A few days before we left beloved Madrid, I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop attempting to order a filter coffee. I knew this place didn’t sell filter/drip/pour-over coffee, but still I liked to ask because how else will they know there’s a demand for something other than bitter espresso drinks? A guy sitting next […]
Jews around the world say “Next year in Jerusalem!” at the end of the Passover seder. I know because, while I’m not Jewish, I’ve joined Mr. Em in Jerusalem’s family seders pretty much since I’ve known him (and we even co-hosted a particularly interesting one at our hotelpartment in Yemen). I’ve now spent two Passovers in […]
On the first day of Passover, a group of friends and I went on a hike. Our plan was to start just outside of Jerusalem in an Israeli National Park and end up in the Palestinian town of Jericho. We figured it would take us about six hours, because some ultra-fit friends said they ran […]
We recently wrapped up a three-week stay in Washington DC. And man, was it hard to leave (even though I was heading to Paris, oh beloved Paris). The three weeks was filled with catching up with good friends, family, cocktails, dinners, strolling the beautiful DC streets, museums visits, a ballet, a musical, and lots of yoga. […]
Every grocery store here seems to have “Super” in its name, like Super Deal or Super Sol. I don’t read Hebrew, so I’ll just go ahead and assume the grocery store closest to my apartment is called Super Sad because everyone in it wears a frown and if it was sunny when I entered the store, nine times […]
First, I’ve more or less recovered from my everything is broken phase. Fixed my bike brake, swept up most of the shards of glass, and recovered much of my novel (in earlier drafts anyway, but a little rewriting can only be a good thing). I did shatter my iPhone in Ikea the other day, […]
Last weekend, hoping to catch the Christmas spirit, I went on a tour of Bethlehem (which is just a 15-minute drive from Jerusalem, a fact I was totally oblivious to until arriving here two months ago). While my new city is the place where Jesus is believed to have died and been resurrected, Jerusalem […]
One time I was walking on U Street in Washington DC, holding hands with my boyfriend, when an older black man said to us with a smile, “It’s just so good to see a man and a woman holding hands in this neighborhood, you know? I still think about my lack of reaction and wish […]
We’ve been in our new city for 10 days now and each day I decide to put off blogging a little longer until I get a better feel for the place that will be our home for the next three years. “Jerusalem is a complicated place,” everyone keeps telling us. I’m already seeing a bit […]
For the better part of my twenty-one months living in Madrid, I visited heaps of coffee shops in the hopes of writing a blog called “Madrid’s Top Five Work-Friendly Coffee Shops” And as I finally write this post from one of Washington DC’s dozens of coffee shops (where everyone is engrossed in either a business […]
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