FAREWELL, ASIA!

After two and a half years, we're saying goodbye to Asia for the second time (the first was when we left China in 2008). We've had some wonderful experiences: meeting the courageous women at Remember Nhu; cozying up to Japan's famous snow monkeys; setting foot, albeit briefly, in North Korea. And some terrible ones: living above a karaoke bar; accidentally imbibing "cat poop coffee"; seeing the garbage-strewn state of once-beautiful Bali.

And while I'm sure we'll return—Japan's charms are too alluring to resist—I'm excited to see at last what's in store on other continents. Starting in February, we'll be volunteering at Unidad Academica Campesina, a college for the rural poor in the mountains outside La Paz, Bolivia. The altiplano (high plains of the Andes) is a place I've dreamed about my whole life, so I'm curious whether it will be, as Bruce Chatwin wrote of Patagonia, "as I expected but more so, inspiring violent outbursts of love and hate."