Happy 2020 Is Over! Or, Happy New Year! Whatever you call it. I need to admit something: I woke up today at 4pm. I am still sitting here, sun starting to set, in total shock. Mostly that my husband let me sleep until 4pm – something I’ve never in my life done. Hadn’t he the […]
Hi readers! I published, shamefully, just one blog post in October. Not sure what happened there, and now it’s already mid-November and we’re deep into a resurgence of COVID-19 and on the precipice of the certain plummet of our current president. I’ve been advised to keep politics off this blog, but lemme say I’m depressed […]
Quarantine update: We’ve been locked down here in Algiers now for four months. The situation isn’t terrible here: Stores have reopened; I go in to work one day a week (and work from home the rest of the week); we play tennis often; we order Indian food often from our favorite restaurant; we’ve drank through […]
One year ago today — on July 1, 2019 — we landed in Algiers to start our three-year tour. Back then, we thought we’d be here for two years, but we quickly extended for an additional year. I’m glad we did, because otherwise we’d be trying to figure out where to go next right now, […]
Whew, what a month. In the midst of the continued coronavirus lockdown here in Algiers, back home there’s yet another police killing of a black person, and now protests all over the country in response. It feels like the start of a major public reckoning on racism in the U.S. and it’s a wild time […]
So things have changed a bit since my last post on the Coronavirus situation in Algeria. The number of detected Coronavirus in the country cases keeps rising – it’s currently at about 700 — and the mood feels different. Way fewer people on the streets, and about one-third of those I see are wearing face […]
On Thursday, Adam and I were en route to the Algiers airport, all set to take the delightfully quick flight to Valencia to join our friends for Fallas festival, when the U.S. Embassy Algiers (aka our employer) called and said if we went to Spain – a country with a growing number of Coronavirus cases […]
Adam and I recently hosted our 4th Annual Holiday Spirit Party and it was our most successful yet. It’s a holiday soiree with a cocktail making competition mixed in. We started this annual tradition back in Jerusalem after being inspired by another Foreign Service couple who have hosted a holiday dessert competition for well over […]
Have I mentioned how much I love French? I have never before had this much fun learning a language. Not in high school when I was the most consistently tardy, unmotivated, yet energetic student in Mrs. Belanger’s Spanish class; not when I did a seven-week Spanish immersion course at the Foreign Service Institute, or when […]
The three of us – Adam, our friend Sarah, and I – recently shuffled across the epic mosaic floors at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, Tunisia and gazed at the intricate tile walls depicting ghoulish sea creatures or fertile signs of the Zodiac. “Can you imagine how long this must have taken?” Adam said, […]
