Expatriate life is not all about corporate or military transfers, embassy placements, government issue, and relocation allowances. People who move abroad without that infrastructure of support, including spousal counselling and health insurance, need special adaptation and acclimation skills.

Or at least a really good sense of humor…

Early one frozen morning, I came to and was horrified to realize that I was wielding an ax with no great expertise but some gusto, deep in the earth-floor coal cellar of our farmhouse, clad only in a terrycloth robe and big, pink bunny slippers with ears and whiskers. A fierce Siberian howling blizzard made urgent the need for warmth, but also made it hard for me to hear if it was the wind or my kids upstairs who were screaming.

As I tottered along my chosen log - trying not to look down at scuttling spiders and other creepy-crawlies and hoping that mice are afraid of pink rabbits - I leaned way over to grab another piece of wood to splinter into kindling, using the ax handle as a prop. And that's when I saw - I mean, I really saw - the state of my heretofore meticulously manicured and pampered hands: dry, chapped skin littered with small scratches and some burns, topped by broken dirty nails.

It was my little epiphany. Far far from home, somewhere in Eastern Europe, where I could speak to no one and no one to me, it took chopping wood in my PJs to internalize the fact that, no, I was not on some National Geographic special, but that this was my life.

(I went back to bed).