“Okay, tell me the difference between your two political parties.” Frank paused for a moment and peered over the tops of his bifocals. “You cannot!” It was noon on our first full day in Cuba, and we were taking a walking tour of the old city of Havana. Tamara and Frank had been friends for […]

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In which Zach and Christine fly from Chicago, to Mexico City, to Havana Cuba to begin a glorious vacation

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In my previous entry, I touched a bit on the ability of QR codes on shared bikes, as a convenient and very cheap way to get around major cities. Shanghai has 24 million people in it, but we also visited the nearby Hangzhou, which “only” has 7 million people in its urban core. We saw […]

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Looking at China’s technological expertise firsthand during our week in Shanghai is simultaneously awe-inspiring and unnerving. We know that we’re in China’s most expensive city, which arguably pushes tech even further than it might be in other parts of the country, but even with that in mind, I sometimes felt like it will take the […]

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I haven’t spoken about young Miss Arriba Mordida Heise very much since Christine and I welcomed the tiny 2 pound, six inch long kitten into our condo back in mid September 2017. Cats weren’t allowed in our condo and as this is a publicly viewable blog that I put my real name on, you do […]

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Surprisingly, there’s only about three months left of our time abroad, living in Panama. With Christine on a teacher’s schedule, we don’t have much time to get away from the city and travel internationally – but in devoutly Catholic, Latin American countries, Easter can provide that opportunity for a vacation! Our original plan was to […]

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