Philippe Lazaro
OCTOBER 2016

You aren't just one thing

NOTES ON IDENTITY

It’s probably a very common experience for the early years of parenthood to come with a bit of an identity crisis. First of all, it invites a whole new role into your life, so there’s that.

If you and a partner are in it together, and are taking it seriously, it’ll probably bring up all kinds of things about your expectations and your own experiences with your families of origin.

Meanwhile, the demands place a whole lot of constraints on your time, money, and energy so that the other facets of your life become harder to tend to.

Having more kids you have in a shorter span of time will probably put a multiplier effect on this.

And I think moms will have a much harder time with this because of social expectations and what not. And if you’re a full time, stay-at-home parent, whether a mom or dad, that’s going to be a challenge too, because you don’t have that outside sphere to stretch that side of your identity.

At the same time, having a lot of different roles, jobs, and activities isn’t an easy road either.

Between having a pretty involved job and a gazillion interests, it’s been a challenge to grapple with the fact that time I spend working or traveling, doing things I love, or engaging meaningful work still comes at the expense of time at home with my kids. And while that’s my top priority, cutting everything else out doesn’t feel like the healthiest course of action either.

But I’m a stubborn believer that there’s a way to achieve harmony among the different areas of life. And while it’s always a give-and-take and requires compromise, I think that this harmony is something worth pursuing.

There’s a  story about Charles Schultz- the creator of Peanuts. People often asked him about Charlie Brown, a very likeable character, but also a bit of a sad sack.

Anyways people would often ask Charles Schultz if Charlie Brown was supposed to be him.

And he would answer yes, but actually all the characters were different versions of him. Charlie Brown was like his tough luck, melancholic side. Lucy was more of his salty side. Snoopy was his cool, mischievous self that he wanted to be more like. I don’t know how we’re supposed to interpret Pigpen, seems like there’s one unflattering way to, but Charles Schultz did and in doing so gave us an all time beloved character.

There’s this idea among visual artists that every drawing, painting, or sculpture is a self portrait, and I think that line of thinking can extend to all kinds of art forms and mediums. Acting, music. It’s all self expression, but just because every creative work is a self portrait doesn’t mean it’s a realistic portrait or a complete portrait. Like; when I’m playing a terrible dad on stage, I hope it’s more reflective of a fear or insecurity than actual reality. Similarly! No portrait is complete. You won’t ever capture someone from every angle, meaning there will be sides of us that always get left out. We contain multitudes and I think that’s a perspective I’ve come to appreciate more this way.

There’s enough depth, contradictions, and angles to any person to create an entire Peanuts gang from. Which brings up another important thing to remember: our identity is always multifaceted.

Personally, I find it very healthy to realize that each of us has a very multi-layered and multi-faceted identity. 

I think when people don’t allow themselves to accept this flexibility, you get instances of trying too hard to force one expression of your personality into a setting, you just might end up coming across as a caricature of yourself.

When it comes to ecosystems, you can see a strong link between resilient ecosystems and biodiversity. And in communities and human services, the more diverse perspectives and experiences and voices you bring in, the more you protect yourself from shortsighted decision making.

So all that is also true when it comes to your identity.

Pagkikikapwa

Archipelago.

Above the water, we all look like our own uniquely shaped islands. But then you dive in, dive deeper, and you find that we’re all connected. Our selves are shaped through the others around us.

As I’ve grow in faith, met people from all over, and taken more laps around the sun, our separation seems more and more like water. And on a day when you’re being your best self, it’s clear. You can see through it a bit more.

Pakikiisa. Unity. It literally translates to a shared state of oneness.

In the end, we’re all together.

Kolkata's Yellow Cabs

Yellow taxis are iconic, but these days they’re becoming more of a novelty. Most cities’ taxis use other colors, and thanks to ride sharing being in most countries, really any car can be a taxi. There’s still one spot where the Yellow Cab reigns supreme, and that’s Kolkata.

Riding around in these things felt classic, and it wasn’t just the color of the car but the vehicle itself was a throwback. Still, changing technologies come for us all. The number of yellow cabs operating in Kolkata dropped in half during the pandemic and continues to decline due to ridesharing.

Let's Get Back in Our Bodies

age & The motivation for a little maintenance

I finally got acupuncture a couple weeks ago.

