You know that feeling you experience when you walk into a room and you can’t even begin to remember why you went there? That’s what it feels like to suffer from brain fog due to chronic illness. On a bad day I leave behind a trail of unfinished tasks, deserting them to wander around my apartment for some reason that I simply can’t remember. I usually find my way back to the things I left uncompleted, looking at them with squinty, […]
Author: Ava
Visiting Busch Gardens Tampa Bay: A Review + Tips.
This was a pretty special trip for us. Mr. Meena’s grandparents live near Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, and he’s visited the park several times on family vacations over the years. We’ve driven past the park each time we were in the area (so that he could gaze fondly upon the coasters) and hoped that we’d soon be back and have time to visit this park together. So after about three years of wishing for this trip (and also almost three […]
MJ Donuts – Some of the Best Donuts I’ve Ever Had.
Maybe it’s the variety of donuts available, the fact that they use 0% trans-fat oil, or the women who always serve us so kindly (and send us on our way with more than we ordered) that have made me come to love this place so much. Whatever it is, it has led me –along with many other people – to proclaim that MJ Donuts serves some of the best donuts I’ve ever had. And I don’t say things like that […]
Hiking in Shelby, NC: the First Broad River Trail.
This was our first hike in a little over a month and also our first hike since we moved back to the USA, so I’m glad we found one that was relatively short, flat, and easy. We wanted to ease back into hiking as we start to explore the lovely region that’s currently our home in the Carolinas. This hike was also a good choice because it features a historic wooden railroad trestle bridge and 120 foot long suspension bridge. […]
City Break: A Mini Guide to Shelby, NC.
When we turned onto the inner city streets of Shelby, NC, I was filled with joy – almost as if I was returning home after a long absence. Which is because, in a way, I was. Though I had never visited Shelby before, this was my first day trip and small town experience since returning to the USA after a year living in Germany. I was admittedly nervous (and afraid I’d be disappointed) to see how traveling in America would […]
One Year Without: What We Gained by Owning Less Stuff.
This is the final post in the blog series One Year Without. See all of the posts here. This blog series has been about what we lived without as expats. We gave up our vehicles, community, and plenty of the smaller comforts of home when we moved to Germany. Owning less stuff pushed the boundaries of our comfort zones and there were even a few items that were too difficult for us to go without. But overall, giving up the majority of our belongings […]
On Traveling Europe Together.
Traveling Europe together with the person you love is an extraordinary experience. It’s something that many couples dream of doing and even spend years planning and saving for. It wasn’t an objective of ours, specifically, until we found ourselves rather suddenly relocating to Germany for Mr. Meena’s training. We began traveling Europe together because we wanted to take advantage of our time there. Our travels were born from opportunity. As we traveled we started doing things we’d never done before; […]
Summarizing Life in Germany in 30 Tweets.
You can squeeze a surprising amount of information into 140 characters. I’ve used twitter for several years, but my use of it changed once I made an account for my blog. It became a quick, easy platform for sharing my life in Germany with other bloggers, expats, and curious travelers. I looked back over everything I tweeted during our year in Germany and now I’m sharing the best and most informative tweets here. I tweeted about what we learned, dealing […]
What We Couldn’t Do Without During Our Year of Living with Less.
This is the fifth post in the blog series One Year Without. See all of the posts here. On the last post in this series I focused on which items were the hardest to give up during our year of living with less. Now I’m going one step further and listing the items that we purchased during that year because we felt like we could not go without them. While some items represent momentary failures in our attempts at self-control and […]
Our Reintegration into the USA.
We’ve had a wildly successful but mind-numbingly exhausting first week of reintegration. Coming home has been a lot like riding a bike again after many years; we remember how to do it but there are still many unfamiliar sensations and a strong likelihood of falling down before we get things right again. Here are some of the things we faced this week along with some tips for others going through the reintegration process. 6 Phases of Our Reintegration into […]