As many of my readers around the world probably know, I grew up in the Netherlands. Happy as I was there, I had a travel bug and luckily ended up…
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.
After years of living as an expat in the US, I still have trouble subduing my inner Dutch girl with her opinions and judgments and directness. So if you’re an American, you’ll want to stop reading, because here’s my list of 7 American things I don’t do . . .
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The mystery of sex: How can you be grumpy on a Italian summer evening sitting on a moonlit terrace with a stunning view of the Bay of Naples? At the table next to us sits an American couple in their sixties with bad body language and no love hormones running rampant . . .
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Straight out if the movies: Four good-looking, rugged guys on camels with meters of cloth wrapped around their heads to protect against sand and sun — dusty, dirty and starving. Dutch and American, they show their true colors when looking for food.
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Humorous quotations about expat life and travel. Have a laugh about the different perspectives and opinions about life abroad. Some pearls of wisdom, some fake.
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