Cleaning Solutions When You Can't Read the Label

Help, I Can't Read the Labels!

One More Reason to Go GREEN!

How much time do you spend in the grocery store each week trying to make some sense out of the cleaning products on display? Sometimes you see friendly Mr. Clean (score!) only to realize that neither the product name, nor the instructions are written in a language you understand (psych!).  Well, I have come to learn that all you really need to clean  your house is baking soda and vinegar.  Really.  

Baking Soda:

Sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as baking soda, is found around the world.  It's often easy to find because the word, "bicarbonate" is similar in many languages.  Check this out:

bicarbonate (English)                      
nātrija bikarbonāts (Latvian)
natrijev bikarbonat (Croatian)          
sosa karbonato (Filipino)
Natriumbicarbonat (German)           
de bicarbonato de sodio (Spanish)

Vinegar:

The word "vinegar," on the other hand, isn't similar in other languages.  Luckily, the bottles resemble each other and always tend to picture salad on the label.
Okay, now you've bought the baking soda and vinegar, it's time to clean.
Here are a couple recipes I found and have used along the way.  Using them makes you feel like you're saving the planet while you clean!  

For stains:  
Use baking soda.  Sprinkle it on the stain until completely covered; spray with water.  When baking soda is absorbed, wipe clean with a cloth.

For Mold, Bactieria, and Grease:  
Use vinegar.  Fill a spray bottle with distilled white vinegar.  Saturate the affected area and then simply let the vinegar evaporate.

For soot, wax, and oil:  
Use sodium carbonate on stone or glass.  Make a thick paste with 1/4 cup of soda and water.  Cover stain and let it set for an hour; scrub. (Prevention Magazine, July 2008, "Speed Clean the Healthy Way")

Toilet Bowl Cleaner:
Baking soda and white vinegar.  Sprinkle the toilet bowl with baking soda.  Drizzle with vinegar (kinda sounds like a salad! ew!).  Scour with a toilet brush.  This not only cleans, it deodorizes.

Scouring Powder:
Lightly sprinkle on surface to clean; wipe with sponge.  Rinse well.

Tile Cleaner:
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar, 1 gallon water, 10 drops essential oil.  Mix well and use a sponge or rag to clean.  This removes most dirt without scrubbing and doesn't leave a film.  (I found that you can leave out the oil if you don't mind the house smelling like vinegar for a bit).  (Green Clean: The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning Your Home, by Linda Mason Hunter and Mikki Halpin).

Ha!  Now don't you feel competent and holier than thou?

Manners, A Peace Offering, and Montezuma's Revenge (Plus a Home Remedy for Intestinal Issues)

The sun is bright the shadows are deep[Day230]*, a photo by Chapendra on Flickr.

It's only a matter of time in an Ex-Pat conversation for the subject to surface. There is no shame. It is just a fact of life for Ex-Pats, as common as, well, the common cold.

In The New York Times' best seller, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Miss Manners advises, one is not to say one has diarrhea unless one is speaking to one's doctor (can you not just hear Emma Thompson's voice here?).

Oops. Well, at least we don't say the word directly. We have our code words. For example, we say, "I'm not feeling well," and "I have to stay close to a bathroom." Then there's a groan and a knowing and sympathetic nod from the listener. We know what THAT means.

We all have our horror stories, our badges of courage, of survival, of unintentional weight loss. So, here I go. Shame aside. One of my horror stories from the foreigners' front lines:

                                                                                817Sanliurfa-Mevlid-i Halil Camii-Abrahams Geburtsort8, a photo by olaf.kellerhoff on Flickr.

Back in 1995, before a Aegean Coast sailboat cruise, I was first traveling through South East Turkey, visiting the famous Nemrut Dag and the not so famous towns of Diyarbakir, locally-known as the "Paris of the East," Harran with its beehive houses, and Urfa, the birthplace of Abraham.  

