immigrant experience
-
* I am in one of the most famous and most beautiful cities in Europe. I have visited it before. It is a lovely European city. It is not unlike the city I was born in. I find I have no desire to live here, ever. I find the buildings are old, the apartments small. Everything is
-
Teeth, that is. I grew up in a country where fluoride in water was not the norm. Also, I have to admit my primary family probably did not instill very good oral hygiene habits. I ended up losing a couple of permanent teeth as a preteen or early teenager to decay. By the time I was out of
-
Long-time readers know that I passionately hate it when people with whom I share a fleeting interaction cannot curb their rudeness and curiosity enough to stop themselves from either inquiring about or making stupid assumptions about my origins. This post has been brought to you by the three separate incidents that happened between Thursday and today. This is
-
I am usually not one to wallow in nostalgia. In fact, I purposefully avoid reminders of my ancestral home and country. I cannot spare the emotional energy needed for thinking about what was or what could have been. Unfortunately, that means that I also avoid thinking about my parents and sibling; I am not a very good daughter or
-
A few weeks ago I posted on my disorienting foray into the Twilight Zone world of high-school athletics at Eldest’s new school. It’s all very macho. The swim team recently went on a dads-and-boys daylong canoeing trip; some dads went, but DH didn’t go. (By the way, it’s not even clear that the kid will make the team
-
Disclaimer: This post was not meant to be obnoxious, but might have ended up being so anyway. It illustrates the experiences my husband and I have had with the arguably very limited number of Americans who happen to be our friends or acquaintances, so for us they do represents Americans. Why we have had such experiences is probably a complex
-
My eldest is starting high school in the fall and I can already tell it will be tough. Not for him — for me. A stereotypical high school athlete is very competitive and usually participates in more than one sport. Eldest has some very stereotypically athletic friends, but is not one himself. However, he has swum for many
-
I wanted to call this post something like “A Post on Cost”, which would only be awesome if “post” and “cost” rhymed… Looking at their spelling you’d think they do, but one of the mind-boggling properties of the English language is that spelling and pronunciation are like two second cousins twice removed: sort of related, but few people can actually
-
I live and work in the US and am an American citizen, but I am not US-born; I came here to go to grad school. I spent my formative years in a small European country and had the equivalent of K-12 and undergrad education in a system considerably different than the one in the US. As
xykademiqz 