Today marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Seven weeks later, the Soviet Union Collapsed. At the beginning of 1989, no one could have imagined these two events. Last summer I had the opportunity to make a super brief visit to Berlin. On the street in front of the Brandenburg Gate, […]
9/11 Boatlift
It was late at night on September 11 in Beijing when my mom called me from the U.S. to tell me about the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Internet was super slow back then and the local Chinese stations were not yet covering anything. I ran next door and woke up my teammate, […]
Yes, Minister
Another Newfoundland story. The day we went to St. Carols to see the iceberg that we’d read was in the little harbor, there was well-dressed man climbing around with us, taking pictures of the ‘berg. We struck up a conversation with him, and it turned out that he was the Provincial Minister for Tourism, Christopher […]
Road Trip by the Numbers
I’m not really a numbers person, but that’s mainly when it comes to doing something with them, such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, or (heaven forbid) dividing! But numbers can be interesting and can help to tell stories. So, here are a few numbers from our road trip to Newfoundland: We drove 5760.4 miles. We drove […]
Whales!
As I mentioned in a previous post, on our boat tour out of St. Anthony, NL, we also had the good fortune of coming upon a pod of whales. Don’t ask me what kind of whales; I don’t remember. Let’s just say they were big ones. We were able to stay put for 10 or […]
Newfoundland Hospitality
One of the things we love about Newfoundland is the friendliness of the people there. Just about everyone you meet — from the shopkeepers to random people in the parking lot — wants to chat. And since the towns tend to be small, everyone knows everyone. When I called the tour company to book a […]
