field partner of Kiva. The borrowers’ homes were tucked in the hills of southern Ecuador in a little village, the road to which was often washed out and impassable. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Perspectives by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
16 Comments | 7 July 2010
People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.
– Dagobert D. Runes
Why is it that so many people reserve their curiosity for new and enlightening experiences on the road while they take for granted similar opportunities just because they happen at home?
Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Personal Growth by: Daniel Noll
24 Comments | 1 July 2010
