Have you ever paid attention to foreign mannequins? As an expat, you come across some funky specimens abroad, some you might never see at home. Once so intrigued I took …
Miss Footloose
Miss Footloose
I hail from the Netherlands and grew up eating lots of Gouda cheese, riding a bike to school, and not wearing wooden shoes. Having adventurous Dutch genes, I married an American Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, East Africa, in an odd if humorous 10-minute ceremony that fortunately has stuck so far. My man is a development economist and I follow him around the world and watch him toil running projects that assist business and agricultural enterprises in developing countries. I have cooked, shopped, mothered, traveled and written stories in Africa, Asia, Europe, the US and the Middle East. I'm an expat writer not living in paradise (like Peter Mayle or Frances Mayes). I do not drink wine from my own grapes or tend my own olive groves. I have, however, visited my butcher's bedroom in Palestine, eaten fertility sausage in Kenya, and almost landed in prison in Uganda.
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How to have a cheek-kissing orgy? Move to France, invite the neighbors. But be warned: hugging is taboo.
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Why is this man here, in Ghana, running a restaurant? Is he a refugee from the law in Italy? Running from an Italian wife? The mafia? All three?
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Bits about underwear involving French wine, expat kids, an Armenian tailor and a girlfriend bonding experience.
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Certain things you do in your expat life don’t seem so strange at all until you stop and realize what you’re doing. And then it hits you: What a crazy …