the *expat* reaction to trump.

happy new year's readers!

here's a post that's been sitting in draft form for a bit. if any of my italian readers find mistakes in my translations of the headlines, please let me know!

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i was happy to be alone.

i put my earbuds in and kept to myself.

i wanted to blend into the background.

if someone heard me speaking english, they might identify me as an american.

and i was embarrassed.

you see, it was the morning after the US election, and while it hadn't been determined officially, we woke up to see several important states swinging red.

trouble was on the horizon.

i felt sick the entire day.

there were some tears being fought back at lunch table among my coworkers.

i should probably tell you that the typical expat, one who packs up their whole life and moves to the opposite side of the world has a pretty open mind. they believe in diversity and acceptance and freedom and choice.

because it is these things that make our lives in a different country possible.

i was asked that day by an italian..."how did this happen?"

and now the most common question is "what do you think about trump?"

ugh.

here are some of the headlines from the italian papers after trump was declared president-elect.

"President for all"

"The fist of Trump"

"America turns a page: But what is behind the surprise triumph of the anarchic Trump?"

The delusion of New York
Hillary: The country is divided.

many of my coworkers lived in europe under the bush presidency and said the view of americans was different and that difference was clearly felt.

so we shall see what the future brings.

i hope for the best.

but i am worried.

how will trump's decision making affect the world? and how will that transfer to my daily life as an american abroad?

only time will tell.

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are you an expat? i'd love to hear about your experiences during and after the election!

viva versace!

i love fashion.

i love interesting outfits, crazy shoes, out of the box style.

while my favorite outfit may be yoga pants and a hoodie, i do enjoy seeing what's new in one of the fashion capitals of the world.

during this fall's spring/summer '17 women's fashion week i headed across town to hang around the versace fashion show.

i took my dslr and the lens with the biggest zoom i own, a tamron 18-200 mm, and joined the crowd of paparazzi and fashion groupies.

there were some fairly big names walking in the show and in town to watch...think supermodel legends like naomi campbell and adriana lima and tennis superstar serena williams. none of these ladies set foot out the front entrance with the rest of the crowd, but there was still plenty of eye catching outfits to capture.

here are some of my favorite shots.

this outfit, those glasses

loved the poufy sleeve, dark lip and graffiti behind her

Brazilian style blogger Helena Bordon

Chiara Ferragni, famous Italian fashion blogger and style icon

she didn't seem to have a ticket for the show, but she sure looked ready

Fashion stylist and blogger @faye_tsui

this girl...loved to pose.

models Impy and Kylie Vonnahme
Don't you love to see a model eat? 

Belgian model Hanne Gaby Odiele
modest much?

I think this is model Ondria Hardin, but it was so long ago I'm no longer sure!

American model Vanessa Moody
She stood around for quite awhile, waiting for a ride, so I had several chances to
get a good shot of her. She's got a strong Jennifer Garner thing going on.

Stalking an event is a bit weird, but truly it is so much fun trying to catch a good shot here or there! Looking forward to the next round of shows in February!

x factor italia

last week caitlin was given tickets to x factor italia, which films live here in milan.

despite loving all things tv, i have never seen a single episode of any version of x factor.

this is also true for caitlin.

so...we knew exactly what to expect.

#notatall

and it was all in italian, of course.

there were six singers remaining at the start of the night and there was a cheering section of sorts for each of them.

it was awesome to see the 'behind the scenes' stuff that you never see at home. like how just five feet from the host, live on camera, they're hauling in huge props for the next performance.

here's a short clip from the show opener, where each act was singing a portion of one song. each act then performed and the audience at home voted. then they sang again and there was more voting. the two lowest from each segment of voted had a sing off at the end and the judged had to vote to send one home.

the judges were fighting throughout the night and it was kind of amusing to try and follow exactly why they were fighting. i think we had the gist of it. by the end, i figured we understood about half of what was said. considering the pace of what was going on, i was pretty satisfied with that!

live taping of tv shows? #twothumbsup

giving back.

growing up in a middle class American family i didn't realize how good i had it.

i always went to private schools and there were always people with more.

as a teenager it seemed that what we had was never enough.

