A blog about travel, culture and finding joy in the journey!

Do you know what drowning looks like? Most people would assume, as I did, that the person in danger would be thrashing around, calling desperately for help. I read an interesting article where a lifeguard and water rescue expert, Francesco Pia, PhD. explains what drowning actually looks like. - Silent: There's no spare breath to call for help. - Bobbing up and down: their mouth sinks below the water's surface, pops up just enough to breathe and sinks back down. - Stiff-armed:

When we first moved here, several things seemed different to me. One of them was the village mentality. Parents actively watched other people’s children. When this first happened, I felt slightly offended. Did they not think I was doing a good job watching my son? I knew he could play in a specific part of the playground by himself. Why did they feel the need to jump in and help him? How differently I view this now, as I sat in a shady area of the playground holding my infan

When you live in a foreign country, navigating little things can feel overwhelming. But this also makes it easy to be thankful for the little things as well. I have always enjoyed doing laundry…it has never seemed like a chore to me. But in a foreign country, it’s a different story. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out our apartment washing machine. You had to manually turn on the water, and then I would push buttons randomly until it started. Sometimes this took only