Home is Where the Heart Is, and Family are Those We Care About.

I am mindful tonight of current events.  Between bombs on restaurants and attacks on field hospitals, my heart is broken and seething.  Mixed in with my grief, I also must acknowledge that I have found another home.  It is not a cabin in the woods, or an apartment with heat and hot water.  This one, like so many, is not a physical location, but an idea.  It’s home and it's family.  I am so stricken with the hate and the violence of a handful of people who wish to change their world by ending someone else’s. 

Despite their best efforts though, I can see a bright and vibrant love and compassion.  In response to events like the raid of La Taverna du Liban and the attack on a Red Cross infirmary in Euromaidan, a community united.  True, there are local reactions, but internationally the ex-pat community is also coming together to find their own, to mourn as one, and to support each other. 

As ex-pats past and present we may, at times, be outsiders in the towns where we were born, and we certainly have conflicting loyalties, opinions and traditions, but together we are a family.  Even if you are a cousin that I haven’t met yet, I will likely buy you dinner, share a laugh, and cry with you if that’s what you need. 

So as my heart is once again ripped asunder, I say to you, those who kidnap aide workers, shoot civilians, and bomb school children:  Shame on you.  Those are my siblings, my nieces, nephews, dayzas, babbas and ejes.  We will continue to love each other despite your best efforts.

Remont!

For anyone who has ever lived, visited, or worked in a country where Russian is prevalent you are undoubtedly familiar with the word "remont" ... or Ремонт or renovation/repair.  There are times when it feels like it is everywhere.  I'm certain the inside jokes attached to that word are endless.  Anyway, as advertisers here keep trying to tell me:  New Year, it's time for a New You!  Well, I'm actually pretty happy with the current me ... is that relevant? 

Point is, there is something I have been meaning to do for a while.  It's time to shed the old elephant skin (blog background, not actual epidermis) and make a new attempt at both aesthetics on this site as well as readability.  Just because it's pretty doesn't mean it can't be practical too. 

So tell me what you think.  I may periodically update the background until I figure out something particularly suitable.  Heck, I may even abandon google's graphics all together and venture out into my own photo shoot ... that sounds like server space though.  We'll see.

In the mean time, I'm going to do something else I've never done before.  I'm going to redirect you to another writer's work.  I don't usually do this in part because I don't read many blogs and in part because I don't really know the etiquette behind this.  You should understand this to mean that I've also not found anything topically relevant that I felt was truly worthy of connecting it to my small but treasured blogovel.  This post is different.  I've been asked many, many, many times how I can travel alone.  Isn't it lonely?  It must be soooooo difficult.  The answer:  Yes.  It is.  But that doesn't make it not worth doing, and it doesn't make it more difficult than travelling with someone else. 

I've mentioned here before how periodically I'll hit a wall.  I'll lock myself in a room and just decide not to go out for the day because after months of newness sometimes my brain just says "ENOUGH!" and needs a day to underwhelm.  I still choose that over not.  I choose to go.

Not to mention traveling with others is hard.  All those coping mechanisms I've nurtured would suddenly be worthless.  I would have to include someone else, which isn't really built into my mechanisms and those mechanisms don't really address any of the new phenomena I would need to cope with if there was an other, other.  Oy!

So much ado, all about nothing.  The piece that I'm talking about is called "I Travel to Feel Lonely ... On Purpose"  The use of ellipses alone almost won me over.  If you haven't yet noticed, I'm a fan.  While I don’t share some of her feelings of coupling envy or agree that solo travel is inevitably a byproduct of being single, I do think her understanding of how solo travel works is spot on.  At least for me.  One of the best solo vacations I took was a lay-over in London that lasted about 24 hours and consisted of going for a run in the rain, people watching, grabbing food at the only open café and taking pictures of things that created interesting patterns and textures.  It was amazing.  It wasn't what tourists are "supposed to do", but that's sort of the beauty of solo travel.

So please, read what Ms. Anna Davies has to say : 
http://www.refinery29.com/2014/01/60099/traveling-alone

and let me know what you think ...