Embrace where you are right now is a concept I try to live up to everyday. I am an American living in the London suburbs and married to an adorable redheaded Brit. I am surprised by how many Americans I know living here who only associate with other Americans. You are somewhere out of your comfort zone and that is the best time to search out a new experience. I live in a very sweet cottage behind a “racing green” colored door. The only yard I have is what I can grow in my flower pots in front of the house, as we live on a side street. But it is just right for us.

Living here I feel like a pioneer woman, the “Laura Ingalls Wilder” of London and her family in their first little sod home on the prairie. Not everything is as convenient as it is at home and so you learn to adapt. You adapt in many ways, your way of life, how you cook something. It is easy to make certain recipes at home with the ease in which you can gather your ingredients, usually half-way done on their journey to finish your dish, yet here, I find that I will have to often start from scratch and even though the process takes longer the finished product is something I have pride in, my hands have touched every step along the way.

I love to travel, especially to Paris, we don’t get to go to France as often as I would like but as the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar said, “To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tantamount to constant travel: one is travelling with the earth,” and that is what I am being, a gypsy in my newfound hometown.