My blog was born when I started my trip to South America towards the end of 2012, and a number of people encouraged (nagged?) me to move to a blog format instead of my regular emails home.

There were a number of advantages to moving to a blog, not the least of which was not having to cut and paste everyone’s email address each time, and also, hopefully not hitting everyone with lengthy emails that clog up the inbox and go unread once they move off the front page. People can now follow me, or not, I don’t mind either way, and can catch up at their leisure.

I, in turn, aimed to keep my blogs to bite-size pieces and not cover too much at once. That way, everyone can choose the topics that interest them and leave the rest.

It hasn’t always worked out that way, as I seem to fall behind again as soon as I catch up.

Of course, I still love to hear news from home, so I encourage friends and family to please still send emails to my personal email address. Everybody that says “there’s not much news” usually goes on to tell me about an abundance of interesting things that are going on in their lives that I love to hear about.

Coming up with a name for my blog was difficult. People have been blogging for years, decades, centuries! OK, so maybe not centuries, but either way, for a long time, which means that any creative lightning bolts that came my way were invariably snapped up ages ago. Sometimes, frustratingly, the name has been used once, years ago, and not dusted off again since but, nonetheless, is unavailable to latecomers like me.

Then, I stopped to think about exactly what it is I’m doing. As you all know, whether I’m away or at home, a lot of my posts will be about food – finding it, cooking it, buying it, sometimes just admiring it but, above all, eating it! But it’s not all about the food (no, really, it isn’t … there’s also the wine).  It’s about discovery and enjoying new experiences.

And so, my blog is born, the blog of a girl, exploring.

Welcome to my blog.