Blogging: Another Year of Favorites

I finished my second year of writing this blog in late October, and celebrated by attending a conference with fellow bloggers in early November. The interchange of that gathering recharged my batteries and gave me new ideas. I intend to make the blog more readable, make post titles more explicit and to focus more on favorite themes.

Speaking of themes, as I look forward to improving An Alaskan in Yucatan, I've been reviewing the past year. As I did on the blog's first anniversary, I would like to share a few favorite posts from the past year.

Interesting travel experiences are among the most popular posts I write. One of my most interesting wanderings this year was to a spring, a magic place up in the hills of the Bajío in Querétaro. I wrote about this hike in a post titled Magic Places.

Also while traveling in central Mexico, I visited another magic place, a pyramid I have visited many times but whose location I do not share with others. I wrote about this in My Secret Pyramid.

Late last winter I traveled south of Mérida to visit Santa Elena, and there walked in the footsteps of the nineteenth-century explorers Stephens and Catherwood, authors of the famous work, Incidents of Travel in Yucatán. I followed the trail of these adventurers and wrote posts about their and my visit to the isolated site of the ancient Mayan city of Xcooch, which has changed remarkably little since they were here in the 1840s. 

Being happy and successful living in Mexico is the theme of many posts. One entitled Language Learning: Why Bother? dealt with some of the issues and benefits of learning a foreign language. This post generated a lot of interest, and resulted in more comments that any other post in this blog, ever. Another post, Successful Expatriates Do This, was a digest of some observations I have made of foreigners living in Mexico over the past few years and why some achieve remarkable things.

I occasionally write about my observations of Mexican culture. A Moment of Joy describes a wonderful scene I stumbled upon one Sunday, an experience that revealed some important aspects of life here. In another post, titled Socializing, I reflected on simple old-fashioned hospitality and the warmth of family social gatherings.



Wonderful Moments seem to occur fairly often around here. Some happen by chance: one gray day day I unexpectedly found myself holding a tiny, live hummingbird in my hand. I wrote about this fascinating experience in a post called, Once in Several Lifetimes. Other moments are ones we create. I wrote about one of the ways I create periods of peace and contentment in The Pool At Night.

I appreciate my readers, especially the ones I have gotten to know -- those who take the time to comment or write. A number of these people have become my friends. I look forward to the coming year of An Alaskan in Yucatán. I hope you will continue join me here.