La Perle des Antilles

This may sound maudlin, but sometimes hate does turn into love and sometimes, if you’re in the right frame of mind, a challenging situation is indeed an opportunity. By the time I left home at 18, I had moved house 17 times in 3 continents, 4 countries, 3 US states and the District of Columbia. […]

Been down so long looks like up to me

To those of you who started reading this post because you are fans of Richard Farina – my apologies. This post will not discuss his seminal novel of the same name/title (see above). For some reason when I sat down to ponder reverse culture shock this phrase/title literally popped into my head. Score one for […]

Coming to America…and then leaving.

In the mid-80s I was finishing my somewhat checkered high-school career in a 3rd, no, scratch that, 4th world country somewhere in Latin America. I lived with my mother who is a highly educated, brilliant woman who, nevertheless, was not paid very much at that point in her career. Anybody familiar with 3rd world countries […]

5 hard-earned tips for alleviating culture shock

As a seasoned traveler and a person who has lived in 12 fairly different countries, I tend to embrace a bit of culture shock and see it as a positive experience. I embrace it precisely because years of experience has taught me the potential pitfalls and also the hidden joys of being immersed in a […]

Stranger in a strange land

In my first post I touched briefly (albeit not very coherently) on the the notion of nationality, cultural identity and, I suppose, the idea of diaspora. What makes it strange for people like me is that Americans think of themselves of the immigrant nation par excellence. People, according to this narrative, are literally dying to […]