Reflections from Abroad

While prepping for the weekend errand run, I stopped and realized the internal dialogue that was running through my head.

We need bread and meat, so we’ll stop at that one store with the good butcher and the bread we like. However, other things are more expensive there, so we’ll swing by the store on our corner after to get everything else on the list. That first store has ramps in and wide aisles, so we can put the baby in the stroller, and they have carts we can put the toddler in. But the stroller does not fit easily in that second store, so one parent will stay in the car while the other runs in. Let’s also plan on eating dinner out tonight, so we can pop into that other store after to grab any final things left on the list. Oh, and they have that cheaper brand of diapers, so we can get those there too. And of course, I’ll do the produce order for delivery on Monday morning as well.

Hey girl,

I know you’re busy. You live in a bustling international city, your kids go to school 25 minutes away, they're both involved in activities, and you're teaching a class on Sunday mornings. You also lead the Bible club lesson on Friday, and you've got local friends you want to see and grow with after the family-centered Christmas holidays and travel.

You still need to take the driving test and the language exam and let's not even get into the things you just want to do: an online theology course, a schedule for being creative, a workout program, a little supplemental nature study or reading lessons with the kids, a day trip for a host country history lesson.

Take a deep breath and enjoy it all because, in two months, you'll be moving into "unprecedented times."

I’ve been wearing my glasses these days. For those of you who wear glasses too, you know that when paired with a mask, the combination is not ideal. Usually, I wear contacts 97% of the time, so it may seem counterintuitive that now would be the time I make the switch. But at its root, the reason I’m wearing glasses more often than usual comes down to the same reason I’m wearing the mask: COVID. More specifically, I’m on my last bottle of contact solution brought from the States. Since our country’s borders are closed, I’m not heading back to get more solution (or anything else on the “America List” I keep in my notes app) anytime soon.

When I packed our suitcases to move overseas for the first time, carefully checking each piece multiple times to make sure it was just the right weight, I had no idea that a silent stowaway had crept in that would rear it’s ugly head time and time again once we got to our host country:

DOUBT.

It all started when I was feeling overwhelmed by my mental to-do list as we prepared to move overseas for the first time as a family. There were emails to answer, deadlines to meet, and people to see. There was a twenty-page visa application to complete, a college course to finish, and a baby’s arrival to prepare for. Not to mention the stress involved in sorting through every single possession—deciding what to take, what to store, and what to give away.

In order for you to buy into this post, I’m going to need you to forget anything you’ve ever heard about dating apps. Especially if you heard that in the USA. Because this post is all about dating as an expat and in order to do that in 2020 and beyond, your best bet is probably going to be employing some dating apps.

But those are for losers! Isn’t Tinder just for hooking up? I’m not into sketchy late night texts! That is not for me.

I kid. I know none of us are that closed off to new experiences, right? After all, you did (or have, or will soon) move out of the country you were born and into another. That is not for someone who isn’t at least a bit adventurous. That’s right, my friend, you are an adventurer! Now let’s talk about how to apply that to your love life.

As I’ve watched the events following the death of George Floyd unfold in the United States, I’ve been tempted to despair. Despair systemic racism and the ignored cries of people of color. Despair for George Floyd and his cries for his mother. Despair for Americans whose ancestors were enslaved by people honored by statues and that wretched flag that stands for the defense of slavery. Despair that although black Americans are no longer enslaved, slavery is alive and well throughout the world. Despair that the consequences of the slave trade, segregation and racism still seem to prevail, and that Civil Rights are still trickling in less that 70 years later.

I have despaired. It’s easy to think that my passport country is broken beyond repair.

Is anyone else feeling overwhelmed by statistics, headlines, and confirmed case counts? It didn’t take me long to get there. I can only handle so much bad news before I start feeling numb. I don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to process every single update. I haven’t been in my host country long enough to know the reliable news sources and I can’t sift through the word-of-mouth news to determine what’s just a rumor (or translate it, for that matter).

This is a serious situation. Everyone is concerned about their loved ones. We have all been affected by this virus in some way. When my company informed us of a potential country-wide lockdown, we stocked up on food and diapers. We have the resources to be able to do that without a second thought. My family has a reliable income, but even if that goes away, we have savings. We will be okay. Then I started thinking about my neighbors. They don’t have the resources to save. They go to work, get paid, and eat. Rinse and repeat. I just stocked my cabinets full of food, and my neighbors might not eat tomorrow.

Although it’s unexpected—and far from ideal—I've seen some good coming from this time of distance learning for my kids, made necessary by COVID-19. They’re able to be more relaxed, and we have more time together. But recently I caught a concerning negative development. My three-year-old daughter now looks at her coloring pages and says, "I'm not good at drawing. I'm bad at this,” and then gives up. She hears this from her brothers.

My secret fear is that they learned this behavior from me.

If there is one word that is universally used and understood in the Year of Our Lord 2020, it is the word interruption. Across the globe, everything has been interrupted — family life, education, careers, finances, church, sports, future planning. We now realize our future is not what what we were expecting, and that is a tough and unsettling place to be.

I remember standing on my balcony in Cambodia when I was younger, the streets bustling with life below, and watching the sunset take over the sky with such theatrical colors of warm pinks, peaches and gold. It was so brilliant. Too brilliant, perhaps.

