this is what sucks about being an expat

I had to say goodbye to a really good friend last night.

Farrell played a show at an outdoor cafe with Eholami and Dad Manki. It was a beautiful, clear night, and I sat on the grass while Darwin managed to sleep for several hours in a pair of “junior-sized” noise-blocking earphones.

People rocked out. The guitarist of Dad Manki may have ran around the audience wearing nothing but a gas mask on his… umm… crotch. In other words, by the end of the night, mostly everybody was a little drunk and having a wonderful time.

And then there’s a group of three of us, sobbing and hugging each other. Dammit, we’re losing a good one! A really really good one.

And that is what sucks about being an expat.

Also, this:

Right in the middle of writing this post, I went to retrieve my sleeping babe from the bedroom and noticed that the “protective” bars on the window had been bent out of the way and the screen slashed. There’s no evidence that whoever did that actually managed to get in, and all of our (meager) valuables are intact, but holy fuck. Today, I wish I spoke the same language as the people around me. I wish my friends were always a reasonable distance away. I wish that in trying to figure out what to do after an almost-break-in, I didn’t have to consult with people about whether or not there is any point in calling the police. I wish that the consensus wasn’t that the police would add nothing, but could potentially steal something or try to bribe us and therefore, we shouldn’t call them. I wish I didn’t have to think about moving again after I just did it a few months ago.

Just a bad day, I suppose.