What does it mean to come home? What do you find when you’ve been away? What is home, anyway? Several months ago we left Moldova in Eastern Europe where we …
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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For reasons only known to the gods of cyberspace, I came upon multiple posts last week dealing with expat nightmares and struggles concerning foreign toilets or facsimiles. Once caught in …
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Happy New Year! On New Year’s Eve in my native Holland (properly called The Netherlands) people go out into the streets — no matter what the weather — and …
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Whichever holidays you celebrate and wherever you are this festive season, with family in your own country, or somewhere far away in a foreign country, I hope you will be …
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Still feeling gloomy after reading my latest post? Oh, get over it! Read this and see if it will give you a few chuckles and cheer you up. Expats often …