The Yellow Envelope by Kim Dinan

The Yellow Envelope    a book written by travel writer  Kim Dinan tell the amazing adventures spent by her and her husband in the world. In a different world less civilized but maybe more real.

The Yellow Envelope, incredible to believe, rejected by publishing houses something like 100 times before to being embraced by Sourcebooks a publishing house opened to tell at the world histories of people very diversified.

The launch of The Yellow Envelope just few days ago. You can find the book in your local bookstore or Amazon.

It's a story this one I feel very close.

Days ago in fact I lunched with some neighbors and very close friends. We said all good-bye to a childhood friend and her husband. They decided to leave their big city, Milan for going to live to Cambodia.
A big change.
I was very worried for them and I remember I saw more negative than positive sides of this choice and I am sorry for it, I am still complaining with myself, because I projected on them all my doubts and perplexities not being at all psychologically helpful.

Reading this book I understood that there is a lot of richness in the exploration of the world.

Most people for the most different reasons decide to drastically  change their existence.

Kim Dinan didn't have any financial problems like also her husband Brian. Just she didn't love anymore her house, her job, her reality.

Her western structured civilized life where certainties were spending an entire day closed in office, in a cubicle, and then back home, in a safe home the couple decided to buy with all themselves and restored completely. Although these blessings, Kim felt that no: they were not enough to her for being happy. She wasn't searching for a comfort-zone, it became intolerant to her, she was searching for exploration, for a face-to.face with the most unknown and sometimes also dangerous world.

Kim wanted to travel, to discover the world, a different world. To write about what she would have seen and lived.

Kim was searching for a world able to enrich her spiritual life with new meaning, a world able to let her become a good travel writer and a different human being.

Her husband Brian followed her without hesitations.

In the process of selling the house once invited by a couple and for dinner this couple changed maybe the course of their future trips influencing also their future: they donated them in fact a yellow envelope with 1000 dollars with three rules:

- # Rule 1- Don't over think it. It's important not to think too much of the best thing that you can do with this money. Listen to your soul and try to do your best with this money, giving away money in any way that makes you come a life.

Rule # 2- Share your experience: people you decided to donate your money at, and why. But just what you want to tell. Keep the rest for yourself.

Rule 3 #: Don't feel pressured to give it all away.

With this touching gesture from their Portland's friends and the melancholy of their beautiful house sold with all the furniture inside, apart few journals and other little items saved, the couple Kim and Brian ready for leaving for Ecuador.

They arrived at La Brib.

They needed to keep clean the place where they stayed in and their main rule was to teach to children, something Kim does with pleasure although not knowing spanish at the end will confess that these children donated her much more than not what she donated them.

Agatha one of the first children interested (at the beginning the example of  the "tax driver") by the couple for the project: The Yellow Letter.

Agatha was in fact orphan of dad from a year and she was very sad, although money not only couldn't reinstitute her dad to her, but couldn't also remove the sadness in her heart. Then there was another old couple who needed a pair of shoes.

Kim felt during this process melancholy for her choice: the desire of returning to the USA sometimes strong, although she understood that what she was doing was good.

It was in Peru, La Mancora that the frictions with Brian became more serious, and where also another couple of friends started to develop problems, while another couple seemed to stay very well together. There wasn't any kind of great sex since Brian and Kim left Portland. Brian a closed man, someone who didn't want to tell his feelings to her and what truly believed of all of this story as well. The couple together from more than a decade, surely Kim knew her husband a lot and understood that he wasn't feeling great.

The couple visited Titicaca and then moved to Lima, but they also passed through other beautiful mountains like Pachatata and Pachamama, the Mother and Father Earth ending up at Amantani's island.

These populations live also of a system of collectivism. Children who wants to go to school as it happens in every other rural place in the world must go somewhere else for attending the other grades of school. For this reason to the local people of Amantini Island tourists are so important.


For some people little money mean a lot and for Veronica, another destinatary of the yellow envelope it meant richness. There is in fact a great disparity or there was, between our living system and the living-system in South America.

Sure the relationship between Brian and Kim is at the same time not going on well.
Brian quit his job and followed his wife in the world for traveling but both appear at the same time miserable.

Kim discover that maybe she doesn't want to be married anymore but Brian will continue to follow her in her trips.

After some brief moments in Germany the couple afford to India.
India is a beautiful place, absolutely, stunning for spirituality. Sure not the cleanest place of this world. Animals respected as people because Indian thinks that animals are reincarnation of their dear ones.

Many adventures and not just in India but in Nepal, Indonesia, with also a great surprise at the end of the book.

The Yellow Envelope speaks of personal growth through a radical change of life-style and if we want, certainties. The certainties of routine, work, friends, habits, customs, put behind for starting to research something new.

At the same time, the couple of Brian and Kim will grow up more solid experiencing with their same eyes what it mean to populations less lucky than them The Yellow Envelope and the word solidarity.

To some of them maybe it was a change of destiny, a big help for their children, or something able to make the difference in better.

Wherever they went, Brian and Kim didn't never forget the lesson of The Yellow Envelope.
Random act of Kindness as remark the author  very important in a world desperately in need of it.


I thank NetGalley and Sourcebooks for this book

Anna Maria Polidori