My posts about Loja, Ecuador are the most popular on my multi-themed blog, and I’ve received many notes and questions from various readers about Loja (keep them coming, by the way—I love hearing from my readers!). I thought I’d share the answers to some of them in this post, and hopefully more people will find…
Last week I wrote about 19 different weird and exotic fruits you can find in Loja, Ecuador. This week I’d like to continue the trend by throwing a few weird veggies into the mix! (By the way, if you want a ton of great info about Loja, Ecuador, check out the book I am writing!)…
Most of my past week has been consumed with drafting my book about Loja, Ecuador. The act of writing brings happy memories to the forefront of my mind. One such memory is of all the exotic fruits we got to know while living in Loja. I do not exaggerate when I say that every single…
Below is my account–as written in e-mails at the time–of my final weeks with Stella the Starling. Monday, June 19, 2000 I am playing a CD of 50 bird songs. You should see my birds! Stella is listening intently–I can see how she would start imitating them if she heard them enough.
Just in case you haven’t been following my blog lately, I recently published my first children’s book, Stella the Starling. I’ve delved into my old e-mails to find things I wrote about Stella while I raised her. Here are weeks 5 and 6 of “The Stella Diaries” from the summer of the year 2000. Enjoy!
Thankfully, the cough/sneeze that John mentioned on May 25 cleared up. By Stella’s fourth week of life, she had really developed a personality, and quickly endeared herself to everyone around! Here are some notes I wrote during that week. If you’ve read Stella the Starling (my children’s book), then you’ll no doubt recognize where…
My little Stella grew so fast! Since Mrs. Wolf, the master teacher in the classroom where I student taught, was uncomfortable with me bringing the bird to school, John volunteered to take over Stella’s care for a few days. Here are another couple of weeks’ worth of e-mail exchanges between me and John (the illustrator of Stella…
I’m so excited that my children’s book, Stella the Starling, based on a real-life wild European Starling that I hand-raised, is finally out! Writing that story brought back many memories. I went hunting through my computer e-mail archives and found quite a few detailed messages that I had sent to my friend and fellow bird enthusiast,…
Four different people have sent me the same link to a news story that broke this week about a girl who was kidnapped by her mother and found hiding in Mexico. It’s not uncommon for friends to let me know when a story like this comes up because it always reminds them of my own childhood…
James Michener famously said, “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” We loved living in Ecuador and highly recommend it to people who love the Spanish language (or are interested in learning) and love other cultures–particularly Latin American culture. Ecuador has so…