Welcome to Doris Gallan.com where occasional updates on my travels and my writing are posted. After nine months in Mexico, I’m now living in San Jose, Costa Rica — likely until the fall. After that, who knows?

Writing Tip:
More Practice: Social networking sites provide you with the opportunity to write short bits as often as you want. MySpace, Facebook and even Twitter – where you only have 140 characters to express yourself – provide an opportunity to get your thoughts out there. Some people write about nothing much – “I’m bored, I just made myself a P&B sandwich” – but you can use these tools to practice your writing and keep people reading your posts by making them interesting. Surf the Internet for information on topics of interest to you and post these tidbits daily…you’ll soon have a following of like-minded readers.
Check back here for more writing tips.
For more ideas, click on the Writing Tips link on the left hand menu.

Travel Tip:
Communications: Rather than send long e-mails updating everyone on your trip, why not set up a blog? On-line web logs permit you to write about your travels, post photos and videos. You can post links to other web sites that provide more information as well as include maps so that you can indicate where you’ve been. There are many sites that allow you to blog for free although many are attached to a product such as TravelPost which is now owned by Kayak. This is the blog we used for our 26-month ‘round the world trip (DJ-RTW on TravelPost). There are so many travel blogs that networks of these have been formed such as travelblogeXchange. These are great to surf for ideas on how to set up your own blog.
Check back here for more travel tips.
For more ideas, click on the relevant Travel Advice links on the left hand menu.