5 Questions for....

...Kelly S., the Costa-Rica-based blogger known as The Embassy Wife.

Q:  Three words your friends would use to describe you:

A: Which friends? Every time we move I have to re-invent myself a little bit (or a lot), so it really depends on the friends and the location! In Jakarta -- where I was evacuated after only seven months -- they’d just ask, “Kelly who?”  In Israel, they’d probably say, “Fun, energetic, slightly crazy.” In Germany -- which coincided with a particularly difficult time for our family -- you’d probably hear: “Nice enough, but I think she’s a little wacko!”

Q: What’s the best thing about having to move your family to exotic places around the world?

A: We get to skip the tourist stuff if we want (there are only so many baroque churches one can visit before going catatonic anyway) and do the real stuff -- go to the markets and grocery stores every week; find out from the inside the "interesting" customs that other cultures have; and see parts of the country that aren't on most…itineraries and are usually more fun because of it.

And, along with that comes real exposure to other people and cultures. I grew up in a small, rural town [in Texas] where [seeing] anyone whose hair was a bit too long or skirt a bit too short was a reason to stop on the street and ogle.

But after so long overseas I -- and perhaps more importantly, my kids -- don't even bat an eye when, for example, a native Nigerian in flowing robes sits next to us in church and strikes up a conversation; and my kids think it's quite normal that their classmates at school hail from six different continents and have every color skin and [myriad different] ways of speaking. It's good to get 'out of the box' for a while.

Q:  Most memorable experiences?

A: I have illegally climbed [Cairo’s] Bent Pyramid (twice -- after posing with the guard's AK-47); seen Yasser Arafat's gilded toilet in the (former) airport in the Gaza strip; gotten repeatedly lost in the wilds of the West Bank; fought a rodent the size of a mastiff in my attic in Jakarta; and “rescued” a mail-order bride and sent her BACK to Chernobyl. And, when we lived in Israel, I kept anthrax antibiotics in my kitchen cabinet and somehow never remembered to get a gas mask (regulation issue at the time) for the baby.

Q: Who inspires you most and why?

A: I think that would be my younger sister Kathryn. In the past few years, a lot of trauma and drama have been poured into her family’s life, and somehow in the midst of living a perpetually upside-down life, four moves, and homeschooling three small kids, she’s never complained, wavered in her faith, or lost her sense of humor or her ability to find and reach out to people around her who need help. She’s an incredible example to me of what a “superwoman” looks like. She’s what I want to be when I grow up.

Q: What have you learned from your adventures?

A: There are only 3 rules when it comes to eating when you're abroad: 1.) Eat whatever you can, whenever you can. There's probably NOT a McDonald's between here and the border. Or here and the International Dateline. 2.) Don't look too closely. 3.) Don't ask questions.

Check out Kelly's blog at:

http://kellyarmstrong.pnn.com/articles/show/43479-my-mug-arrived