I say finally because it’s something I’ve been curious about for a long time. I’ve had family members use it to treat allergies. Fertility. The way that you can work on wrist arthritis by connecting the wires running through a person’s foot? That seemed completely fascinating.

Except I’ve never had a good enough reason to get acupuncture myself.

I always thought it would be awkward to schedule an appointment and during the intake have to say, “oh, nothing’s wrong. I just want to check out your needles!”

But finally.

Watch Now

I laid face down on a doughnut pillow in my underwear, wondering if the ambient music playing was cut from the same cloth as the background music of Playstation menus. I try and pay attention to the way my blood flows more freely up my thigh, the result of the pins scattered strategically in my leg.

I’ve been a lot more attentive to my body lately. Every little quirk. The way my right calf developed an involuntary twitch. The recent pressure behind my knee.

I have running to thank for all of that. The injuries, as well as the attentiveness. Long distance runs get you so familiar with your own body. Its capacity. What it takes to push yourself just a bit further.

On top of all that, there’s the quantitative data that running apps provide. I can see how my better and worse performances overlap with the days I didn’t get enough sleep, or the days I managed to hydrate better.

Salt intake matters. That’s a new one I started observing lately. I’m pretty proud of my own detective work there. I noticed that whenever I passed the nine mile marker, I typically had an intense craving for pho, ramen, or soup dumplings. Translation? Salt deficiency. Some electrolyte mix in the water bottle helped smooth things over.

I started getting back into distance running because of insomnia. There was an unfortunate convergence of when my kids started sleeping through the night, and when I found myself unable to. I soon attributed the overnight restlessness to going over a year without much physical activity. Before the kids were born I alternated distance running, weight training, and boxing.

Then when they were born, I decided boxing and sleep deprivation were a terrible combination.

However, the kids were a motivating factor for getting me back into action. I hear a lot of runners in their 30s or 40s cite that. Staying active helps increase the odds they’ll be around for their kids longer. I know I want as much time with mine as possible. My time with my dad was cut short early, and while some things are always out of our control, I wanted to play my part.

I did my morning runs around a lake. The road around the perimeter stretched five miles, and there was a good cover with trees. I got to know my fellow runners who were lake-regulars. One was an East Asian man. He was most likely in his mid-to-late fifties, and he was still pretty fast. It was always a bit motivating to come across him on a run. I hoped it was a peek at my future. In my 50s, my kids would be in their 20s, and the thought of being able to keep up as they bust out on their own adventures is appealing.

That said, I’m at the age where most pro-athletes retire, so unsurprisingly running brought me a good collection of odd injuries. Scraped knees from a fall. Knee damage from overuse. Calf cramps that were a bit of a mystery.

Your calves are pretty much like rocks, Alex remarked, as she removed the needles from them. Typically, firm muscles are seen as desirable, but mine were tense to the point of being uncomfortable. 

She recommended a little pause from running. Maybe a month while my muscles repaired themselves. Instead, I’d benefit from working on weight training, core strength, and yoga. I wanted it all. In my ideal world, I could do each of these regularly. And I’d love to be in a rec baseball league or something at the same time. Of course, the challenge is often finding the time to do all this.

That said, a lot of issues can be attributed to spending too much time in our heads, and not quite enough in our body. Even if the most ideal regimen is elusive, it’s worth finding some time to move. I decide that while I might scale back the running, I’m doing so in order to keep running a part of my life for the long haul.

The day after an acupuncture can feel strange. Alex warned me not to be surprised if I even feel sick. “Your body fast tracks getting rid of stuff after all those channels have been opened.”

I don’t experience the cold she described, nor did I envy it. Instead, the day after, I felt something akin to a hangover… except strangely good? That night, I managed to score some of the best sleep ever.

I’ll take that as a win. This whole saga started with a bout of insomnia.

Intellectual Humility

When access to all the information in the world is constantly sitting in your pocket, there’s something you might not know.

You might not know how to deal with not knowing things. Uncertainty. Ambiguity. Liminal space.

I wonder if that’s why sometimes it feels like progress in information technology has led to a regress of basic humanity. Because there will always be the unknown.

To me, this makes intellectual humility one of the most attractive things to see in a person.

Someone who knows they see through the lenses of their own culture, upbringing, and experiences.

Someone who knows that their ideas and the beliefs of others have room to expand, and will likely evolve over years.

Someone who isn’t threatened by different ideas or perspectives and prioritizes everyone’s humanity above the need to be right.