#soclueless

as an adult i've become much more aware of the realities of life.

i suppose this happens to everyone when the bills must be paid out of your own bank account.

now having traveled to 39 countries, i've come to realize exactly how much i have and how much i am thankful for.

spending time in asia and north africa quickly opens your eyes to the circumstance of millions of people around the world.

as americans, we have enough.

more than enough.

while i know that there are many in the US in need, the need is truly much greater in other parts of the world.

in laos, three quarters of people earn less than $2 a day.

traveling in laos this summer, caitlin and i were privileged to meet an american man named michael sebastian. caitlin and i were shopping in a store and found him sitting on the floor reviewing english with a small group of workers from the shop. he gave up his life in america to serve the needs of the students of laos.

they need to learn english. so he teaches them.

they need a place to live. so he houses them.

they need someone to help guide them forward. so he counsels them.

michael asked if we wanted to come to his advanced english class that evening. we later called him to make arrangements to attend and he sent two students on motorbikes to pick us up and bring us to his home. (my first time on a bike!)

the evening class was full of boys, likely ages 15-25, who were all hoping to become proficient in english and better their lives. they asked us questions about where we were from and michael googled both new york and savannah to show them pictures. in a tv show one of them had heard of hell's kitchen and wanted to know if it was beautiful. (kind of an odd question!) they were impressed by the live oak trees of savannah. (questioning is that real?)

we were particularly taken with one student, her, 2nd row with his arms around the guys on either side of him, who michael has helped earn a scholarship to a united world college school in the netherlands. he had come home for the summer and was back in english class to share his story with the others. it didn't hurt that he had quite the charming personality and winning smile. this opportunity will change his life and without michael it wouldn't have been possible.

you can hear from the kids themselves in this video they've put together.

so with this in mind, i'd like to help michael continue to fund his program. his ability to help these students depends completely on donations from people like you and me.

i plan to donate and i hope you will too. our 90 minutes with michael and his students were the highlight of our month long asian adventure and it's not an experience you can find in a travel guide.

with each year that passes i continue to realize that buying more things doesn't provide happiness. but giving of ourselves, through both time and money, does.

i have enough.

more than enough.

now i'd like to try and better the lives of some of the truly less fortunate.

will you join me?

find more information at this Go Fund Me page i've set up.

you can also read about caitlin's take on our laos experience on her blog.

pumpkin: every shape and size.

you may know of my love of all things pumpkin.

so when i read about the world's largest pumpkin festival i was intrigued.

when i saw this catchphrase i knew it was something i wanted to do while living in europe.

so in early october caitlin and i flew to stuttgart, germany. we stayed just outside of the city center.

the stars, from top to bottom:
ludwigsburg, the wilhelma zoo, our hotel,
and the central train station

the first sign that something was amiss was that the guy at the hotel had never heard of this festival.

i mean, wouldn't everyone in a 30 minute range of the world's largest pumpkin festival know that this is one of the biggest events around?

regardless, we headed out saturday morning, making the requisite stop at starbucks before hopping on the train for a 20 minute ride north of the city.

we weren't exactly sure where to find the entrance to this festival and that was probably another clue that the world's largest pumpkin festival might not live up to expectations. (the world's largest festival would be hard to miss right?)

eventually figuring out the entrance, we paid the fee and headed into the park. the festival is held on the grounds of the ludwigsburg palace and we ended up with a lovely fall day.

all varieties of pumpkins start to appear upon entering the grounds and even more as you move behind the palace.

there are huge crates of every variety of pumpkin.

in colors and shapes i didn't even knew existed.

"black little" pumpkins.
love them so much.

"kronli"

one super looooong squash

this year's theme was 'circus'.

the carving of various pumpkins was awesome.

this pumpkin set a world record. grown in Belgium it weighs 1190.5 kg! that's over 2500 pounds!

