Empty Nest Expat

Moving to a Muslim country is a chance for an expat to confront one's own Islamophobia directly. It works too. I love living without fea...

Turk, Kurd, Bosnian Circassian, Nomad, Immigrant Laz, Albanian, Georgian Alevi, Sunni, Şafii (what is that?) One of the things I l...

At Topkapı Palace with a trusty audioguide around my neck Wow! How exciting. I'm part of a trend documented with a three-page tr...

This week, I cast my ballot in the American election. I was proud to have not blown it off but to have figured out how to do it. Figuring it...

Can you see the people near the bottom of the magnificent Vasa Warship? There were so many things that impressed me about Sweden but ...

There are times in one's life when there is no possibility of travel.  When illness threatens, for example, or there are numerous small ...

As an American, one of the things that impresses me about Europe is the amount of political risk-taking the average European is willing to s...

Good morning from Sofia, Bulgaria! What a fantastic, comfortable, and easy bus trip that was. There was so much to look at.  It was the firs...

I decided to take a bus to Istanbul because I knew it would be a volcano-proof plan, I wouldn't have to stay awake watching my luggage l...

Today is a blur.  A sunny, potentially relaxing day in Prague but still a blur. I'm packing up my things because today marks my last day...

When I left the Czech Republic last year, I flew back to the American Midwest. Within two weeks, I needed to go to my home state of Iowa fo...

Welcome Wall Street Journal Readers! I was delighted to see my blog featured in "Blog Watch" by WSJ Online Editor James Willhite i...

I've safely arrived in Madison and am up early because I can't sleep. Maybe because it's high noon in Prague. Luckily, there...

My dream of living in the Czech Republic came true. It just didn't last. As of Friday, I will no longer have legal status to remain in ...

Today the Governor of my former state of Illinois was thrown out of office without a single legislator rising to defend him. Having spent f...

I have just completed my first week of teaching English and it's been really fun. My class load is twenty hours a week, which is just r...

I knew I needed to get out of the country when I looked at my expiring passport and I had only one stamp. Over the last ten years, I left t...