Expat Living Interview: Schweinfurt, Germany (from 2016).

Expat Living in Schweinfurt, Germany (from 2016).

Three years ago I was living in Germany and eager to share my experiences with the world.  I was going on seven months as an expat and I jumped at the chance to join an expat interview series by a popular blogger.  Last month I discovered that the interview was taken down (thanks to my broken link checker – such a useful tool).  I don’t want my work to be wasted, especially when it’s so hard to work with chronic pain, so […]

100 Days Back Home. | My Meena Life

100 Days Back Home.

I never thought I’d be so deeply dissatisfied after returning home.  I thought that transitioning from expat to repat would be difficult but overwhelmingly positive.  I was wrong. Mr. Meena and I were gone from the United States for 13 continuous months.  As we neared the end of our time in Germany I was rather desperate to be reacquainted with my family, certain luxuries from home, and my native language (not that I was ever successful at learning German beyond ordering coffee). Yet, […]

One Year Without: What We Gained by Owning Less Stuff. | My Meena Life

One Year Without: What We Gained by Owning Less Stuff.

This is the final post in the blog series One Year Without.  See all of the posts here. This blog series has been about what we lived without as expats.  We gave up our vehicles, community, and plenty of the smaller comforts of home when we moved to Germany.  Owning less stuff pushed the boundaries of our comfort zones and there were even a few items that were too difficult for us to go without.  But overall, giving up the majority of our belongings […]

What We Couldn't Do Without During Our Year of Living with Less. | My Meena Life

What We Couldn’t Do Without During Our Year of Living with Less.

This is the fifth post in the blog series One Year Without.  See all of the posts here. On the last post in this series I focused on which items were the hardest to give up during our year of living with less.  Now I’m going one step further and listing the items that we purchased during that year because we felt like we could not go without them.  While some items represent momentary failures in our attempts at self-control and […]

Our Reintegration into the USA. | My Meena Life

Our Reintegration into the USA.

We’ve had a wildly successful but mind-numbingly exhausting first week of reintegration.  Coming home has been a lot like riding a bike again after many years; we remember how to do it but there are still many unfamiliar sensations and a strong likelihood of falling down before we get things right again.  Here are some of the things we faced this week along with some tips for others going through the reintegration process.   6 Phases of Our Reintegration into […]

Repatriation: Our First Week Back in the USA. | My Meena Life

Repatriation: Our First Week Back in the USA.

This week is going to be a whirlwind.  We left Germany last Saturday around noon in one time zone and arrived in the USA in the afternoon of another.  We made the long, slow trek though the airport customs line with our bird, Koopa, who passed his USDA inspection with flying colors.       Since we had to fly to an airport near Washington DC instead of the one closest to our home in Charlotte (because it was the only […]

One Year Without All the Small Stuff. | My Meena Life.

One Year Without All the Small Stuff. 

This is the fourth post in the blog series One Year Without.  See all of the posts here. Moving abroad, giving up our cars, going without community – those were all huge life changes.  But what about all the small stuff that we went without?  All the smaller comforts of home that we left behind had a big impact on our comfort levels and approach to minimalism as well. I’ll break down all the small stuff that we missed the most during our […]

Are These Really My People? | My Meena Life. Photo by Carol via Flickr.

Are These Really My People?

“Yeah, the fool bought himself a big ol’ king size bed that don’t even fit in his bedroom.” My ears were drawn like a magnet to the English language.  I listened to the group walking being me as they spoke loudly with strong southern drawls.  There were Americans in Schweinfurt – I had inadvertently found some of my people! I wanted to turn around and ask, “Where are y’all from?” but I hesitated, thinking maybe I’d come across too strong […]

Blog Series: One Year Without.

A blog series about living abroad, embracing minimalism, and what we learned by going without. 1| Introducing One Year Without: A Blog Series. 2| One Year Without a Vehicle. 3| One Year Without Community. 4| One Year Without All the Small Stuff. 5| What We Couldn’t Do Without During Our Year Abroad. 6| What We Gained by Owning Less Stuff.            Photo Credits: Featured photo by Trekking Rinjani licensed under CC BY 2.0.  Modifications made my My Meena Life. Vertical images: 1) Photo by Marsha licensed under CC BY-NC […]

One Year Without Community. | My Meena Life. Photo by Chris via Flickr.

One Year Without Community.

This is the third post in the blog series One Year Without.  See all of the posts here. Over the past few years we’ve been slowly sliding downhill, shifting further away from friends and family, until we finally hit bottom when we moved abroad.   At least, that is what it felt like. Mr. Meena and I both spent several years in our college town surrounded by a church community and friends who felt like family, and we greatly missed that support system […]