To smile or not to smile? The world over, smiling is nice, right? It’s cheap. It’s easy. People like it. Well, no, sometimes they don’t.
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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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 . . .
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Jet-lagged, I’m in a restaurant on another continent, sipping wine. No sleep in two days, a woozy vision of a semi-naked nymph . . . where am I?
- Adventures AbroadForeign Cultures and CustomsLife Abroad
Expat Life: Have You Ever Visited Bethlehem?
Bethlehem is a Biblical place. But I found it not quite as Biblical as I’d imagined when we got our car stuck in an alley.
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Are we speaking English in Kenya? I was annoyed with the response I received when I offered tea to two rain-drenched African girls. Sheesh!