Tagged: americanabroad

Mom got fired early on as navigator, even though she had several chances to redeem herself. She swears up and down that she CAN TOO read a map and follow directions, at least when she’s alone, but yeah, whatever, Mom, hand over the map. In her defense, it WAS damned confusing that we kept having to go what was actually north on a road called south and south on a road called north. Luckily, I had printed out directions and maps in advance to most of the places we were going and we knew that if we just kept backtracking...

Yesterday, at book group, one of the women asked us to help with an experiment her daughter was doing for school. She is asking everyone she knows to write a few words or sentences about what they think of America. Not Americans—AMERICA. She’s drawn a map of the U.S. on a big piece of paper and she’s putting all the notes that are BY Americans inside the confines of the country, and all the notes that are by NON-AMERICANS outside of the penciled country borders. I joked that my view of America has been revised rather drastically since November 4th....

Today made me miss my family terribly. We hosted a sort of mini family reunion with a couple of Anders’ cousins and their kids…cousins that he hasn’t seen for 25 years (despite the fact that they only live about 1.5 hours away), and that I’ve never met either, despite having lived here for 11.5 years. They had another get-together some years ago, but we were out of town and couldn’t make it. Anders’ mom was the youngest of 12 siblings (she was 25 years younger than her oldest sibling…I’ll just pause for a moment while you contemplate the horror there)...

We have been go-go-going non-stop since I arrived. Working every day and shopping every evening. I’ve met Chuck! And Bluepoppy! And Christina! And Bluepoppy’s T! And being at Soliden this weekend filled my whole middle with a big golden ball of warmth. The temperatures all this past week have been in the middle 80’s (*boggle*) and Mom and I have been having a great time tooling around and just being together. And it’s half over, already! Where does the time go? Zooooooooom! >>>> Photos!

Anders arrived home late last night from his 2 week business trip in Italy. Now it’s his turn to hold down the fort for 2 weeks, and make sure the kids get their homework done and the fish get fed and the dishes done and the laundry folded. Except for my bathroom bag, I’ve been packed since this afternoon. I am ready to go. The taxi is coming at 7:45 to take me to the airport and from there I’ll fly via Amsterdam to Boston where I’ll wait until my mom’s plane lands and then we’ll pick up the rental...