maptia

Foreign Words

With my trip to Buenos Aires just a few weeks away, I’ve rekindled my Spanish studies. I’ve dug out my notebook filled with conjugations, grammar rules and definitions, and resumed listening to the “Coffee Break Spanish” podcast, every day on the subway. I can feel my slight grasp on the language returning.

Studying Spanish every day has reminded me of this wonderful Maptia blog post I came across a few weeks ago. It contains 11 illustrations of words in other languages that have no English equivalents.

Some of my favorites:

Culaccino

goya

sobremesa

Iktsuarpok

The comments on the post are just as interesting! Readers have noted other fantastic words that we could use in English—like mahmihlapinatapai, which is “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to suggest or offer themselves,” in theВ Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego.

I’ll try to drop that one into conversation!

(Illustrations via Maptia)

Let the Journey Unfold

Does traveling just fuel your wanderlust?

It does for me. On one hand, there’s no place like home, and I’m usually okay with coming back to NYC. But on the flip side, there’s nothing like traveling. And spending time in places that are very different from NYC reminds me that there’s so much more to experience. It’s a big world out there.

This weekend, I had a fabulous time at the shore. The house we rented was much newer and nicer than it appeared online (and in this promo video!), and we had amazing beach weather almost every day. Plus, we grilled most of our meals and went out for the long-awaited blue crab dinner—two luxuries that are pretty rare in the city! It was so hard to leave—I wanted a few more days (or weeks) there.

So when I got back to NYC, all I could think about was planning more trips. (The best way to stave off post-vacation blues!) As I was browsing various travel Tumblrs today, both stoking and soothing the wanderlust, I stumbled upon this image. Its words rang especially true:

maptia manifesto

(Image via Maptia; found via National Geographic Traveler’s Tumblr)