This coming summer will mark seven years that I’ve been living abroad as an expat. In those seven years I’ve traveled home to the U.S. five times: for Christmas in 2016, the summers of 2017, 2019, 2020, and then this last holiday gathering, Christmas 2021. My longest break was from the summers of 2017 to 2019 as I moved from Mongolia to Turkey in the summer of 2018. While my employer does fund a ticket…
After five years of counting down and a solid year of planning and preparations, our Caveney Clan Christmas holiday gathering arrived in late December. This holiday gathering, coined a reunion by the cousin contingent, and rightfully so, was made more meaningful as it was preceded by nearly two years of COVID impacts. We have valued getting together once-every-five-years since 2001 when my father initiated this wonderful plan, now tradition. We pilgrimaged to MI again in…
I said I would tell you more about my trip to Germany, as well as how I know Harika, the friend whom I visited in my brief time there. So here I am to do just that. The first week after I arrived to İzmir in August of 2018, I spent a lot of time walking the streets around my apartment and in my neighborhood to begin to get a feel for this new country…