Category: Rat in The Toilet
The Cult of El Senor
Wherever we lived in Latin America, the power always centered around El Señor. Whoever he was, whatever he did, it always was the same, the culture believed that El Señor magically always knew best. Very “Father Knows Best” of the 1950s, but then the Latin America of my time was just like that. So it... Read more »
Eating Like an Expat in the Time of Coronavirus
Caveat: I am not an expert in anything, but living abroad. Having lived for 16 years in what some have undiplomatically call “shit holes”, how did I keep myself and my family healthy while eating a bounty of locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables? Cleaning fruits and vegetables like an expat. Where the original suggestion... Read more »
Memories of Living in the Curacao in the Caribbean
On a forgotten flight out of Curacao while living on the island in the early 1980s, I found myself sitting next to a highly caffeinated Dutch woman. Before we reached cruising altitude, she shared with me her retirement plans. To move to Curacao with its never-ending sunny days. Since the island was still a part... Read more »
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The Joys of Passalongs (a.k.a. hand-me-downs)
As a young child of the 1950s, the bane of being the youngest daughter of Depression Era parents was the passalongs, those hand-me-down clothes that came at regular intervals, washed, ironed and neatly packed in a box sent by the U.S. Mail. Aunt Mildred would send them to her younger sister, my mother, who’d just... Read more »
USA is a Banana Republic
And yes, it is bloody bananas but tragically true. My firsthand experience living for two decades abroad–14 years in banana republics–gives me the street cred to answer Dana Milbank’s Washington Post op ed question of August 6th. “Have we become a shithole country?” Yes indeed. Hop in your TARDIS to time travel back to Donald J. Trump’s kvetch... Read more »
The Attempted Inside Robbery
Sophie had always been a light sleeper. Compounded with the challenges and real world threats to her family living in Mexico City, sleep was even more elusive. So it wasn’t surprising she was awake the night of the attempted break-in, distinctly hearing above her the thud of footsteps on their rental home’s roof. With her... Read more »
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Stores Stocked with Christmas Twinkle Lights in August
Life is weird. We spend a lifetime accruing, learning and if lucky–loving and being loved, only to–WHAM. Die. So what is the point of it all? Does nature make a point? No, it just is. As part of nature, we just are too. What keeps me engaged in this experience we call life is humor. Not... Read more »
The U. S. Embassy Abroad
When I turned 21-years-old, my aspiration wasn’t to go to a bar and order a drink, but to vote for the first time. So when I moved to Lima, Peru in 1972, I began the tediously difficult process to learn how to get an absentee ballot for the Nixon-McGovern election that November. Registered at my... Read more »
Raining Cockroaches in Texas
In the wild kingdom of my life overseas, I’ve experienced the company of bedbugs, cockroaches, centipede, scorpions, fleas, head lice, iguanas, jelly fish, lizards, frogs, mice, rats, pin-worms, ringworms, ticks, termites, goats and more. Some of these critters also made appearances in my so-called civilized homeland in America, like the centipede who scurried out of... Read more »
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At Home Abroad-The Expat
“Why the hell would you want to move from one Third World toilet to another?” inquired my best friend in Willemstad, Curacao when I confessed to her we were moving to Guayaquil, Ecuador. It was a common question. The interrogatory, well-meaning relative had put it another way. “How do you expect your children to ever... Read more »
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