Musings of a Global Nomad

Our dear family and friends As I sit down to write this annual Christmas letter, it’s an unusually bleak day here in Rome. It’s dark, rainy and cold and but sitting here, in front of the huge Christmas Tree we have put up in our living Rome, I feel anything but. As I look back on the year that’s been, and search out those tidbits of our lives to share with you, I feel warm and fuzzy, contented, accomplished, just plain happy. And that’s because I realize, it has been a good year, in fact it’s been a great year. Gerard finished his stint in Afghanistan and we are all together in a place we are once again happy to call home. The move back to Rome went well for the most part, and after the initial expected hitches (telephone and internet connections) and unexpected hitches (we were without a washing machine for almost a month) we settled down into our lovely home, ready for round 2 in Rome. The kids, especially the younger three, settled into their new school really fast.

This is a household of five ladies and one man. We range in age from about five to forty four, have a diverse  fashion sense, varied interests and a host of other idiosyncrasies. We share everything...clothes, shoes, hair brushes, lunch boxes, TV time... yes, (nearly) everything is communal. Of course we have duplicates and triplicates of some stuff that is just precious and that is sometimes needed by everyone, all at the same time. One of these, more precious than gold type of precious, things is the honorable hairbrush. Now all of us, sans one, have alot of hair to brush. Hair of varying lengths and varying textures. Hair that we sometime like plaited, sometimes put up, sometimes left to fly in the wind. But what can I say, how ever many hairbrushes we buy, however much we try and exclusively allocate them to individual members, they seem to have a mysterious pact. They enter the house, act all coy and obedient for the first few days and then they disappear, and they often take o

Two years are up and I have been trying to write a blog on the end of what we call our 'India Experience' but I seem to be having a major case of writers block. There is so much to be said, but for some reason the words are stuck in some inner recess of my brain. Is it because perhaps I am reluctant to say goodbye and putting my thoughts down will actually mean the end of two incredibly amazing and yet agonizing years. But this must be done today, now. I must somehow tease and cajole the words out, because as time passes and I get caught up with life in the Eternal City, those words may just dry up and believe me I really need to sing my swan song as a long distance wife. I used the words amazing and agonizing and yes they are completely contradictory, but no two words can better describe our two years in India. Amazing because the experience was everything and more than what we expected and agonizing because simply put, the days without Gerard were...just that. But in sp

My city goes to the polls tomorrow. After weeks of frenzied campaigning and an overkill of election propaganda, the streets are vanilla again. Yes, all signs of campaigning have been removed as per election commission guidelines. But you can still smell it in the air, you can hear it in the wind. The drums may have stopped beating but the echos haven't faded. The Indian General Elections 2014. The world's largest democracy voting to elect its next central government. Complicated, calculating, sometimes comical, this election seems to be one of the most exciting elections ever. Excited to be in country to vote in a general election for the first time since I turned 18, I went through all the procedures to get my name included in the voters list in my constituency. However when the final lists were published, I was utterly devastated to see that my name wasn't there. I set out on a mission to try and find the main master voter list to see if maybe my name had inadvertent

When the Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) led by Kejriwal first came into the limelight, I never took them too seriously. Saying that let me clarify that I am quite apolitical and the closest I get to talking politics is on the phone with my dad (who by the way is quite the lay politician) or husband a few times every week. We lightly discuss and laugh about the political news trending that day, vent our anguish at the theatrics of some idiot politician or the other and that's enough politics for me. And then the AAP did surprisingly well in the Delhi elections and I began to take more notice. What if there really was something about this bunch of people? What if their ideologies which were refreshingly pure could be made reality? What if their spirit spread, allowing India to face their toughest demon, namely corruption? Though I thought their caps made a really bad fashion statement I began to like them and pay them more notice. Well they managed to form the government in Delhi but sadl