Travel changes us.
It allows us to reflect and connect in ways that our daily routine doesn’t always provide space for.
The stories here reflect meaningful experiences living the ex-pat life, blending inspiration and humor.
I pulled up the drive to my friend’s beachfront house in my truck and killed the engine. As I opened the door and stepped out, Roo, with unrestrained excitement, leaped from the back seat and into the driver’s seat. She wriggled through my arms to help her down out of the truck, landing boisterously…
DetailsIn the mornings I wake up slowly because I want to play back my dreams one more time. My dreams are colorful every single night, pulsating with so much meaning, that I am eager to understand them. I try to register each detail and commit them to memory, to glean whatever message is…
DetailsWhat started as a chill-and-grill birthday pool party at someone else’s house, ended as an impromptu girls’ wine night at mine. This isn’t unusual. I try to always keep wine and coffee stocked in the kitchen, pillows and candles ready for comfort and ambiance, fairy lights twinkling and strung out the back, with…
Details3 weeks ago “We have no more hope”, she said. I hovered in the back galley, the metal drawers and cabinets slamming slightly, but not alarmingly, in the turbulence 35,000 feet above the Earth. The seatbelt sign was unlit, and after 4 or 5 hours into a 12-hour flight, I was…
DetailsThe wishing tree lay fallen on her side. Once stretching to the heavens, emerald leaves hiding monkeys from view, she now sprawled across the jungle floor. Branches grown twisted for the safekeeping of birdnests now down-spiraled into dirt. Every uplifted bough had smashed through the younger, smaller trees, splitting them in pieces as feathers…
DetailsRainy season has descended on Nicaragua. The heat lightning warned us of its coming, dancing arrogantly along the purple horizon. I’m coming for you, it flashed. And it came. At the stroke of midnight, the thick, humid air was shattered by a downpour that woke dreamers from their peace. I was…
DetailsThis week, the moon has loomed high and white, fully illuminating the jungle, the homes, and the ocean blanketing out beneath her. There’s a calmness in the evenings here that is absent during the frenzied heat of the Nicaraguan day. It may not have been a peaceful month for me or many others…
DetailsThey say the good die young. Does this mean the bad will live a long, hearty life? How bad must one be to live forever? And what about the ugly? I was thinking about this while patiently waiting at the dentist for a check-up. Ten minutes earlier, an elderly Nicaraguan lady…
DetailsTwenty-four years ago this week, someone asked me to marry him. Shiny balloons, lush red roses, velvety wine, a night sky sparkling with stars. Keeping with the theme, the diamond was also sparkling; shining bright encased in lush velvet. A grand, romantic production. I said yes. I am pleased that I eventually…
DetailsYesterday, my neighbor spotted a sloth in her tree. Bicycling down the dusty dirt road through the intense Nicaraguan heat, I met her in her front yard. Standing under the shallow forest of tall, leafy trees, we gazed up into the sunshiney canopy and were in awe. High, high above us hugging…
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