It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that.

The undulent landscape looks serene in every direction. Honey-colored farmhouses, gently placed in hollows, rise like thick loaves of bread set out to cool.

All afternoon in the deck chair, I try to describe to my notebook the colors of the water and sky. How to translate sunlight into words?

May summer last a hundred years.

Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different.

The world cracks open for those willing to take a risk.

I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.