Author: Mike

The world is a complicated place.  Europe is a fine example of how human existence in large groups is anything but simple.  Even quick look at Europe’s history will reveal that collaboration and cooperation haven’t always been at the top of the list of things to do with neighbors for those in power. For most…

Our adventure in Amsterdam just surpassed the one-year mark. We have one more year to go with this current format where I live in Italy most of the time, and Marianna and Sean live in Amsterdam most of the time.   There are so many ways to describe what it has been like. It’s been awesome…

In my line of work, there are all kinds of theories about how much people can truly comprehend cultures different from their own. Some of the more renowned theories, the ones that get published, often say that people who are very adept at reading cultural clues are often people who have lived with, and experienced…

I have played a lot of sports but I have a particularly funny relationship with basketball. I’ve been in this relationship for quite sometime now. It was never love-at-first sight. It’s just something that has always been there, selflessly willing to lend a hand (and knock me down). The sport of basketball certainly doesn’t need…

In 2005, my boss took me to a conference. It was in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. The conference was held by an organization with whom we still work that sends students abroad for Service-Learning experiences (volunteering combined with coursework). The organization is based in the US and is named IPSL, but…

As an American in Europe, sometimes it’s hard to be proud of our food. Ok, let me rephrase that… I am very proud of all kinds of American food, but nobody in Europe knows about some of our best foods.  Green chili is a good example.  Nobody knows what it is and yet anyone who’s…

Our family situation sometimes has me feeling like a sailor from centuries ago who was forced to leave his family every so often to lead another life on the sea. Maybe that’s a little too dramatic.  I live in Siena, and take airplanes.  I also don’t know a whole lot about boats. I know that…

So we don’t really speak Dutch yet.   Of course, we know the easy things like thank you and you’re welcome, hello, goodbye and a few other expressions that help us pass as polite people. Amsterdam is a bit tricky when it comes to learning Dutch because it is indeed true that almost everyone speaks English…

Sometimes you just gotta go outside. When I was little and there wasn’t time to drive up into the mountains my Dad would take me to Denver’s City Park and we’d eat a sandwich on what he called the “solar rock”. It was a large rock that sat on the southern side of the Natural…

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about family and what that means for a lot of different reasons. I don’t think that I can come up with one single definition of what family is, and I’m more than comfortable with that. I feel very close to a lot of different people in a lot of…