Free Rice for Fun
April 24, 2008 at 7:00 am | In Just For Fun | Leave a Comment
The nightly news has been reporting world wide rice shortages. There have been riots in Haiti because of a lack of food.
The country of Vietnam , one of the world’s top rice producers, recently announced it was cutting off exports of rice, preferring instead to keep all the rice it grows inside its own boundaries to feed its own people.
Closer to home, just this week Sam’s Club announced it was rationing the number of bags of rice that customers can buy – only four bags of rice per trip.
Even my local news crew got in on the story, interviewing the owners of popular Asian restaurants and asking whether or not the global rice shortage will affect their menu prices. Their answers – so far – were no.
So why all the fuss over some tiny grains of rice?
Well, a lot of people, the world over, count rice as a daily food staple. They relay on cheap and available rice so that they can continue to eat. If rice suddenly becomes scarce and expensive, then people will go hungry.
In fact, people are already going hungry. According to the United Nations, 25,000 people die every day from hunger. Most of these people are children.
And even though there is a rice shortage right now, there is still something you can do. You can play a really fun and addictive computer game.
The game is called Free Rice. Every time you answer a multiple-choice vocabulary question correctly, you earn grains of rice. The rice you earn gets donated to people who desperately need free rice in order to survive.
The site is supported by advertisers, which is how the site, which is operated by the United Nations World Food Program, is able to buy more rice to distribute.
Visit the site and give it a try. I dare you. It’s impossible to just answer one question. Before you know it, you’ll have passed 10 minutes on the site!
Kids Write and Travel Too
April 18, 2008 at 7:00 am | In Shameless Self Promotion | Leave a Comment
The Loft, an organization for writers and readers here in the Twin Cities, recently posted class offerings for its Summer Young Writers’ Program.
I’m teaching a few classes through the program in July, including a 5-day travel writing class for kids.
Registration is open!
Grandma Knows Best
April 15, 2008 at 7:00 am | In Letters from Readers | Leave a CommentNow that Global Roam ink has been up and running for a few weeks, I’ve gotten some feedback from readers.
For example, a woman named Elise recently sent me an email. After reading through our premier issue, she said that the site reminded her of something her grandmother always used to say:
Travel is the best investment in the bank of knowledge.
Obviously, Elise’s grandmother rocks!
Bikes, Bathrooms & Blobs of Mayonnaise
April 11, 2008 at 7:00 am | In Article Outtakes | Leave a Comment
It was lots of fun working with Amber Procaccini, the photographer behind the lens of this issue’s Eye Spy photo essay, to compile her collection of bikes in Amsterdam.
Because Amber has been to the Netherlands 4 times in the past 10 years, she had lots of images to work with. And she has plans to return to the country! For her, there’s just something about the Netherlands.
Here, she talks a little more about her Amsterdam bicycle fascination:
I love the idea that masses of people live without owning cars. It’s amazing how bikes in some cities have taken over. In Amsterdam, there are traffic lights for the bike lanes!
It seems that everyone in the Netherlands owns a bicycle. Walking down the street of any big city or small town, I always notice the bikes parked out front of stores, apartments, schools, and restaurants.
They are waiting so patiently and I always wonder where all those bikes will travel next. I feel adventurous for them. Their rider could come out at any minute and ride them away to a new destination.
It’s completely possible to bike through the countryside from one town to the next. There are separate paved paths for bikes that run parallel to the roads. I’d love to bike all across the Netherlands.
The bikes are definitely a recurring theme in my pictures every time I’m there. 
I also have a fetish for photographing the bathrooms of our hotel rooms.
Lately, I’ve been trying food photography, too. It is fun to show people that you can buy sandwiches or crepes or Turkish pizzas or mounds of French fries drowning in mayonnaise right off of the sidewalk.
The fries are the bomb! Hot, crispy, oily, salty goodness with a big blob of yellowish heaven on top! It’s not like regular mayo, it’s better. Mmmm….fries and mayonnaise.
Good Morning Vietnam
April 8, 2008 at 7:00 am | In Classroom Speaking | Leave a Comment
I started the day bright and early talking about a place I love: Vietnam.