#somanypumpkins

there was food available at the festival for purchase and samples of seasoned pumpkin seeds to be had. i envisioned stall after stall of samples of different pumpkin-y things.

that was, in fact, not the case.

there were a couple places to order off a menu and that was about it.

we shared some pumpkin soup.

and drank pumpkin prosecco.
which was really just really sweet prosecco.

the pumpkin fest was lovely. it's just not really that big. so to go into it thinking it's the world's largest pumpkin festival makes it a bit of a let down.

somewhere i saw something that said "world's largest pumpkin exhibition" and this, this makes sense. because i would agree that there is probably no other place displaying quite so many different varieties of pumpkin.

world's largest festival? not so much.

so, should you go?

if you're within range of making this a day trip then i'd say, yes, yes you should make an effort to spend a few hours here.

do you need to fly to stuttgart and make a weekend of it?

probably not.

it's a good thing that caitlin is always willing to check out these strange festivals with me.

(this was better than the nut festival!)

temple time: cambodia

just when i thought i had written all the major posts about asia, i discovered that i neglected the time we spent in cambodia.

so, back to asia we go.

after our island time on phu quoc, we flew to siem reap, cambodia.

country #4 of our summer asian adventure.

away from the cooler breezes of the water, we found ourselves back in the summertime heat.

we had arranged airport pickup with our hotel and a tuktuk driver waited for us. a tuktuk with your luggage is an odd experience. we were thankful our luggage actually stayed in the tuktuk with us for the 30 minute ride back to the hotel.

we stayed just outside of the main part of town and it worked out pretty well. the staff was amazing and worked very hard to take care of us.

they arranged a tuktuk driver to take us around to the temples the following day. our leaving was delayed a bit by a flat tire and having to go and buy our tickets before going to the temple. we fretted about missing the sunrise. getting up at 4 am after a 1 am bedtime only to miss the sunrise would have sucked. majorly.

when we finally arrived at angkor wat we really had no idea where the best place to wait would be. we decided to remain outside the complex where plenty of others were waiting. this turned out to be okay and we were able to capture several images with the reflection of the towers in the water.

once the sun rose we wandered inside and looked around a bit. it's quite large and on our own everything felt a bit repetitive. so perhaps using a guide would have been a good idea, if only to point us to the most important historical pieces and to focus our attention.

we completed the 'big' tour that day, without returning to our hotel for breakfast. we spent a couple hours wandering around the various temples. i enjoyed them a lot, but it was so hot and the temples do start to look the same. given the heat, i wouldn't have wanted to be stuck with a guide who felt it necessary to show us many details. there is little shade and a lot of steps. for this reason, we didn't stay too long and attempted to move quickly around the temples.

this blog post does a much better job showing the individual temples and sharing info about them than i could. so click away if you are interested in specifics.

on our second full day we took a bike tour through the cambodian countryside. again it was hot. and the bikes were not comfortable. but we did see some cool stuff, our favorite being the basketweaver we met. we got to watch her work and do a little weaving on one of her projects.

those bottles...hold gasoline.
welcome to a gas station in siem reap.

there were still some temples to see, so on the following day we headed out on the 'little' tour of temples. we hadn't seen the tomb raider temple (a la angelina jolie/lara croft) and that was on the must see list. it was the same story as the first day. hot. so we quickly moved through the various temples. i even blew off our driver's attempt to give us a little information when we stopped at the first temple. we wanted to be fast and stay out of the heat.

despite the heat, cambodia was lovely.

it's a shame that many of the temples have fallen into disrepair. there is some evidence that maybe they're working on it a bit. however, with millions of tourists climbing about the temples every year one has to wonder how much longer the structures will survive.

we stayed here. i recommend it!

the front desk team was adorable and helped us make a plan to get our gel nails refilled. (despite the fact that around the world you can get gel nails done, usually by an asian woman, we found it quite difficult to find a place in asia to fill the gel nails.)

we ate here. and here. both were really great. two of our favorite meals in asia.

i'm hungry just looking at this picture

we also ate here. also solid. and a nice relief from asian cuisine.


traveler's tips:

we completed our cambodian visas online in advance of arriving. we printed them out and were able to skip the line at immigration and go straight to passport control. i would recommend this to other travelers as well.

if you intend to spend multiple days at the temples, go ahead and buy the three day pass in advance. the tickets are valid from 5 pm the day before.

it appears that prices are going up in february 2017.

this post is linked up with weekend travel inspiration.