Traveler Brandon enhances his Spanish vocabulary between licks of homemade ice cream at the Paleteria la Paloma in Todos Santos, Mexico

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I won't lie—I have misgivings* about Thanksgiving.

But nevertheless, taking a day out of the year to kick back with family and reflect on and give thanks for what's going right in our lives…that can't be a bad thing.

And, as travelers, we have much to be thankful for.

The majority of Americans have...

Homesick for peanut butter, traveler Brandon finds the next best thing - fish with peanut sauce- at El Zaguan in Todos Santos, Mexico.

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Traveler Brandon not only gets to meet the energetic Jill Logan but also gets a personal tour of her famous gallery. After watching this video check out her collection online at www.jilllogan.com

Todos Santos, Baja California,...

I’ve dragged Michigan around my whole life. 

As the place of my birth, it turns up on every form I fill out, my security question for on-line accounts, on my passport and my FM2 and my teaching contract and my marriage certificate.  Yet I have no conscious memory of...

The lights dim.

Heavy metal pounds over the Arena México sound system, and the announcer's deep-throated Spanish thunders into the microphone.

One of the dozens of roving Corona men delivers me a fresh 20 oz. beer.

On the runway connecting the huge projection screen to the small square ring in the middle...

The tour guide with a name I could not pronounce stood at the front of the air-conditioned bus. He was light skinned, probably in his 50’s, wore a dark curled mustache below his nose and a sombrero to boot. He was a Mexican cowboy, I imagined. I looked around at the tourists who would be joining...

Twilight seeps in through painted glass to bathe the tables and chairs of the Korean restaurant. It's quiet. They haven't even switched on the big flatscreen with the Korean soaps yet.

Dinner won't begin for a couple hours for most Capitalinos here in Mexico City, long after the autumn sun has set....

Most people, knowing my disinterest in Halloween, are confused to learn that I really enjoy the celebration of Dia de los Muertos. As a matter of fact, this is my favorite holiday in my new home country and I look forward to it every year! Commonly known as Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), this...

There was nothing ordinary about tonight.

It was my first visit to Polanco, a Mexico City hideaway of unconstrained affluence. Its tree-lined boulevards and clusters of softly lit bistros are a far cry from the city as I've experienced it over the past week. I felt decidedly under-dressed.

Fortunately,...

No holiday screams "¡México!" louder than Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), celebrated November 1–2 to honor departed family and friends.

The trappings of this annual event are familiar to anyone with knowledge of Mexican culture: carefully constructed altars overflowing with personalized...

Of all the half-forgotten, relatively unimportant things that happened the year I was born, such as the UK recording its lowest temperature ever, Johnny Carson hosting the Academy Awards, and Gordon Johncock winning the Indy 500, my favorite is this: the release of the third film in the Friday the...

   

             “So you stole her?” Gil asks, his eyes round.  I lean forward on the bench.

            “Oh, yes,” Don Faustino tells...

I was sitting in the teachers’ room yesterday, pouting because I didn’t want to be at work when the sun had finally come out, when the school receptionist, Raul, walked in.  He flopped on the couch and asked me:  “Who invented work?”  He smiled as he said it, but he...

I read the local paper over breakfast this morning.

Yesterday afternoon, it said, "anarco-punks" took to the streets of Oaxaca with their cans of spray paint and lighters, tagging historic city buildings, private homes, businesses, and even churches, burning the Mexican flag, and...

On a Saturday evening, Gilberto and I walk up the main drag of our neighborhood, past the tortillería, past the preschool, past the neighborhood security headquarters, past the boarded-up former bus station—up to the edge of town, where wary, matted dogs nose at constellations of soda cans, plastic...

It’s a funny thing about Pachuca; in the four years or so I’ve been coming here regularly, and in the six months I’ve lived here permanently, yesterday was the very first time I talked to someone who actually likes it here.  Oh, people will say, with rueful smiles, “Well,...

There's an antiques market on Londres Street where vendors sell stacks and stacks of postcards and old photos. It's easy for me to lose hours there, and a few months ago, I did.

On that visit, I found a black and white postcard-- the kind you get as a souvenir--that I had to have.

On the...

            I can’t lie about it.  When I really think about it, when I let myself, my job frightens me.  It is, in a way, the opposite of what I really want to do, which is be grounded in a place and be a part of a functioning and...

When I was 15 or so--back when Spanish was still trying to form itself on my tongue--my mom and I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant called El Jalisco. "What's a jalisco?" my mom asked me. "No clue," I told her, "but I'll ask." I practiced the phrase in my head, and as soon as the waiter reached the...