Do things that scare you. Order the least familiar thing on the menu. Take a chance on a random new class. Whatever it looks like for you, cultivate your relationship with the unknown. Take it on dates. Sharpen that intellectual humility.

Sustainable Populations

I often hear people talk about population and climate with confusion… or at least overlooking some important elements.

Intuitively, it makes sense that a growing population makes people wonder, how are we going to support that many people?

But, as far back as the 1800s, population growth and ecology has been used by some to advocate for letting people in poverty be completely neglected or worse. It’s an area of conversation that can’t afford having so many people misinformed.

Countries with the fastest growing populations very consistently have the highest rates of poverty and lowest carbon footprints.

This means the real work is to keep improving people’s quality of life while also working on other ways for people across the board to keep their emissions down.

Expectations, Plans, & Interruptions

Ever since 500 Days of Summer gave us that Expectations vs Reality split-screen, it’s been the way a lot of us understand disappointment. The larger the difference, the greater the disappointment. It’s not a bad working definition.

This also makes a good case against overplanning your life.

When you live your life by one checklist after another, you might be extremely productive, but when things get in the way of your tasks, it creates a rift between what you expected and reality.

When those interruptions take the form of your kid wanting to play, a conversation with a stranger taking a man interesting turn, or birdsong calling you outside, a part of you knows deep down that these are worthy interruptions. They’re the ones that years from now, you’ll be glad you said yes to.

But, when you live by the rhythm of getting it all done, you learn a different muscle memory. It kicks in, processing these invitations as threats to the day you were expecting. In order to avoid disappointment, self preservation kicks in. The kids, the stranger, the birds, they all get sorted as distractions.

All that to say, checklists can be helpful until they aren’t. Don’t go so overboard on planning, you talk yourself out of saying yes to some of the best parts of life.

CreativeMornings SD (2 Year Anniversary)

Two years ago, I got invited by the CreativeMornings SD team to speak on the topic of depth. It turned out to be a perfect springboard to share my story. I got to have all these different dimensions of myself come out for a jam sesh together: the traveler, the environmentalist, the dad.

This talk turned out to be about as good of “allow me to reintroduce myself” as I could ask for, so catch it here in case you missed it or in case we just met within the past two years!

Show & Tell #1

Favorite photo I took this month:

I’m presenting this giraffe without much context. I’ll fill you in on that story later.

Is it just me, or does it seem like everyone around me is also trying to recover from an extremely hectic stretch?

The end of August and start of September was quite the crescendo. I had a race, several improv shows, an international trip, and my work’s biggest event of the year all right on top of each other. It seemed like all these big events were landing mid month, and the other side seemed like this mysterious void of much lighter activity.

Greetings from that mysterious void. 

Happy to report that it is indeed a slower pace over here, but there is a lot of cleaning up and catching up to do after the chaos. 

Anyways, that was my experience this month, but it feels like I’m far from alone. So many friends have reported being in recovery mode following travels, big social events, and so on. Maybe this is the big back-to-school curve I’m getting reintroduced to, as my oldest just started!

How did I not mention that until the very end? That was perhaps the biggest event, and the biggest change for our family since we welcomed twins. I guess this month has just been that full. Now time to prepare my nervous system for baseball playoffs.

Somehow, I’ve still managed to find the time to make things, and I thought I’d share some of my favorite bits of creative work from this very, very full month:

Gig Poster: Metal People at Mockingbird

After a little stretch without an improv show, I finally got to take the stage with my Metal People and I had a blast. I feel like we’ve hit a good groove as a team. I put together a quick textable gig poster for the event since I feel like I need to get better at promoting our shows. On that note, this weekend (9/28 at 7) I’m playing with Brown Privilege at Finest City!

Video: Plant With Purpose’s 40th Anniversary

Plant With Purpose celebrated 40 years of work this month and I made this video to premiere at our gala. Making a commemorative anniversary video is a bit of a challenge. You want to celebrate your history and play to your community, but you don’t want to be too self-congratulatory and keep looking forward. I’ve been pulling this one together since June.

Art: Josh Gibson

I made this illustration of Josh Gibson to celebrate the incorporation of Negro League statistics into the Major League recordbook, quantitatively entering Josh Gibson into the conversation of baseball’s GOAT. Most art I see of the batting king features him in mostly black and white, given that he played in the 1930s and played for a team called the Grays. But I wanted to lean in the opposite direction and cranked up the colors here.

