Well, if that’s not the teasiest title I could muster. So I have been living in my Quebec City wine cellar-like apartment for a year now. And I have been freelancing this whole time, which is …grand but lonely. Even though my work has brought me to a whole new level of writing (travel writing! journalism!!) , I miss having coworkers. Elwood snores and steals half of my wobbly writing chair. Super annoying. I should relegate him to his crate, but I don’t have the heart.

Yeah… I stand next to graffiti to look like a bad ass. So what?

What I learned at the one year mark:

1. Expating ain’t easy.  I was taught to jump into the deep end and swim upwards. I do this with recipes, I did it with French, I did it with the Big Move. My husband once asked me, as I was deep in the middle of making an all-day chili: “why don’t you start with something simple, something with less than 20 ingredients?” I answered, “Because this is how you learn.” Things like navigating government offices in French can be horrifically scary but strangely rewarding. When I got my license, I danced in the parking lot. I almost cried last time I took a taxi because I was having a conversation, in French with the driver, who moved to Quebec from somewhere in Africa. We shared a moment!

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