It was in Urfa that my true initiation to a traveler's life began. According to local legend, Abraham defied King Nimrod by not believing he was God. King Nimrod bound him to stakes and catapulted him to a bonfire. God then changed the fire to water and the stakes to carp. These days, one can visit the Urfa mosque complex which includes a pond of sacred carp and two caves (separated by gender) with springs of the holy water known for its miracles.

On that fateful day in Urfa, I wrapped my scarf around my head and headed towards the door to the women's cave alone. I had no idea what to expect. From what I remember, I entered a cramped dimly lit room filled with whispering women. There was a basin at one end with water trickling into it from a small pipe. A pregnant woman lay supine in front of the basin. As I entered the room, the whispering stopped. Was it my ankles? Probably. Every other inch of my body was covered except for my face and the bottom of my abnormally long legs. Somehow everyone knew I was not from there.  All eyes were on me. I'm not kidding. It was one of the most bizarre moments of my life.  

I looked around, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do when a small girl soundlessly approached me carrying a dented metal ladle full of water. Her small hand was cupped underneath it to catch any water that might drip. She lifted the ladle up towards my mouth indicating with a slight nod that I should drink, a peace offering.  

Stop.

Traveler's Rule #1:  One does not drink the water in Turkey.  

Did I mention everyone was staring at me and the room was silent?

I did what anyone would have done.  I took the ladle and . . . pretended to drink the water. I then smiled, nodded my head vigorously up and down, and tried to return the still relatively full ladle back to the girl. She shook her head and did a drinking motion with her hands pantomiming that I was to finish it. I looked around. The women were patiently waiting to see what I would do.  

I drank the water.

The women sighed and nodded. Several hands gently rubbed my back. The whispering began again while the girl led me around the wet pregnant woman to the spring. She showed me how to dip my fingertips in and touch my face. When I left, she hugged me. 

Blinking in the harsh desert light, I returned to my group and related the story. Their lips formed a grim line. I was destined for the bathroom, unless the spring really did perform miracles.

It did not.
At least, not for me.

For the first three days of our cruise, I ate only rice and toast while everyone ruefully shook their heads at me while devouring their freshly caught fish and octopus and cucumber salad. For three days, everyone politely pretended not to hear what was happening in the bathroom of one of the five closet-sized rooms in the sailboat. Miss Manners would have been proud.

Ah, the things we do for peace.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Well, maybe not a heartbeat, but I'd do it.

The Tried and True Way to Tackle the Trots

or a Home Remedy to Treat Diarrhea:

The B.R.A.T. Diet

B=Bananas

R=Rice

A=Apples

T=Toast (plain, not untoasted, not with butter, jam, magarine, PLAIN)

Eat ONLY the food in the BRAT Diet and drink ONLY water until you are "normal" again.  It usually works like a charm in 2-3 days, but only if you don't cheat.

Back-to-School and Goodbye to the Beauty of Unscheduled Playtime

Today is the first day of school for my kids.  For me, in essence, it is the first day of non-childcare work of the year (Yes, I still live my life on the school year schedule).  In most of the foreign countries we've lived, summer activities are more do-it-yourself, compared to the organized camps you have in the U.S..  My goodness, you have art camp, golf camp, soccer camp, music camp, camp camp.  You name it, it's there.  When we were back in the States, we wanted our kids to have this U.S. experience and enrolled them in golf camp and tae kwon do.  They met kids their own age and learned new things.  In the afternoons, they swam in the lake and sometimes invited their new friends over to play.  They had a blast.    There's not much better than that.

There is something to be said, though, about complete and utter unscheduled play.  In the Balkans, you have "summer."  These folks are experts at unscheduled play.  The coffee shops, shady parks, lakes and swimming pools are packed with people.  My son compares the scene at the public pool complex down the road to "ants on an anthill."  It's an apt description.  All day, everyday, children play.  They sleep in.  The play until the sun sets.  Then they sleep in.

