my history of living abroad

I’ve done quite a bit of moving around the world, some of which was never shared here or only shared in bits and pieces. I decided to write out my full history of spending extended lengths of time abroad, and maybe I’ll expand on certain experiences in more detail in a later post. In 2007, …

How to start a business in Kyrgyzstan

My first piece for the Glimpse Correspondent’s Program is up on Matador, called “How to move to Kyrgyzstan and start a business.” I will let you know now that there is not a speck of useful advice for doing either one of those two things. This was a tough piece to write. Firstly, because I’m …

Hey Kirstin, what do you actually do?

My family thinks I’m in Russia. My friends think I’m a journalist. A lot of people I meet in Bishkek call me a spy (and I think they’re jerks). The House Hunters episode said my husband, Farrell, and I moved to Bishkek to start a media analysis company and cut out my brilliant explanation of …

2012 resolutions

I think I did a decent job keeping up with my resolutions. All things considered, I’m achieving many things that weren’t on the list. For example, I’m earning a salary from the business and we’ve earned enough to repay ourselves for all of the start-up costs. We even treated ourselves to health insurance, which I …

watching myself on TV

I thought about never watching it. I was worried that all the ridiculousness that happened over the three days of filming in Bishkek and one day in DC would be a half-hour of embarrassing nonsense. Still, I had come to terms with the fact that other people, friends, family and complete strangers, would watch me …

hello, new readers!

Our big television debut on House Hunters International is tomorrow night, and the amount of press we’re getting for it is just really overwhelming! So I thought I’d write a bit of an introduction to my multitude of new fans! (just kidding) If you happen to have made it to this page after reading about …

Goals for 2011 {update}

Remember January? Remember when we were all full of hope at the empty slate that the beginning of a new year presented to us? So we made goals and wrote down the things we hoped to fulfill during the year. What happened to those? I’m battling some fierce jet-lag at the moment, so like any …

I’ll be 23

The world didn’t end, so I therefore survived to celebrate my 23rd birthday yesterday. I spent the day lounging, watching reruns of House Hunters International on Youtube (research, of course, for my upcoming episode), and baking cupcakes for an utterly over-sized group birthday party last night. I’m quite happy with how my day went! I …