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 […]
I drove to the garden store in Algiers the other day, and it was the first time in months I’ve driven more than a few kilometers. (Seriously, I last filled the tank in our car about 60 days ago and it’s still at least half full!) On the drive back, I was trying to figure […]
Quarantine Log: Day 38. I say 38 because it was that many days ago when Adam and I turned around en route to the Algiers airport and ditched our trip to Valencia. Cancelling a trip made shit real, but we still went in to the office for a few more days after that. But we’ve […]
There’s something about being at home all day every day that really makes one consider all the nooks and crannies of one’s home. So what better time than to style, photograph, and share some of the completed rooms in our Algiers house, amiright? When we moved in to our Algiers house in the heat of […]
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 […]
As someone who has lived in rentals or government-provided housing for the past 16 years, I know there’s only so much one can do about drab or ugly kitchen tile. And if you’re like me, a person who is in the kitchen a lot and also very into interior design, then bad tile really bums […]
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 […]
My husband, inspired by Benjamin Franklin, tracks metrics about his life performance. Everyday, he records whether or not he accomplished certain goals, like drinking fewer than x number of alcoholic drinks, exercising, meditating, and much, much more. He’s been tracking all this DAILY for more than a decade. I’m much less of a tracker. Mostly […]