So, when in Serbia, do like the Serbs.  For three weeks this summer, my kids did nothing but build forts, star in their own movies, act out imaginary scenarios out of the Old West and their own Twilight Zone.  They painted, made perfume, built space stations, baked dog biscuits, washed cars, played in the sprinkler, rollerbladed, biked, skateboarded, hiked, swam, sewed, learned new songs and then serenaded us from the balcony, performed self-written plays, played Monopoly, Clue, and Sorry, and, yes, sometimes got on each others nerves (but remarkably, only sometimes!).  These were those lazy days of summer, when we rolled out of bed, stretched, yawned, and smiled, saying, "What are we going to do today?"  It was a beautiful thing.

At first the kids were a bit lost, "Mom, what can we do?"

"Anything you want, within reason."

Huh.  Eventually, they would wander off and the next thing I knew, I'd hear pounding in the garage, or my daughter would ask me to thread her needle,  or my son would ask if he could wash the car (who would have thought that could be so much fun?  Score!).  After a few days, they stopped asking the question and after breakfast would disappear.

I was the support team.  I completed health and safety inspections of workplaces and practices (my own personal OSHA), helped find supplies,  practiced mediation (and sometimes, meditation), fed the masses, bandaged the injured, cheered them on, and did whatever else needed to be done by an adult ("No!  Only I get to use the axe!").  Most of the time I just watched these beautiful little creatures, sweaty, dirty, and, oh, so happy.  This is one of the things the Balkans got right.

Today, it's just me, the dog, and the computer.  The silence is a wonderful thing.  Sort of.  I can't help but miss the laughter bubbling from the yard.  Besides that, my car already has a layer of dust on it.

The Olympics Withdrawal and Identity Crisis

The Olympics are over.  What are we going to do now?  Already I miss the cheering coming from the family room and a minute-by-minute update on who is in the lead.  And it's only day two of Olympic-free living.  Groan.

This was an interesting year for the Olympics in our house with my two kids old enough to follow the competitions.  It was unlike any past Olympics for me.  My children showed me how different their upbringing is from mine.  When I was a kid, there was no question for whom I was rooting, the USA (although, I must admit, I'm such a softie and most times silently rooted for the underdog).  For my kids,  the cheering field is a lot wider.

For example, on a typical Olympics 2012 day, I could hear my daughter singing, "Ethiopia, Ethiopia, Ethiopia," rolling the word around in her mouth like grapes.  She was watching the 2012 Olympic Track and Field races where the lithe, nut-brown men and women figured predominantly.

"I love that word!  Ethiopia," my daughter sang, "Have we been there, Mama?"

"Not yet," I smiled.

"Where is it?"

"In Africa."

"Oooo.  Can we move there someday?"

"Maybe," I replied, "You never know where we'll go next."

"We haven't been to Africa," my son piped in as he ticked off on his fingers the 14 countries he has been and the 3 continents of which they are part.  "Isn't that where the Lees and your friends, Bruce and Julie, are going?"

"Yep," I nodded, shaking my head at his almost savant memory of people and places.

"Are they in Ethiopia," my daughter sang the last word, yet again.

"No, they're in Kenya and Bruce and Julie are going to Zimbabwe."

"Hey!" my son pointed to the TV, "KENYA!  I'm rooting for Kenya since our friends are there!"

And so the cheering went when they saw athletes from Mexico and Guatemala ("Since I was born there!"), Finland, Cuba, Bosnia, Poland, Spain, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Turkey ("Our friends live/d there!"), Honduras, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic ("Since we've visited there!") along with the USA ("Since we ARE Americans!).

Watching the Olympics through EuroSports and Serbian TV cast a broader light on the competition for us; whoever was excelling at the moment was featured on the screen, compared to US networks who predominately focused their cameras on Americans.  CNN online's Frida Ghitis wrote an interesting article titled,  "Americans Miss Out on the Best of the Games,"  which highlights the US network's slanted coverage and the inspiring non-American athletes the American public missed.

