The homesick expat. It’s a cliché. But, like most clichés, it reveals a truth. One of the first things people ask me when they find out we live abroad is ‘aren’t you homesick?’ But what is homesickness? It’s more than just missing your actual home. You are now away from familiar routines, familiar faces, familiar […]
Expat Life
The upside to all those Expat goodbyes…
One of the hardest things about expat life is all those goodbyes. They don’t seem to get any easier. But there is an upside…
Forty Thoughts on Turning Forty
I thought turning forty was one of those things that only happened to other people. Er, nope. Here I am, celebrating my 40th birthday this week. Even writing that seems weird because my brain still thinks I’m 26. My body, on the other hand, definitely got the memo… But birthdays should always be celebrated. Because […]
When this Expat thing gets too much – 5 Self Help Tips
Living overseas can be wonderful. It can also be stressful, lonely and unsettling. Here a 5 self-help tips for when expat life gets too much…
Small steps to big change – can cutting down on meat make a difference to the planet?
This blog is dedicated to everything about making wherever you are currently living feel like home. But whichever country you move to, we are all still residents of the same planet. And right now it feels like we are on the brink of destroying it all. Plastic pollution, air pollution, ocean pollution. But when everything […]
Expat Book Club – Our Favourite Books of 2018
2018 was a brilliant year of books – and book clubs – for me. In my non-reading life, it’s been a year of highs and lows with another expat move from Germany to France. But my cunning plan worked! I set up the Expat Book Club because I wanted a book club that I could read […]
Christmas Guests?
What evokes Christmas for you? For me, it’s the smell of mince pies and tangerines and the twinkle of fairy lights. It’s the opening bars of ‘Fairytale of New York’ and the tears that come all too quickly whenever I hear children singing carols. It’s being at my parents’ house with all my family, which […]
Living in France – Seven things I’ve learned in our first few weeks
We haven’t even been living in France for two months yet. It feels like longer. Not necessarily because the time has flown due to me having too much fun…but there’s time for that! So I thought I’d share my first impressions as a British expat living in France. I wonder how much these will change […]
The Truth About Moving: Expat Anxiety…Insomnia and Ikea
The last time I was new in a new country was three years ago. I wrote about it, after the first year, and described this initial couple of weeks as having been a honeymoon period. It almost feels like you are on holiday…until the reality sinks in that you aren’t going home. So I think […]
Moving on, leaving friends…Why I never can say Goodbye
In the past five years we have lived in three different countries, and we’re just about to move to our fourth. From our home country of England to Thailand and then Germany, the latest move will take us to France. I have learned a lot through all of these experiences…the biggest thing being how little […]