Video: My 50th Country… SURINAME

Made this video to celebrate my 50th country, which I entered in the form of a quick daytrip. I love how pleasant the capital of Paramaribo is to walk around. Old wooden buildings hang around, monuments and gardens all around the riverfront, and an abundance of good spots to eat.

Sticker: Metal People

Remember when I noted my need to get better at promoting our improv shows? I turned our team logo into a sticker to give to attendees. Branding, baby! The peel off back has a QR code to our Instagram page so people can keep tabs on us.

Art: Alec Bohm

Baseball playoffs… the most wonderful, blood-pressure spiking time of the year. My beloved Phillies clinched their spot in the playoffs, first place in their division, and a first round bye in their last three wins this past week. It’s been an incredible season, but it’s always about how you finish, huh? Peep some of my playoff thoughts here.

Creative Changemaker: You don’t need to be the one who hits launch

The founders and top leaders of movements and organizations are often the most celebrated within the world of social change... and it's not undeserved. Launching and leading good organizations is tough! But, there are also many other ways to be part of leading change and doing good that should also be celebrated. If everyone was a founder... we'd have a whole bunch of ineffective tiny organizations of one! Here's a spontaneous little riff on how those who find their specialized role within a system are also important changemakers.

Art: Mac Miller

Been catching myself listening to quite a bit of Mac Miller lately, so I decided to draw the late Pittsburgh artist.

I really liked the direction his career was going at the end, moving away from straight up rapping and instead parlaying his vocal style into halfway-singing. It blended well with his later concept albums, and his posthumous releases have only confirmed this evolution.

Short: Heart of a 1 on 1 Trip

I know I’m not gonna get everything right as a dad, but one thing I am pretty confident in, is that I will not regret making sure each of my kids gets some quality one-on-one time with me. 

It’s fun to have a large family, but it does mean having to put in the extra effort to make sure I get these special moments with each kid in appreciation of who they are.

And as a nice little bonus, sometimes they happen in Finland.

As always, thanks for following along. Love having you in my corner.

Alec Bohm

n 2011, my Phillies had an unreal pitching staff and the best record in baseball. Their playoff run ended too soon, with Roy Halladay not getting run support and Ryan Howard injuring his leg on the game’s last play.

Neither player was the same after that, and neither was the team. Who knew it’d be 13 long years until celebrating another division championship?

I don’t think most people who follow me are here for my baseball takes, but in the spirit of Philadelphia Freedom, here they are…

🔹 The team I find the most threatening is San Diego. Best record in the second half. Not only that but they’re an absolute powerhouse in the late innings with the back of their bullpen and guys like Merrill being so clutch.

🔹 On the flip side, LA is the bettors favorite, but we’ve played them really well this season. The Phils have mitigated Shohei about as well as anyone.

🔹 Baltimore’s odds just soared when they let go of Craig Kimbrel.

🔹 The timing of Ranger Suarez’ recovery may be a blessing in disguise as it gives the Phils an obvious reason to slate him 4th in the rotation. But, his pitches are coming around. This means we get one of the best postseason performers in the bullpen for the early rounds where he has also excelled.

🔹 One of the Mets, Braves, and Diamondbacks won’t make it and I can’t decide who I’d most like to have miss out!

To my non-baseball watching friends who read this despite it being total gibberish to you, y’all are real ones!

Heart of a One-on-One

I recently took my four year old on a one-on-one trip to Finland. This is something I hope to do on rotation with all my kids. One on one trips, that is. Location may vary.

With three close in age, it’s a special opportunity to get more quality one-on-one time. Hanging with everyone together is cool too, but it’s just different.

This morning, when he woke up on a train to see snow all over the ground… I’ll never forget that look. It struck me that this is one of my favorite parts of being a dad.

I like to show love by giving people experiences, and when it comes to my kids, I know them. I know what wows them, I know what they’ve never seen before, and how to get it in front of them. And getting to serve up an experience like this is what it’s all about.

Your Income Reflects

Saw a post a while back that started with “Your income reflects…” that went on to list things like, “the caliber of the people you spend your time with” and “your commitment, perseverance and fortitude.”

And honestly, it really doesn’t.

I mean, these things are variables that have some influence, but they’re pretty far down the list in comparison to things like…

Where you were born.

Your parents’ level of income and education.

