I’m six years into living overseas, and I can already see so many distinct seasons that have shaped our time here. How we’re spending our daily lives and who we’re doing it alongside now looks completely different than even just three years ago, despite having lived in the same neighborhood and worked at the same school our entire time here.
Read MoreWhile prepping for the weekend errand run, I stopped and realized the internal dialogue that was running through my head.
We need bread and meat, so we’ll stop at that one store with the good butcher and the bread we like. However, other things are more expensive there, so we’ll swing by the store on our corner after to get everything else on the list. That first store has ramps in and wide aisles, so we can put the baby in the stroller, and they have carts we can put the toddler in. But the stroller does not fit easily in that second store, so one parent will stay in the car while the other runs in. Let’s also plan on eating dinner out tonight, so we can pop into that other store after to grab any final things left on the list. Oh, and they have that cheaper brand of diapers, so we can get those there too. And of course, I’ll do the produce order for delivery on Monday morning as well.
Read MoreI’ve been wearing my glasses these days. For those of you who wear glasses too, you know that when paired with a mask, the combination is not ideal. Usually, I wear contacts 97% of the time, so it may seem counterintuitive that now would be the time I make the switch. But at its root, the reason I’m wearing glasses more often than usual comes down to the same reason I’m wearing the mask: COVID. More specifically, I’m on my last bottle of contact solution brought from the States. Since our country’s borders are closed, I’m not heading back to get more solution (or anything else on the “America List” I keep in my notes app) anytime soon.
Read MoreWhen I was in college, I lost my passport.
At the time, I studying in the States and my parents were living in Kenya and I was scheduled to fly there for Christmas a few short weeks later. Honestly, looking back now, my parents were way too nice about this, and we got an expedited new one that arrived in time for me to still be able to go. I probably was not as stressed as I should have been about getting the replacement (nor felt as guilty as I should have about losing it in the first place), but I did feel the loss of that passport – the actual object itself – deeply.
Read MoreYesterday I made pumpkin bread with frozen pumpkin puree that a friend had made from scratch and tucked away, intending to use herself. Today I made pot roast for dinner with beef from their freezer. These friends had to make the abrupt decision to leave their home in Rwanda due to medical reasons. Even though the airport closed last week, some embassies worked to figure out a handful more flights out this week. So, these friends took the last-minute opportunity, packed up their home and two small children in a matter of days, texted out the contents of their freezer and pantry to those of us who lived in the neighborhood to come pick up, and — a few hours later — were headed to the airport, unsure of how many months it will be until they can return.
Read MoreWe have an unusually large kitchen for where we live, but an unusually small fridge. At 5’2” I look down on it, and our 9x12 Pyrex dish with the snap-on lid only fits in perched at a diagonal. Essentially, trying to make everything fit can easily become a game of Tetris, and last week I lost the game.
Without thinking through the consequences, I set a glass bottle of Sprite on a higher shelf on the fridge door to make room for something else. I’m sure you will not be surprised at what happened a little bit later, when I opened the fridge…
Read MoreYou see, I started college absolutely convinced I would be returning overseas after I graduated. I just could not picture what it would look like to live in America long term. It felt so foreign to me – whereas being foreign was what was comfortable. I knew how to handle being obviously "other" and to skate across the mix of cultures growing up overseas involves. But I didn’t know how to handle it when I looked
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