The park where we walk the dogs Yesterday I got a message from a longtime reader asking if we were OK, which prompted me to to see when my last post was made. I had a vague sense of “sometime during the summer.” It was nearly three months ago, when we were back in the … Continue reading A long overdue update
Catching my breath, part 2
In my last post, I wrote about getting Emerson evaluated for ADHD. For one reason or another, it took a while to get it done and finally get the report. The reason for the delay in getting the educational psychologist’s report was because of the other major development of the school year, which can best … Continue reading Catching my breath, part 2
Catching my breath (part 1)
Online school is hard. This post has been a long time coming, and it’s been really hard to write. (And it’s getting split into two posts, it turns out.) Emerson’s version of it is, “I watched some TikToks and said, ‘Ohhh….’ I told my mom, and she said, ‘That’s all normal. Everyone does that.’ I … Continue reading Catching my breath (part 1)
Quarantine
Hotel quarantine sign It’s Saturday morning in our apartment in Ulaanbaatar, and I’m sitting on our new patio chairs in what I’ve dubbed our sunroom, the enclosed balcony off of my bedroom, which also doubles as a drying room for our laundry. It gets the morning sun (and sunrise is around 4:30 am these days) … Continue reading Quarantine
Foreign contaminants
To enter Mongolia during the late stage of the pandemic, I had to be vaccinated. And since Emerson could not yet be vaccinated, we would have to quarantine for a week in a hotel, and then Emerson would have to stay home for a week after that. We also needed negative PCR tests within 72 … Continue reading Foreign contaminants
Back in Mongolia at last
We’re back! We’ve been back about two weeks, and I finally feel settled down enough to write about it. When charter flights to Mongolia started up again in the spring, and we started to feel like we could actually make it back into the country, we settled on May as the month to try. There … Continue reading Back in Mongolia at last
Not quite getting back to Mongolia
It’s been months since I’ve written regularly for this blog. When I started this (a few weeks ago) I couldn’t even remember the last post I’d written, so I just re-read it. September seems like ages ago. Some things have changed, and some have stayed the same, so here’s an update. The punchline: We’re still … Continue reading Not quite getting back to Mongolia
Musings on a Tuesday afternoon
The Hope Preparatory School, Hill Cut, Freetown, Sierra Leone Yesterday afternoon, Emma suddenly started talking about something that has bothered us both on and off for a while now. I’m not sure what triggered it, but, out of the blue, she said, “It’s weird how all these kids at my school were so excited about … Continue reading Musings on a Tuesday afternoon
Where we are right now
At the Salton Sea, January 2021 Well, we are still in California, and now hope to get to Mongolia during the summer, one year later than planned. I haven’t written for a while because first things were too chaotic, and then I had to recover, and then I just didn’t feel like thinking about it. … Continue reading Where we are right now
Our rooted rootlessness
Rootlessness is so strange. Don’t get me wrong. I love that world-is-our-oyster feeling that I’ve had since I sold our house in July. That feeling that I haven’t been able to act on because the global pandemic has shut us out of the country we had decided to live in. I love it. But what’s … Continue reading Our rooted rootlessness