Where you fall on the spectrum of inequality because of race, gender, ability, etc.

In a world where your ZIP code predicts your health better than your genetic code, the hard data shows stronger correlation between the circumstances of one’s birth than “mindset” or “attitude,” which isn’t to say those things don’t matter. Often they’re key to a person being able to outperform their social predictors.

But man, I’ve been to parts of the world with some of the highest poverty rates, and I can tell you, it’s not that way because of the caliber of the people those communities spend time with, or a lack of commitment.

Invest in your mentality. I do think that matters a lot. But don’t let it be a thing that makes you think less of people in worse scenarios because you think they simply “don’t got it.”

A Tree Planting Campaign

I got to join this Ethiopian community for a tree planting campaign wherein 1.9 million seedlings were planted in the woreda of Andabet with Plant With Purpose. This was awesome! But one of the things this community helped me understand is that when it comes to reforestation, it’s not just about the numbers, but the knowledge and involvement of the local community.

Voting is Hiring and Mickey is Paraguayan

Letting this one go where it goes

Is it just me or is everyone some version of tired and recuperating from something right now? My organization just threw it’s biggest yearly fundraiser, so there’s been a lot of that energy at work, but beyond that, in other circles of life, I’m reading the room and getting the sense that we’re all just catching up on sleep and everything we’ve been putting off.

I’m definitely in that arena myself, so I decided to not overthink, and to record a freestyle, stream-of-consciousness vlog… not something I do too often! But I managed to mostly share something quirky I learned about Mickey and something sincere about the voting process.


Elections are weird. They invite all sorts of bold predictions, polls, and prognostication, and people with very strong feelings around their predictions. It’s not enough to get your candidate in office, people need to be right about how it will all go down.

If anything, these cycles could be reminders of how we don’t know the future, and how we need to learn to live in the uncertainty. We don’t really like that, though.

I do find elections and campaigns to be pretty humbling, if I’m being honest. For example, I’ve always thought things like mailers, lawn signs, and commercials were a waste of money. Never have I once seen a bunch of signs on somebody’s lawn and thought, well, their garden looks good so I’m going straight ticket with whoever their voting for.

But oddly, there is data on how much this stuff can sway decision making, and in a tight race that can be enough.

I honestly don’t like writing about politics especially during an election. It’s not that I don’t recognize the importance of it, but there's simply a lot of noise out there I would rather not add to. This year’s has been dramatic, but I guess I’m pretty glad it’s kind of been abbreviated.

There is one way of thinking about an election that I wish were more common that I think would turn down the noise and lead to more measured decision making, rather than drama.

Casting a vote for someone is simply hiring them.

Voting for a candidate is saying, I would like that person to work for me. And that’s it.

It’s a similar thought to a post I see every now and then that a vote isn’t a Valentine. You aren’t waiting for your soul mate of a candidate to come along in a meet cute. You’re simply hiring the best player to help you advance your goals.

What would happen if we actually approached voting with this mentality?

1) There would be a lot less celebrity attached to leadership roles

In my mind this is a good thing. Relative to a lot of other Western democracies, the US has a lot of allure around its Head-of-State. People hold them up against the shadow of romanticized leaders of the past, and political newcomers are given a TMZ-esque treatment on the come up. In other places, this is less pronounced by a parliamentary structure, having a figurehead monarchy, or other means.

The celebrity approach to political personalities is really unhealthy. People zealously back their candidates, look past all their wrongs, and build their identities as if it were a football fandom. Candidates and parties feed off this appetite for belonging in manipulative ways.

When I hire people, it’s not because I’m obligated to as their fan. It’s because I think they can get the job done.

2) Experience would matter a whole lot more

Rather than being won by a slogan or a yard sign (data says it happens even though I don’t get it!) you’d look for more telling indicators of someone’s ability to do the job. Namely, past performance in analogous roles. Leadership roles would be more earned, and less awarded to sleek marketing.

While this might give a slight edge to experienced candidates, it doesn’t mean whoever quantitatively holds the most years under their belt is the default winner. That’s not really how you hire. I’ve often valued the fresh perspective of a total newcomer. But both experience and novelty would be seen in proper context.

3) We’d have higher expectations and more accountability for leaders

When you hire somebody, you don’t then only look at their wins and constantly remind the rest of your team that you made such a good decision! You evaluate their performance, look for ways to help, and expect a learning curve and progress over time.

