Megan Ritchie

Megan with Latte

Megan Ritchie is one of our newest additions to EntertainingYourself.com.  A native Minnesotan, (she graduated magna cum laude from Macalester College in 2009, with an English and Creative Writing major),  Megan currently lives in Changzhou, China, where she teaches English to both kindergarten and college-aged students.  We asked Megan to tell us her favorite bridge and here’s what she shared

Megan:  There’s a bridge in Hastings, MN, where I lived when I was a kid, that I really love.  It’s not particularly remarkable, just a standard steel bridge over the Mississippi, but I have a great memory of the place.  When I was about 5, I took art lessons for a summer with my older sister.  One day, our art teacher took us down along the shore of the river to paint the bridge on huge pieces of paper with watercolors.  I remember feeling so sophisticated with my easel and paints, like a professional artist.  Both of our finished watercolors, “masterpieces” that they are, are still framed in my parents’ house.  Looking at them now, my favorite part of them is our signatures: my sister’s is in perfect just-learned-cursive penmanship, signed down at the bottom right of her painting.  I wrote my name, on the other hand, smack dab in the middle of the picture, floating in the water.  I even managed to write the “g” in “Megan” backward. I remember my sister telling me I’d “wrecked” mine with signing it there, and sure enough, looking at it closely now, it appears that I re-signed it down in the bottom right, just like her.  I can only assume the double signatures will make it more valuable someday.

EY: That is hysterical.  Perfectly captures the quintessential older/younger sibling relationship!  So any other advice worth passing along?

Megan:  There is a saying: “Shake, shake the ketchup bottle.  None will come, and then a lottle.”  I feel like that saying can apply to most anything I do in life.

EY: Touché!