Stick left today, which was just as miserable as the last time he left China. Airport goodbyes don’t actually get any easier with practice. We had a really insane 36 hours getting him ready to go. Finally, as he was stuffing the last few things in his bag, the seam popped! I sewed it back […]

Maria Liberati’s Pasta Carbonara
This is a typical dish from Rome. The pecorino cheese used is typically pecorino from Rome or Pecorino Romano. The Romans tend to like dishes that are simple, without a lot of ingredients and not snobbish-just real food. That is the secret to the great food that you find in Rome-authentic, fresh […]

The Basic Art of Italian Cooking by Maria Liberati is part cookbook and part travel memoir. Between recipes, Maria shares travel adventures, like meeting her now-husband, and misadventures, like the Italian-language student who asked for a shower, instead of a cookie.
High romance, good food and foreign-language misadventures… Naturally I was pretty excited to be […]

When I was in Yantai, pining for the smell of my beloved Herbal Essences shampoo, they stopped making it. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that this happened while their best customer (me) wasn’t able to buy any.
Yesterday I went to the supermarket to find some…. other shampoo…. in my heart and in […]

“What were you doing in Moscow?” the immigration guy at Newark airport asked.
“Transfering planes from China, I was only there for a few hours.”
“What were you doing in China?”
“I was teaching English in Yantai and I had the greatest students ever and they actually paid me money to make up English games and play with […]

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Tags: Rome, Stick

We went to the Ara Pacis today. I love the Ara Pacis. (Zorro, if you turn on my computer, that’s my background) My Roman history is the Julio-Claudians with some Livy stuff before and some Constantine stuff after. If Robert Graves didn’t care about it, then neither do I.
I’m exaggerating, but only a […]

One my first Roman day, Stick and I went to the Pyramid of Cestius, and to the Non-Catholic Foreigners Cemetary where Keats and Shelley are both buried (not together… although both are buried next to their “good friend”) and we saw the veiw of the city from the Garibaldi Monument. Mostly, though, we walked around […]

When I thought about seeing Stick again in Rome, I imagined coming off the plane, with shining hair, and possibly a cute shoulder bag, and running towards Stick’s arms. I forgot a lot of little details, like dragging all my luggage with me (Baggage Girl in Beijing: °You are overweight° Meg: °No, all Americans look […]

I finally got onto a social networker before Kristin. I signed up with Spokeo, a new combination blog/RSS reader and profile network. Unlike MySpace, Spokeo seems to have users who are out of their teens. You don’t have to declare your dating status, list off your favorite movies or come up with a cutesy tagline […]