Rejected Visas and Re-Routed Travels

We were in mid-air when I suddenly became overwhelmed with emotion. Tears were streaming down my face uncontrollably that the flight attendant made his way from one end of the plane to the other to ask, “Are you okay?” I was fine, but I had been caught up in my thoughts. Sometimes you plan things…

At Souk El Akel

We’ve been meaning to try Souk El Akel for a while but the opportunity never really presented itself until yesterday when I came home and had no idea what to make with the ground beef I had let defrost overnight. So Ahmad suggested we go check out the weekly market that takes place in Downtown…

Going Home

Does anyone else get butterflies in their stomach the night before they’re due to travel? That it’s so bad they can’t sleep at night even though they’ve got a journey of about half a day and they need all the energy they can get? Because that’s exactly what happens to me every single time. I…

Primark, Revisited

As a graduate student in the city of Maastricht, we used to travel 30 minutes by train to shop at Primark, the English low-cost clothing store that Europe absolutely loves. In exchange for cheap clothes suitable for our budgets, we would go through the ritual of Primark shopping: turning down temptations at every corner, yet…

Lest We Forget

This is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. As you can see, it’s a pretty striking structure, and not because of the new construction right next to it or that I happened to take this shot on a rather sunny Autumn day in the German capital. It is quite remarkable because this church was…

Pictionary- and New Friends

This blog has been a blessing in disguise. Ever since I started writing daily a few days after my 24th birthday, I haven’t been able to stop. It’s truly doing what I need it to do: give me a place to document my thoughts and experiences and overcome my nasty writer’s block. It’s also been…

A Hospital Bystander

“So what does that mean?” is the question I always get asked after I tell people what is that I do. Without going into too much details, my job is to observe and correct any actions and practices that might cause patients to get an infection during their hospital stay. I’m on my feet for…

I Have My Masters Degree: Looking Back

Exactly a year to the date that I moved to Maastricht to start this adventure I keep talking about, and get that highly coveted Masters degree, I got an email confirming that I had passed that pesky thing that kept me up for nights on end and had me learning complicated statistical methods- my thesis….