In the USA, people like to bask in that brilliance, you know? Get a nice, golden tan. Where I grew up, people shielded themselves from that same brilliance (well, those who could afford to). The Cambodian sun is hot, brutal, and unforgiving.

All of us on the Taking Route team carry passports that say United States of America, and we know many of you do as well. The events happening in our home country right now are devastating. The murders of Black men and women like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor (and so, so many others) have opened our eyes to something that has been going on for a long time. As U.S. citizens living abroad, we find ourselves grasping for something that we can do right now to work for justice in America.

We are not experts and we are still very much on the journey of learning (and unlearning) things when it comes to racism. Because of this, we are pointing you to the voices of men and women who have done a lot of work to help us listen, learn, and take action. We wanted to share some resources we have found to be helpful in educating and or/prompting actionable change to fight racism in America.

A week or so after arriving in Armenia, I ventured out to a local zoo to meet up with some other expat parents and their kids. By the time we got to the zoo, my head was spinning from trying to call for a ride, communicate with the taxi driver, and hold onto all three of my kids in the back—without seat-belts—while the driver dodged wildly around other vehicles, and even backed up on a busy road after missing a turn. But we arrived safely, so I counted it a success.

I was thrilled to be out of the taxi, and ready to meet some new friends.

In some ways, during this time of social isolation, I find myself more connected than ever.

In the past two weeks alone, I’ve been on more video conferences than the rest of my life combined. I’ve had countless conversations through text and other messenger apps with friends. People have emailed and reached out to check on our family. We’ve chatted almost daily with our family in the States.

And yet, after a video call with several friends recently, I found myself messaging one of them saying, “I just wish we could sit across from each other with coffee and have a conversation face to face.”

Yesterday I made pumpkin bread with frozen pumpkin puree that a friend had made from scratch and tucked away, intending to use herself. Today I made pot roast for dinner with beef from their freezer. These friends had to make the abrupt decision to leave their home in Rwanda due to medical reasons. Even though the airport closed last week, some embassies worked to figure out a handful more flights out this week. So, these friends took the last-minute opportunity, packed up their home and two small children in a matter of days, texted out the contents of their freezer and pantry to those of us who lived in the neighborhood to come pick up, and — a few hours later — were headed to the airport, unsure of how many months it will be until they can return.

I have the hair of a Mediterranean sea goddess. I discovered this last fall when our family traveled to Malta for a conference, and every single one of my ringlets was living its best life every day. One morning, I came out of the bathroom after catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror and shrieked to my husband, “I actually woke up like this!” They were so tight and bouncy I got compliments on my “haircut” when I posted photos.

The humidity, the sea breeze, the silky hotel pillowcase and the relaxed atmosphere of the conference that enabled me to primp a bit in the morning created the perfect environment for my curls to thrive. I only needed to wash my hair two times the whole week. The rest of the time I spritzed with a little water, added a tiny bit of product to combat the frizz, and twisted the few disobedient ringlets back in shape. To my amazement, they stayed all day.

Can I just say that COVID-19 is really messing up some things? Like my plans. My husband and I had a much-needed weekend away planned. That came and went and is still much needed. My daughter is a senior this year. Her cap and gown are sitting in the packaging and she is making jokes about graduating online after all. We homeschooled for so long and she was looking forward to a graduation with her class. Her prom dress is hanging with the tags still on it in her room, and I’m trying to brainstorm a get together that fits in with the current restrictions on gatherings where we are. Our friends are trapped in country with expiring visas. Global workers who are stateside are having their much-needed fundraising functions cancelled. Schools are closing. Oh, the list goes on.

“The only good thing to come out of this are the memes,” I’ve muttered to my family.

But then I had to repent.

This past year, I fluctuated between two extremes with my phone: either I was mindlessly scrolling too late at night or I was obsessively attentive to a few accounts I thought were really helping me — both at the cost of actual time with my family. My feeds infiltrated my thoughts to a point where I wasn’t sure where social media ended and my real thoughts began. I had convinced myself that I was using Instagram intentionally because of how carefully I curated who I followed. My feed was full of beauty and joy, homeschooling, theology, inspirational expats, real life friends and funnies, and I was super interested in it.

My mother’s family spent several years in the early 70’s living in Seoul, South Korea, when she was a teenager. Because of her vivid memories and my relationship with my grandparents, the influence of Korea on my family was marked. My grandparents’ home in the States was filled with beautiful artwork and furniture from Asia. My grandfather often answered the phone with the Korean greeting, yobaseo, rather than the typical hello.

Everyone in my family loves olives, thanks to a long heritage from my Greek great grandmother. There were always bowls of the briny treats on the dinner table, and my grandpa purchased them in enormous tins to accommodate our large gatherings. You could call them our “Big, Fat Greek” gatherings, but the truth is our family is much more international than that. My Greek great grandma was adopted as a little girl by a French family living in Istanbul. She married a Russian man and raised three boys who all married foreigners, and she immigrated to the United States with her middle son, my grandpa, who had married an American from Washington State.

The baby stirs in her crib. It’s still in our room because the carpenter made it an inch too wide and it can’t fit through the door to her room which is, for some reason, more narrow than the other doors in the house. We were up most of the night. 40 hours of traveling back to our Asian home from the US has us all trading colds and coughs and fevers.