“The ESSENCE of learning to be GRATEFUL is to learn to WANT what you HAVE.” Maureen Gaffney – Flourishing
Tag: mother
Don’t Panic!
Fittingly enough given it would have been Douglas Adam’s 60th birthday on the 11th of March these words have been running through my head repeatedly in the last few days. The government have decided to change the education system. This should be greeted with shouts of joy and delight as there are plenty of things that could be improved on. But instead of changing the curriculum or adjusting the exam system (which changes every few years anyway) the plan is Click for more
Testing, testing…
According to the Via Me online survey my strengths are love of learning, judgment, prudence, teamwork and fairness. The Strong Life Test for Women tells me my lead role is that of caretaker with an open heart, a chance of being consumed by others feelings and that I should be on or leading a team. My supporting role is teacher, with faith in others, who should be paid to facilitate the success of others. The Primary Colors assessment meanwhile tells me Click for more
Baking up Christmas
The smell of pudding, that rich combination of fruit and sugars, pervades the house. I am home again, watching my mother becoming increasingly frustrated attempting to cover the pudding with greaseproof paper and tinfoil. The string with not go right, will not tie tight enough. My first Christmas in Turkey in 2001, my first away from home, my first as a married woman, I cooked rice pudding. My husband regarded the sticky mass with barely disguised wonder, comparing it to Click for more
School Days
One thing I wasn’t going to do when I started blogging was talk about my children, I was not. My time online was going to be my time for me: no kids, no housework, no responsibilities. I’m breaking that rule today. Having spent the summer constantly in the company of my children, the last month of which also included Baba aka the Handyman, we have been wrenched apart. It started with the Handyman’s return to work, leaving the three of Click for more
Special-ism
Announcing HYBRID AMBASSADORS: a blog-ring project of Dialogue2010 You met our multinational cultural innovators this spring in a roundtable discussion of hybrid life at expat+HAREM. Now in these interconnected blog posts some of them share reactions to a recent polarizing book promotion at the writing network SheWrites. Join the discussion on Twitter using #HybridAmbassadors or #Dialogue2010 I am special. I really am. I’m from a small country. That makes me special, there are only so many of us out there. Click for more
Slow Learning
The children are out on their new bicycles at least once a day, rattling along on their training wheels. The Brown-eyed Girl has mastered the u-turn at the end of the road but Little Boy Blue sits and waits to be pushed around the turn. Neither are ready to be left alone where cars may turn into our cul-de-sac at any moment. So I’ve walked the road more times than in the four years previous, chatting to the newly-arrived summer Click for more
Sisters-in-arms
Sisters are on my mind lately. Initially the real thing, busy with work and hopefully with pleasure soon, I follow her journeys with a bird’s eye view, imagining the new city streets she sees, the small coffee shops, the sprawling conferences. I tick off a list of cities I have ‘seen’, saving them for longer visits in the future or discarding them as not worth the effort. There are the new sisters I have gained, many through shared interests, most Click for more
Working Wife
A recent post on expat+HAREM has got me thinking about being at home and what it means to me. I never had any desire to be a housewife, in fact as a teenager I went so far as to reject the idea of marriage and family, a sure case of baby going out with the bathwater. A lot had to do with my mother, from whom I felt a lot of mixed signals about her life at home with the Click for more