Sabrina Lloyd

I am from Florida. Most of my family still lives in Florida. I want my heart to break for the school victims, I want to cry and scream, and it did and I do, but my heart can’t break much more because it’s already broken. It broke with Sandy Hook. It gave up with Sandy Hook. If little children dying in gunfire did not wake my country up, if little children watching their classmates die did not shock my country into change, nothing will. Little children. The truth is guns are w

I keep thinking of Hilary Mantel, winner of the Booker Prize, twice. The New Yorker did a wonderful article on her in which she referenced an old belief that one must return to one’s own country within 10 years of leaving or risk never fitting in again (she lived abroad for 9 years before returning to England). We’ve been out five years now but I already feel that old adage wrapping me up in string. I feel a part of Rome; I am becoming etched in its stone. Perhaps it is in my

There are quite a few things that have surprised me here in Rome. Of course I come from a bias of NY Italians and the Sopranos, but I think the stereotypes throw a wide net. Here are some of my observations: I see more Romans drinking white wine, not red, even in the cold of winter. I wonder if this is partly because there is so much bad red wine here. I cannot tell you how many bottles I have had that have sat in the heat too long and turned. Most wine stores are not air-con

As my sojourn in the states comes to an end and Italy looms closer every day, I find myself reflecting on all I will miss and the things I most certainly won’t. _____ Things I will miss: The diversity. Brunch. Endless hot showers in wintertime. Heated cafés and restaurants in wintertime. Considerate drivers (at least here in LA). Enormous playgrounds in which to watch your child run free and have a ball. Progressive education options. Jon Stewart. Opening night movies. Barnes

Yesterday, I went to Korea. I soaked in soft mineral baths and steamed out a week’s worth of wine before following a tiny Korean woman into a wet room where I was placed on a table and for an hour and a half bathed. At first she scrubbed my skin with what felt like sandpaper, but there was no pain, just the feeling of my pores crying out in ecstasy. As the steam from the constant running water enveloped us, she took buckets of hot wet towels and used them to rock me back and

I love how Italians eat lunch. The middle of the day is not just a stop to refuel, to grab something on the go, to get to the next point, it is literally in the Italian language a “pause.” You must pause, stop completely, rest. It was the same in Uganda. Day after day I would marvel at the locals around me, no matter what their job: government official, housekeeper, garbage man; when it was lunch time it was lunch time. Everything stopped. Meals were lingered over in restaur

My husband was recently in Yemen for work. One afternoon, during lunch, an unnamed official from the Ministry of Education kindly offered him some help. You see the conversation had turned from work to life and the difficulty on spouses who are moved from home to home, continent to continent where they alone have to set up shop and maneuver the streets, find someone to talk to, while the other is at work surrounded with like minds and breathing room. “Yes,” my husband agreed,