In this guest blog, Dr. Dawn Bowen, Professor of Geography at the University of Mary Washington, writes about a journey she and UMW Geography major Colin Hess made to Haiti in April 2012.   During the first week of April, Colin Hess and I undertook a truly transformational journey.  We traveled to the island nation of Haiti; the only country in the world with a last name: “The poorest country in the western hemisphere.” Despite U.S. Government warnings about travel… Read the rest

It’s now 6.15 am on Monday February 27, and I am sipping a cup of coffee in Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok’s new, gleaming and vast international air gateway. I arrived here late last night on a journey that began on Saturday in Richmond, Virginia, when I boarded 7.40am flight for Chicago. There I connected to a 16-hour nonstop flight to Hong Kong, followed by a short 2 1/2 hour hop to Bankgkok. In an hour or so, I will leave here… Read the rest

Cambodia is best known for Angkor Wat, the vast temple built in the first half of the 12th century by King Suryavarman II to honor the Hindu goddess Vishnu (and, more than incidentally, himself too.) Angkor Wat, though, is by no means the only temple dating back to the days of the Angkor empire. Nearly a hundred other temples dot the landscape around Angkor, and many others are to be found in other parts of Cambodia. Phnom Chiso is one… Read the rest

Guest post by Dr. Dawn Bowen, Professor of Geography at the University of Mary Washington… Read the rest.

In January, I traveled to Guatemala to interview young Maya women who had received scholarships so continue their secondary education.  An organization, Community Cloud Forest Conservation (CCFC) run by Rob and Tara Cahill and several Guatemalans, began providing small scholarships for young women, aged 13-24, about seven years ago.  Its goal was to accomplish two things: 1) educate young women, thus producing better educated

Part One: The Arab Spring in Bahrain is posted separately. Part Two: The American Fall in Richmond Coming to America In October 2011, explicitly drawing on the methods of Arab Spring protests, the Occupy Wall Street movement began. As in Bahrain (see Part One of this blog), a continuous presence in a public place of symbolic importance was central to the movement’s message and tactics. As the movement’s name made clear, its target was the global corporate elite (which it… Read the rest

(Part Two: Richmond, Virginia is posted separately.) Part One: Bahrain 2011 has been a year of occupations. From Cairo to Columbus, citizens have appropriated public spaces as sites of protest. They have set up encampments and insist that they will maintain a continuous presence until their demands have been met (as in Cairo) or they are forcibly removed. This latter fate befell protesters in Bahrain in March, and, on a much smaller and less violent scale, in cities around the… Read the rest

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Some of Phnom Penh’s poorest residents make a living pushing their carts around the city’s streets, gathering soda cans, plastic bottles, and anything else they can sell for recycling. This short video shows some of these hard-working people going about their daily business.  … Read the rest

In a recent blog post, I discussed various ways in which I have tried to convey what places are like through postings on my site RegionalGeography.org. I use words in writing descriptively and analytically about places, but powerful though they are, words have limitations. I can only describe my own perception and interpretation of a place, for example; I cannot describe how others might see it. Pictures can help: I can take a photograph, and while my own … Read the rest

… Read the restI love words, and I am enthralled by the power of language. There is a richness in language that goes far beyond its ability to transmit facts, opinions, or instructions. Words can convey emotion, complexity, character, ambiguity, and humor in ways that go far beyond their dictionary definitions. One of my main objectives on this site is to use words to try and give readers a sense of some of the places visit and people I meet, and to communicate