The 8th graders I met today were curious and involved during my photography slide show program about this Southeast Asian country.
I spoke to 5 groups of kids throughout the day and it kept me on my toes to keep my spiel to a 50-minute minimum. I could go on and on about my travels in Vietnam.
This image of a gross spider got a big reaction in each class!
Talking Up Travel Writing
April 6, 2008 at 7:00 am | In Global Roam Ink Giveaways, Shameless Self Promotion | Leave a Comment
I spent yesterday talking about travel writing at a local writer’s festival, which was hosted by the Bloomington Center for the Arts, a Twin Cities’ arts organization.
I taught two classes back-to-back. In the first, I spoke to about 20 people. The second class was a smaller group, just seven attendees. It was energizing to talk about something I so love to interested listeners.
When I wasn’t teaching travel writing, I was pumping Global Roam ink. at one of the many vendor booths.
I had a box at the booth where visitors could drop their name for a chance to win a signed copy of the young adult novel, Sold, written by Patricia McCormick, who is featured in this month’s Brave New World column.
There were three lucky winners. Congratualtions to Patti W., Susan N., and Bridget C.!
And thanks to Steve Peterson for the photo of the Global Roam ink booth!
Ernst in Silhouette
April 3, 2008 at 7:00 am | In Article Outtakes | Leave a Comment
When April Dobbins, author of this month’s travel essay Mondesa on my Mind, sent me a batch of possible photos to accompany her story, I immediately knew I wanted to use this image. I loved its brightness and vitality.
The picture depicts Ernst Taniseb, an artist April encountered in the Namibian township of Mondesa and a character in her essay.
When I emailed April gushing over the shot, she wrote back:
Funny thing about that Ernst silhouette. It’s one of my favorites, but it was a total mistake. The camera wasn’t focused. I love it, but I never thought anyone would use it because of the blurriness. I like so much because I think it captures the energy his house.
Global Roam ink: The Beginning
April 1, 2008 at 7:00 am | In Behind the Scenes | Leave a Comment
If you’re reading this, you’ve made it to the Global Roam ink blog. Welcome! I’m so excited to have a reader!
Global Roam ink has been a long time in the making and it’s grown way beyond my modest, initial plan, which – of course – started with a trip.
Those who know me know I come with a history of travel. I love to journey abroad. Thankfully my career as a public school teacher left my summers free so I could pursue my wanderlust. I filled up my twenties with teaching and travel.
But when I turned 30, I left the classroom behind to embark on a second career: writing. Yet I couldn’t shake my nagging wanderlust. I still schemed ways to get myself onto an airplane.
My last big trip out of the country was a big one indeed: My husband and I quit our jobs to travel across the world. We dubbed this trip our Global Roam.
For me, travel has always sparked introspection. When I get far away from home, and stay away for a while, my brain starts asking questions.
Once I’m exposed to life in another land, it becomes very obvious to me that my life back home isn’t the only way to live a life. There are other options. Other ways. Suddenly, nothing seems more stifling than going home and carrying on with my life just as it had been before I left.
So it was during this last big trip, this six-month Global Roam, that I got to thinking about new directions my life could take upon going home.
I wanted to combine all the things I loved doing: traveling, writing and teaching. I came up with this plan to start an online travel magazine that would cater to teachers and students.
Through it, I wanted to inspire and encourage kids to first learn about the world, and then get out there and go experience it. That’s why you’ll find that each feature story comes with a corresponding Student Activities page.
Inside the Teachers’ Lounge are lesson plans and reading guides saved as pdfs so that teachers can quickly print and copy the activities for use in their classrooms.
In a nod to the trip that sparked the brainstorm that started it all, I christened the magazine “Global Roam.” The “ink” was added later for a bit of fun, and because – even though it’s all online and technically not using any ink – it’s still a magazine.
And I’d love to know what you think of the magazine! So drop me a comment and I’ll do my best to make Global Roam ink just as user-friendly as can be.
And so…
Here’s to this issue and all future issues, too!
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