Hello everyone!! What happened to January?! I could have sworn I’d blogged last month but I guess that wasn’t so. Sorry ’bout that. Will try to compensate for that in February! When...
India
This is a collection of posts from our tour in Mumbai, India from August 2018 through July 2022.
I haven’t written about Nia in awhile and I know she’s one of your favorite subjects so today I’m devoting an entire post to her! Nia is eight now and continues to evolve as a...
Hello dear readers – Goodness gracious, can you believe it’s mid-February already?? Everything feels like a blur lately, which is largely because work has been so intense. Happily though...
My 40th birthday is just around the corner (July 9th) and as a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of aging. I had a sobering moment the other day when I heard an old favorite...
I was feeling so good about things. Virus reports everywhere, yet nothing in Mumbai. Mind-blowing, given how many people are in India and what close proximity they live in. Now, it may just have been...
Uff da. It’s been a hard four weeks hasn’t it? I, for one, am EXHAUSTED. Trying to work, oversee school and cook/clean left me feeling hopelessly ineffective at all three. There’s a...
As promised, here are the details of our repatriation flight from Mumbai back to the U.S. If you haven’t read my last post then you should probably start there. That way you’ll have some...
Ughhh. I’m embarrassed to write because it’s been sooooo long. Was my last post really in October?!!? All I can say is that COVID fatigue has hit hard and writing feels like way too much...
I was so delighted with how many of you took the time to read my post yesterday and comment. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside….which makes me want to do it again! I guess that’s...
Howdy blog readers! Happy Tuesday to you all. Please note that I am writing my third blog post in two weeks (woot woot). Really trying hard to write consistently and get back in the habit of blogging...
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash Have you noticed how during the pandemic there don’t seem to be any “good” options anymore? I definitely have. So much so, in fact, that I even coined...
Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash As my fellow parents can attest to, this last year has given us the “opportunity” to revisit prior grades alongside our children. I have had the...
Image by Nick Fewings on Unsplash Hello dear ones – It’s 2:33 AM in Mumbai and while I’d love to be sleeping, my body has other plans for me. So I thought, “Why not write to...
Hope and I have had a rocky last year and a half. You see, I placed all my trust in her, counting on the fact that she’d come through for me like she had in the past. In August 2020 I was sure...
Since my last post was all dramatic and depressing, my goal for this one is to keep it a bit lighter. No promises though because my general mood lately has been very “angsty teenager...
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash It’s that dreaded time of year folks . . . bidding is upon us. Instead of just complaining about how stressful it is, I thought it’d be fun to give you a...
I thought parenting would make me a better play-er. When I give my daughter the option to choose an activity for Mommy/Daughter time, she inevitably chooses imaginative play with some combination of...
Nick is away for several weeks on a TDY (temporary duty assignment) in Abu Dhabi. In order to break up what would be a very long stretch of solo parenting, I decided that Nia and I would need to go...
Hello again! This is a continuation of yesterday’s post, so if you haven’t read that yet, do so first to give you some context! We spread our sightseeing out over three days in four hour...
Pic by Kristen Our auto-rickshaw sped through the streets of Jodhpur, careening this way and that, locked in a tight race for God-knows-what with the motorcycle next to us. I close my eyes as...
Hey All — It’s good to be back with you again. I’m thrilled to report that Nick is home after 22 days in Abu Dhabi. We missed him immensely but were so proud of the amazing work he...
Photo by Aung Soe Min on Unsplash Greetings dear ones — Happy Monday. I am here with exciting news. Not the news you were likely expecting about the location of our next tour, but a different...
Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash With our next assignment now confirmed, we’ve entered what I like to refer to as the “Senior Slide” portion of the tour. This is the beginning of...
We arrived in India 38 months ago. It was August 2018 and our first time having a three-year tour (which we later extended for a fourth year). It felt like I had all the time in the world as I busily...
Hi Everyone – We spent the morning hiking amongst the beautiful ruins of Hampi, an ancient civilization from the 14th century. I am trying out a more detail-oriented style writing for my book...
Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash Hello dear readers — Thank you for stopping by. No, I really mean that–THANK YOU! I know that there are a bazillion and one things demanding your time...
It started out as a nice, normal Friday afternoon. Nick and I were preparing drinks for Happy Hour, debating what to do for dinner. We’d been told the “sprinkler guys” would be...
Last Thursday marked the end of our first “adults-only” trip in four years, to none other than romantic, stunning Udaipur–the Venice of India–complete with tours of the...
Day 2 in Udaipur The plan for our second day in Udaipur was a daytrip to two sites that I’d heard were worth the effort–the great Mewar Fortress of Kumbhalgarh and the splendid Jain...
As the morning progressed, I couldn’t help but compare this safari experience to the ones we’d experienced in Africa. The first big difference was that there were far more cars around...
I am delinquent in my blog writing, I know. Let’s get caught up, shall we? The weeks between our trips to Udaipur (right before Christmas) and Pench (mid-January) were rough ones. If...
Hey All – Sarah here for our semi-regular touch-base! Has it really been three weeks since we last talked?? Ughhh. I blame February. It just seemed to evaporate! It’s crunch time here...
I reached down to grab my first handful of gulal but stopped short as a blast of yellow hit me square in the chest, the excess disappearing between my cleavage, tickling my torso as it tumbled its...
Mention the word “Pakistan” and danger and/or violence are pretty much the only things that come up for me. I couldn’t tell you any good things about Pakistan, likely because...
Hi Everyone – If you haven’t read PART 1, you should definitely start there, as it provides some great historical context for this post about our time in Amritsar...
Our time in India is winding down (less than four months to go, can you believe it??) and one of the few remaining places on our “must see” bucket list for India was the city of Amritsar...
Hey Y’all — It’s June! Crazy, huh? I’m still trying to figure out what happened to May! Definitely bittersweet, although I am VERY over the 90 to 100 degree Fahrenheit temps...
Well, it happened. Monsoon is officially upon us, which means Mumbai will now be getting rain every day until the end of October. I was really hoping it’d hold out until after our packout, but...
The relative normalcy of the last few months deluded me into believing I had control of my life again, that I could make intricate plans requiring everything to go ‘just so’ with no...