We, though, got it all.  While the camera flitted from one countryman to another, my kids yelled out the country name.  Every new country prompted a geography interrogation, a getting out of the globe, and the shaming realization of how poor my US-taught geography is!  And to think I am so much better than I was when we started this business!  Don't you remember looking at the bid-list wondering where in the heck Ljubljana was?  My kids can say that word.  They've even been there, for goodness sake!

In general, when we live in a country, we cheer for that country.  Novak Djokovic is our favorite tennis player.    Tose is our favorite Macedonian singer.  Shakira is our favorite Latin singer.  It was quite the conundrum in our house when Serbia (or any of the other places we've lived, for that matter) and the US were competing against each other.  We usually ended up cheering for them both and feeling sad for whoever lost and happy for whoever won.

In the end, their chests burst with pride over their home country's medals, though savoring the victories of their beloved friends just as much.  Isn't that the way it should be?

From Exhaustion to Acceptance to Giddiness: The Three Stages of Life in the Foreign Service

To be honest, there are many days that I think I can no longer do this, this nomadic Foreign Service life.  Life is hard enough without adding more complications to it, like flying for days to reach home, moving every few years, packing up your stuff, changing your house, your kids' school, your time zone, losing your mind.  And it's not just moving, but moving to different countries with different languages and different customs and different everything.  Not just moving, but moving far, far away from family and friends.  Far enough away that many feel they cannot visit you, that you have abandoned them, that you no longer fit into their lives since yours is so different, they just can't relate.  Who can relate unless you've lived it too?  And those who have lived it too flit in and out of your life because, well, they're moving too.

This feeling comes most often after an exhausting "vacation" back to my home country.  Living in someone else's home, eating meals with countless numbers of people, having no space to call your own for weeks on end, the days of packing and preparation, the sleep deprivation of transatlantic flying, the hours of stressful travel in and out of airports and airplanes, the dragging of exhausted children from gate to gate, the waiting in lines, for check-in, security, food, boarding, for seat exchanges, for take-off, for weather delays, for gates, for baggage.  The jet-lag.  The culture shock.  The exhaustion.  

That's when I break.  

You know, I say about life in the Foreign Service, "Everyday is an adventure."  It's an exciting, motivating prospect.  The reality, though, is that adventuring is tiring.  I just think of my 12 years being  part of Foreign Service life, that's about 4380 days of adventure.  That's a long time.  That's exhausting.  I'm just plum tired so much of the time.  A compatriot of ours, Kathy Heinrich, who has moved 13 times in more than 16 years, hit the nail on the head when she said during her most recent move, "I'm a transient who feels like an itinerant. . . . just when I think I'm veteran status, I find out once again, that each move is unique and challenging in ways that test my confidence!"  I hear you, Kathy! 

It's now been long enough that my native country is foreign.  I have trouble navigating the technological advances that have taken place in America over the last few years.  For example, I distinctly remember the first time I signed a computer screen at check-out in Target in 2006.  I had no idea what I was supposed to do.  The cashier looked at me as though I was from outer space.  Most days I feel that way.  Most days that's okay.

It's just when I'm tired that it's not okay.

So, what do I do?  I don't have a successful antidote yet.  I've tried several different tactics over my years living the Foreign Service life, from immediately trying to return to my normal routine, to walking around in my pjs all day.  The key seems to be sleep.  At least it is for me.  Like 9-10 hours a night upon return.  Try doing that when  you have babies.  Boy, were those arrivals a mess for me.  Now that my kids are older and they can get up and occupy themselves in the morning, if by chance, they wake up before I do, the transition time of exhausted-sobbing, "I can't do this anymore," to matter-of-fact, "Okay, Steph, this is your life, now get back to it," to giddy, "OOO, where are we going next?" takes less and less time.  I reached the matter-of-fact stage after I was back home for 6 days this time.  I haven't reached the "giddy" stage yet.  It'll come.  I like to believe that life for most folks in the world is in the "matter-of-fact" stage.  I feel fortunate to be here.  This is my life, my Foreign Service life.  I can't imagine it any other way.