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 …
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.
-
-
As an expat, have you ever come back to your familiar hometown and seen it with foreign eyes? Living abroad changes how you see even the familiar. So here I …
-
I’m frozen in terror. Our kamikaze driver is writing, eyes down, one hand on the steering wheel. The car is drifting into the left lane . . .
-
Getting searched and groped at airport security is my lot in life. Sometimes it’s more fun than others.
-
Integrate? After years of living in the US, I still have trouble subduing my inner Dutch girl. Here’s why.
