Craving connection

For me, it’s been a rough start to life in Brussels. I have been here since December 2nd and been sick for the better part of the time. It began with bronchitis, and now my husband and I are wondering if I am actually allergic to the mold and its various floating spores that we…

We come bearing bugs

Living in a foreign land can be intriguing. For my husband and me, it is often a source of trial and error, trying to understand how things work in a different culture and language. Questions arise for most activities that would be simple in the United States. For example: Will the #12 bus arrive at…

Long distance lament

My husband and I spent the first four years of our relationship traveling back and forth between different corners of the United States. Rich may have been living in Arizona the entire time, but I seemed to bounce all over the place, from Washington to Alaska to Massachusetts, with a much too brief stint in Arizona in the…

The land of damp

I have lived all over the world, in places on both ends of the fairly extreme temperature and weather spectrum. I have spent hours out walking and hiking in Southeast Alaska in winter and hours walking in the desert sun in Africa and Arizona. Most recently, I spent nearly two years in central Arizona, and I…