Ellie and I met at university, when we lived together in halls (“dorms”) the first year, and then lived together another two years. She’s a knitting, tea-drinking, opinionated student worker who will make you feel welcome within thirty seconds of meeting her. She writes at her blog Surrounded By Clouds, and wrote a guest post…
Today I’m breaking my daily post habit and giving you four posts in one day. It’s because later on today I have THREE guest posters here to tell you their story, their experiences of our theme today: going home. Being an expat is usually not a permanent situation. For most people, even those who move…
Expat life is wonderful because it’s new, it’s different, it’s so often everything you’d define as “strange” back where you come from. Which is precisely why I love it so much! So my tip for embracing expat life today is a short one: Say Yes. Say yes to the unusual food, say yes to the…
Maybe it began this way for you: you were frustrated with you life, fed up of small town life in your home country, or maybe done with big city life there. Your job was going nowhere and you weren’t sure what to do with yourself. The relationship had just ended, or maybe there was just…
The flat we lived in together in Brussels when we got married, was in a kind of unique location. You’d walk out the door and turn right and within a block there were nice restaurants, trendy bars, boutique shops. Turn left and you’d find a park where Roma gypsies would gather at the end of…
If you come from a Western culture, chances are you’ve been brought up with the value of independence firmly planted in your mind. We pride ourselves on being able to do things for ourselves, figure it out, no need to ask for help. Even if you’ve embraced a more gentle concept of interdependence, it can…