A few months ago, I gave a speech at a local university here in the Portland area. If you’re interested, you can listen to the full speech here. In short though, the goal was to talk to design students about who I am, a little bit about my history and… Read more
I’m answering the questions I get asked a lot, both in my daily life and online. And if you have any more, feel free to leave them in the comments. Ok, here we go! Why was I born and raised on Saudi Arabia? Were my parents in the military? So… Read more
I’ve written quite a bit on Land of Marvels about my experiences growing up as an expat kid in Saudi Arabia and while truthfully, it took me a long time to come to terms about what that exactly meant in my life, especially as an adult, I can say now… Read more
20 years ago this Summer, my family left our home in Saudi Arabia. We packed up everything we owned in shipping containers, sent our furniture across the ocean on a boat that took months. We spent our final week in our home on the Persian Gulf saying goodbye to everyone… Read more
I’ve often talked here on Land of Marvels about my childhood growing up in the Middle East as an expat kid. And in the time I’ve written about my experiences here on my blog as an expat and then as a Third Culture Kid, moving back to the States, to… Read more
With so much in the news lately about the Middle East and with what’s happening in that part of the world these days, I find myself continuously drawn back to my memories of growing up there. If you’re new here, I’ve written a lot about my birthplace and subsequent childhood… Read more
If you’re new here or not aware, I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I was born in an Arab hospital in Dammam, Saudi Arabia and lived there all throughout my childhood. It was home. It wasn’t until years later as a teenager in small town USA that I came across… Read more
I haven’t written anything for a while on my childhood in the Middle East, though for numerous reasons as of late it’s been on my mind a lot. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been different had I not been born in Saudi Arabia and every time… Read more
The world is full of places that change you as you travel, places that you remember for different things or that move you, but certain places change how you see the world entirely, how you look at things in your own life or those around you. Certain places in the… Read more
Happy Labor Day to all the Americans! I hope everyone is enjoying their long weekend, I know I am enjoying the 3 day holiday with a lazy weekend at home in Portland. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know somewhat of my background. I… Read more
It’s the end of the week and it’s been a while since I’ve posted on my childhood growing up as an expat kid in the Middle East and in the last few days, a few different things have come up that have made me look back at how I grew… Read more
I’ve talked before about my background and growing up in Middle East, my heritage as a third culture kid (TCK) and a bit about what my childhood was like abroad. But in the span of the last few weeks, I’ve been reading so many posts from other bloggers on their… Read more
While I speak a lot about Portland on this blog and a bit about my childhood abroad in Saudi Arabia, I realized I haven’t really touched much on the other places that have shaped me into who I am and those places that I have called home over the years…. Read more
If this title confuses you, just bear with me and I’ll provide a background on what I’m talking about. But to start, one of the things I hope to accomplish on this blog is to promote understanding & to negate ignorances. I think in order to do that, we need… Read more
Recently my mom has been putting home videos from my childhood on DVD and in the process she is sending me clips of them as she gets them. It’s so interesting for me to sit here, in the States, in Oregon, in the cold rainy days and remember back to… Read more