"Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance…"
— Cesare Pavese
Scotland, 2012
We read that and thought: exactly.
Since leaving our last 'home' in Southern California in 2010, our calendar became a collage of shifting addresses and blurred dates — life measured more by experiences than by months or years. A friend once remarked, "You're really living on the edge." We took it as a compliment.
The path was discovered, never planned. Random — but in hindsight feels like destiny.
A blur of apartments, markets, establishing routines, new neighbors, names, experiences, and challenges that spanned Mexico, South and Central America, Europe — while dashing back to cities in the U.S. for family and events.
Along the way we kept meeting people doing the same thing — leaving, adapting, staying longer than planned, building lives in places they never expected. Each one had a story. Each one had a reason that sounded familiar and an outcome that surprised them.
Finally we sat down and collected the essays. That's the book.
Thirty-one of those people, in their own words. We compiled and edited At Home Abroad because we lived it — and because we knew the stories deserved to be told.