Since 2018, I’ve been organizing and leading open-group and private Greek heritage tours of Asia Minor. The tour for summer 2024 runs in two sessions:
The big news of late is that Marisol and I got engaged last week! We will get married in Pereira with the date to be determined. (Update: The wedding took place December 17, 2016)
A few days ago, I was nominated for a Liebster Award. This award is given by the blogging community in order to help newer blogs get recognized. I am honored to have been chosen by Weekend Campervanning for this award.
I’m very proud to have had my photo Sunset in Búzios selected by Rough Guides for their feature “23 Brilliant Pictures of Brazil”. It features the Three Fishermen (Três Pescadores) monument.
After nearly two years of planning and hard work, I’m proud to announce a new project on a new website – lifetrip.club. This collaboration between four people from four different countries will embark on an inaugural journey in just a few weeks, September 2015. We will travel to the Rocky Mountain states visiting several national parks and cities along the way, and will finish in Colombia in December and January.
After enthusiastically receiving the ancestry results from my DNA test and uploading them to GEDmatch, I sent away my 23andMe raw data to Dr. Doug McDonald, a former professor at the University of Illinois, for further analysis. This was the result:
I’ve been studying a lot about my DNA and ancestry lately. A Greek’s DNA typically seems to have higher levels of Italian and Middle Eastern ancestry, which were consistent with my 23andMe results, but what about specific ethnicity?
About a month ago, I ordered a saliva test kit from 23andMe to test my DNA. My primary purpose was to learn more about my ancestry. I know that all of my known ancestors going back 4 or 5 generations are of Greek descent, but I also know it’s impossible that I’m 100% Greek. Nobody in the world is 100% anything. I was also very curious to find out why I’m always mistaken for being Lebanese, Turkish, or Italian.
It’s 3am and I’ve finally decided to start that blog some friends and family have been encouraging me to start for three years now. Where do I start? What do I say? I have enough travel experiences since moving to Turkey to keep me busy writing for the next month. That’s a good thing, because I pretty much have nothing better to do with my time for the next, say, 6 weeks. So here are my ideas: