I walk as quickly as I can, looking down most of time, making sure not to make eye contact. It is obvious I am foreigner. It is not that I am a Latin woman walking alone in the streets of Kiev that sets me apart, it is the fact that I wear a stocking hat, mittens, jeans, and tennis shoes. Women in Ukraine wear high-heeled boots, dress clothes, and furry coats.

I know I help perpetuate the stereotype people have of Americans as I walk with a McDonald’s bag in one hand and a soda in the other. At least I am skinny.

I walk back to my one room apartment quickly because I want to eat my food warm.

In the apartment, I sit down on the dark brown leather couch and open the bag. I eat the French fries first. Then I open the box and smell the Big Mac. It smells and tastes the same as it always does. It doesn’t matter that I am in Ukraine, away from my family, alone. The Big Mac is a Big Mac just the same. Even when I order all I have to say is, “Big Mac” and hand them three dollars, which means I want fries and a drink too. Fast food is cheaper in Ukraine.

I never liked Big Macs before.

But today, like I have done every day since being alone in Ukraine, I eat a Big Mac, French Fries, and Vanilla Coke. It has become my flavor of home.

Being homesick has changed my taste buds, and I look forward to my Big Mac every day.

I eat it slowly, sipping coke between bites.

Sometimes, like today, this meal is the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind in a country where I do not speak the language and cannot communicate. I desperately miss my two little girls back home and my husband who is taking care of them. Even from keeping me sane as I visited my new daughter at the orphanage, she has no idea what is about to happen o her. She has little interest in me, but great interest in the “stuff” I bring to our visits. I carry the emotional distress from the day, being around the other orphans and the institutionalized behaviors they already display at such a young age.

Being homesick is hard today. So I take a bite of home.