XXX (Happy Holidays)
When you beamingly receive a holiday package that has been ransacked by customs, you're living the true expat xmas experience.
I am Matthew Dolmont, and I am the invigilator, one eye on my exam-writing students and the other on my holiday checklist. Although there are a few familiar bullets, my “send gift to dad” entries are flanked by ominous red-pen reminders to take my malaria medication, buy water purification tablets, and do not forget my multitool. My holiday planning is travel planning for under African skies.
If it was not for the women in my life spreading tinsel and silly party planning grins about my apartment, December for me would be so far removed from the “typical” x-mas lifestyle that you could call me on Christmas Day and I wouldn’t know it was for the bright desert sun and mosque prayer-calls in the background. To be honest, I would rather spend my holiday time sailing on the gulf than shopping for gifts. Perhaps “the sheets at my apartment are still drying outside on the clothesline” is not as romantic an excuse to stay the night with someone as being snowed in, sitting by an open fire, but the quality of company is just as good. The adventure of travel is a greater gift to me than any material gains; though throughout all of this I do long for one unattainable piece to complete my strange holiday puzzle.
You are so far away from me. Another winter will pass without a feast or three with family, drinks and music and packed bars or living rooms, filled with grinning laughing people. Hangover breakfasts at home, hot drinks in cold hands. Reunions with the finest people I have met on this planet.
I am living the expat xmas experience, and my travels, experiences and new friends will empower my life, but it’s not the same without you. You are a giant missing piece, a solution to completing the big picture. You are the difference between object and art, and your livelihood, humor, music, stories, wit and promised company give colour and shape to the substance of my memories. I will not be the same without you.
Happy Holidays where ever you are.
-/\/\
I am Matthew Dolmont, and I am the invigilator, one eye on my exam-writing students and the other on my holiday checklist. Although there are a few familiar bullets, my “send gift to dad” entries are flanked by ominous red-pen reminders to take my malaria medication, buy water purification tablets, and do not forget my multitool. My holiday planning is travel planning for under African skies.
If it was not for the women in my life spreading tinsel and silly party planning grins about my apartment, December for me would be so far removed from the “typical” x-mas lifestyle that you could call me on Christmas Day and I wouldn’t know it was for the bright desert sun and mosque prayer-calls in the background. To be honest, I would rather spend my holiday time sailing on the gulf than shopping for gifts. Perhaps “the sheets at my apartment are still drying outside on the clothesline” is not as romantic an excuse to stay the night with someone as being snowed in, sitting by an open fire, but the quality of company is just as good. The adventure of travel is a greater gift to me than any material gains; though throughout all of this I do long for one unattainable piece to complete my strange holiday puzzle.
You are so far away from me. Another winter will pass without a feast or three with family, drinks and music and packed bars or living rooms, filled with grinning laughing people. Hangover breakfasts at home, hot drinks in cold hands. Reunions with the finest people I have met on this planet.
I am living the expat xmas experience, and my travels, experiences and new friends will empower my life, but it’s not the same without you. You are a giant missing piece, a solution to completing the big picture. You are the difference between object and art, and your livelihood, humor, music, stories, wit and promised company give colour and shape to the substance of my memories. I will not be the same without you.
Happy Holidays where ever you are.
-/\/\