Our atmosphere of political fandoms makes it so we’ve attached our identity to a candidate’s success. People who voted for a candidate should in theory be the most demanding of that leader’s accountability, but instead they’re often turned into defenders of that leader, no matter what.

I do think this mentality, of voting being an act of hiring, can help reduce a lot of the unhealthy aspects of our political culture. It would reduce the misaligned expectations we have of leaders in the political arena and replace them with more appropriate standards of accountability.

Don’t forget to vote! Just try and do it as a member of the hiring committee instead of the fan club.

My 50th Country, Suriname

I recently hit a neat little travel milestone, in being able to spend time exploring my 50th country. 

The country that will forever hold that distinction?

It’s one I wouldn’t have expected.

Suriname, one of South America’s least visited nations.

Suriname is one of the “three Guianas” that sit at the top of the continent, along with Guyana and French Guiana. I got to visit while spending a little longer in Guyana after discovering how relatively easy it was to catch a flight between capitals- Georgetown to Paramaribo.

My original plan was to attempt the border hopping by land, hiring a car on each side and taking the ferry. After trying to make those plans, it got a little too unclear whether or not all operators were still running post-Covid, so I took a 45 minute plane each way.

Most arrivals into Suriname will come by way of the Johan Adolf Pengel Airport, which sits about 45 minutes outside of Paramaribo. For an airport its size, it functions relatively well and feels a lot calmer than its Guyanese counterpart.

Display materials remind you that most of Suriname is an almost uninhabited rainforest with plenty of open space and biodiversity.

The drive from the airport to Paramaribo will also drive home this impression. You pass mostly open space, with the occasional small home. The houses you do pass by on this main road are modest, but well kept.

There is plenty of green around.

When you finally make it into town, you quickly discover that it stays relatively calm.

After spending a few days in Georgetown, this was really welcome. Guyana has a lot going for it, but one thing that made it a less-than-ideal destination for me was the fact that it had very limited walkable areas. The parts of town that were walkable by design tended to be more chaotic, and somewhat unsafe.

In contrast, most of Paramaribo consisted of calm streets and old wooden buildings. A very easy place to explore on foot.

It didn’t take long for me to find a few favorite spots in town. Zus & Zo was a cafe not far from the central streets. I heard good things about their breakfast and while I showed up at an awkward brunch time, the courtyard was a great place to spend a morning. Zus & Zo doubles as a hostel, and there were several opportunities to book ecotourism excursions through them. If only I had a bit more time!

Perhaps my favorite part of central Paramaribo was the waterfront. Right along the river were several kiosks, artisan stands, and mini-cafes. I found a pop up coffee-shop-slash-juice-bar and ordered a ginger juice. Not too far from there, I even found a stand serving up lumpia… extending my claim to find Filipino food just about everywhere!

Caveat… with the spelling Loempia and given Suriname’s history of Dutch colonization, I think the dish actually came by way of Indonesia, but hey, all roads connect.

This part of town also hosted the Palmtree Garden, and as simple as it sounds, I spent a long time wandering around there. It was a small outdoor space, but I wound up finding a spot to sit and be still for a good while.

After that point, I wound up walking all the way to Suriname’s Chinatown, which is about as chaotic of a space that the country has to offer. But, it was a spot where I could find a needed USB charger for cheap, and some pretty great foods.

Speaking of food, Surinamese cuisine ended up being one of the standout things I’ll remember about my short time in the country.

Suriname has a very complex history. It was colonized by the Dutch, who enslaved and brought in African populations. Some escape and intermarried with indigenous tribes, others were later emancipated.

Waves of labor brought in populations from India and Indonesia. All these cuisines and other regional ingredients shaped Surinamese cuisine.

It was a treat to have Suriname as my 50th country.

To be transparent, I find counting countries a little silly. Being able to cross one off a list can be a misleading indicator of how much you engaged or interacted with its culture or its natural wonders. My day in Suriname counts as much as my many months and multiple trips in South Africa.

But to also be transparent, I can’t stop my curiosity in counting how many countries I’ve set foot in!

One other reason I feel lukewarm about counting countries is that it devalues the return trip, and that’s often where you get to the next level in experiencing a place. While I don’t see a return to Suriname on the horizon, I certainly wouldn’t mind coming back again.

Ideally, I’d love to leave a little more room in the itinerary to explore some of that heralded forest space and take one of those nature based tours.