ABSTRACT
It is November 2014, and I have mostly fi nished my manuscript. I am in my home offi ce, surrounded by a rather scattered collection of about 1,000 books, audio interviews, 100 large binders overfl owing with notes and pictures, and everything else one would need to write a book. I work on a computer that faces a wall, with one picture drawn by my children when they were ages fi ve and seven. I used to face the window, but in the summers I found the incessant activity of the birds and squirrels running around in the beautiful oak tree to be distracting. In the winters the fl uffy, white snowfl akes covering our streets would call me to go out and play in the snow with my children. My home in the Canadian Prairies is comfortable, and I feel truly lucky to be a part of this community. I am not a fan of the long and bitterly cold winters here, and I miss the heat of the tropical rainforests of Laos, but I’m fortunate enough to be able to travel on occasion and get my “fi x” of tropical weather. Truthfully, the weather is the least of the differences between my life in Canada and my former life in Laos.
