Hi, I’m Eliana.

I’m Colombian-American, married to a Swede, a mom of three, and someone who has spent most of my adult life living somewhere that was not technically “home.”

The U.S. Sweden. Switzerland. Nigeria. Jordan. Georgia. Soon Serbia.

So at this point, I have spent years starting over.

Finding grocery stores.

Learning which app people use.

Trying to remember names I absolutely forgot seven seconds after hearing them.

Figuring out whether I’m supposed to give one kiss, two kisses, three kisses, or just panic and stick my hand out.

Very graceful. Always.

But somewhere between all the moving, the school events, the friendships stretched across time zones, the cities that started to feel familiar right before we had to leave, and one very dramatic dog named Maya, I realized how much of life disappears if no one writes it down.

Not the big things.

Those usually get remembered.

I mean the tiny things.

The woman at the bakery who wrapped bread like it mattered.

The taxi driver who made me question every life choice before we even reached the roundabout.

The friend you thought you’d see again before geography quietly had other plans.

The ordinary moments that somehow stay with you years later.

That’s why I created Letters From A Friend Abroad.

Not as a travel guide.

Not as a perfect postcard from a perfect life.

This is something much simpler.

A monthly letter from my life to yours.

The real version.

The awkward greetings.

The cultural confusion.

The memories that refuse to stay in the country where I left them.

The little details I cannot stop thinking about.

And the bird?

The bird felt right because so much of my life has been built around leaving and returning.

Every year, I find myself moving between places — Sweden, the U.S., and wherever we happen to be living at the time — carrying pieces of one life into the next.

I hope these letters feel like hearing from a thoughtful friend somewhere else in the world.

— Eliana 🕊️