Q: “What season is your favourite to travel in and where would you go based on your answer?”
Category Archives: expat
Are You a Girl Gone International?
✈ New generation of women living abroad
✈ We represent, connect and support
✈ Over 10,000 members
✈ Fast growing, friendly global community
✈ 100s of free events all over the world
✈ Active hubs in 24 cities
✈ 20 more hubs opening in 2013
✈ Busy online communities on different platforms
✈ Funded by our magazine GirlGI
About GGI communities
Bath Drama: A Letter From The General
*photography belongs to Bonnie Rose of Bonnie Rose Photography © 2007 – 2013 | All Rights reserved – www.bonnie-rose.co.uk
My Expat Life: The WWII Evacuee | DIY Gas Mask
*Photography belongs to Bonnie Rose of Bonnie Rose Photography © 2007 – 2013 All rights reserved | www.bonnie-rose.co.uk
The Sunshine Award – Expat Style
[source] |
- Acknowledge the blogger who nominated you.
- Share 11 random facts about yourself.
- Answer 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you.
- List bloggers.
- Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate and let them know they have been nominated.
11 Random Facts (of my life as an expat)
- I have not driven a car in a two and a half years, since moving abroad.
- I am technically a dual citizen living in the country where I am an expat.
- I have more books about travel, languages, or that take places in other countries than I do anything else on our book shelves.
- I get my food delivered to the house from local organic farms. Which means I’ve swapped waiting in long queues and maneuvering around busy grocery stores for cleaning the dirt off of my vegetables and enjoying raw milk.
- I do not like Starbucks. I have never liked their coffee because I grew up drinking ‘real’ espresso in Italy as a teenager, and find the taste to come off like burnt coffee beans. I find their drinks that contain syrups way too sweet. With that said I used to go there all the time as our ‘meet up’ place with my military wife friends. I used to love getting their ice tea in Hawaii but now that I live in England I would rather go somewhere for tea where I feel like I am treating myself to a nice day out with service that includes sitting down with a menu. I will say I appreciate people who go there so much they bring their own reusable cup to help the environment. I have my own Starbucks reusable tumbler from Hawaii that I still use at home.
- I dread package slips. Before expat life a package slip was exciting and it was followed by excitement over who it is for, who it is from, and what could be inside. If I am excited now it is because solely it made it to us and did not get lost in the mail. However a package slip now means that it was delivered while we were out of the house and either too big to fit through the mail slot in our door or that it has to be signed for and so it went back to the post office. While we have a post office on our high street in town, a mere five minutes away it is not where our packages go when they need to be picked up. They go into town and that involves either a forty minute walk into town or I need to shell out the £ for bus. A taxi is about £10 one way so to just pick up one parcel is not worth that option. So that is why I dread package slips.
- I miss my american sized dryer and being able to dry my clothes quickly. It is the one thing of my specific expat life that I would change if I could. The last three places we have lived at here in England have had a washing machine (small like an american dorm sized fridge) but no dryer. Which means if it is sunny and warm enough we dry our clothes outside and if now we dry them inside. This involves clothes on our radiators at all times and on clothing racks that take up a lot of space in our house. The laundry is never completely finished and I find myself fantasizing about throwing in a large load of laundry in a dryer to have it dry within the hour.
- I never liked ‘domestic’ beer in the US but would drink imported beer from Germany or Belgium. Here in England I still like a good beer or ale but I tend to drink cider more often. It is my favourite weekend treat!
- I love planning new trip and journeys. At any time I have several trips in the planning stages. Some nearby in England and others in the world. I am looking forward to Christmas 2014 where my family has talked about going to Austria or Munich, Germany.
- I can always find new things to document and take photos of where I live in England. It makes being an expat always exciting especially living in a place that has seasons.
- I am fluent in English but have known Italian and German at different times in my life. I am now trying to work on German with my boys with the hope that one day I can say I am fluent in two languages.
- What do you plan to do today? I am going house/flat hunting with my family as we are moving out of the place where we live this Christmas.
- What fictional character do you most identify with? Vianne Roche from Chocolat.
- If you wrote a novel, what would it be about? A group of people from different backgrounds who challenge the ways their societies have formed their worldview by the relationships they form with each other.
- What’s something your readers might not know about you? I wear glasses. I tend to not wear them when I photograph myself. One day I will go back to contacts again.
- What album could you play on repeat all day? It really changes every day as my music selection can be quite eclectic. However, Lana Del Rey and High Flying Birds has been playing quite a bit recently.
- What color(s) do you wear most and why? I am trying to wear more ‘Angelina Jolie’ inspired shades of monochromatic and neutrals with colour saved for special occasions or nights outs.
- Do you like watching crappy movies? Modern ones probably a no…but I love watching films from the 80’s and early 90’s that I watched as a kid.
- What’s your favorite for a good laugh? Captain Ron with Martin Short and Kurt Russell.
- Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? Both.
- Opera or musicals? Both.
- Classic films or classic lit? I like to read the book first.
The Eleven Questions
- Something you are looking forward to in the next fortnight (two weeks)?
- What is one thing your readers may not know about you?
- What is a short time goal you are currently working on?
- What is a lifetime dream you would love to achieve?
- If you were to have a dinner party what celebrity would you invite?
- Favourite comfort food?
- If you were to have a quite night in what film could you watch over and over?
- Is there a book you have been wanting to read but have not yet?
- Your next dream vacation will be to where?
- If you wrote a book (fiction or non fiction) what would it be about?
- Favourite item you own?
A list of bloggers I have tagged for the Sunshine Award. No worries if you are busy or have already been nominated.
The Expat Life of Kate
My Expat Adventures Hey friends! My name is Kate and I am a British expat who owns a blog called Diaries of an Essex Girl. I am not a run of the mill expat who has moved to X country but I am an expat who moves to a new country every 6-12 months. This means my life is constantly all over the place and my character is currently a mixture of British, French and German culture with a sprinkle of Greek & Dutch in there too.
I travel with my long-term boyfriend Daniel, who is my partner in crime and an all around top chap, we have a lot of fun traveling together and I couldn’t imagine doing it with anyone else. So far we have lived in 4 countries together (including England) – I have also lived in France – since we left England 1.5 years ago. It can be a struggle to get creative with telling your travel story due to it’s length or the amount you’ve told it, so today I’ve decided to share my story with you guys in pictures. I think the glee on my face in all of them tells you how much I love where we are at right now!
Elizabeth’s Expat Life in Thailand
I am so thrilled to be able to write today on Bonnie’s inspirational site. You see, I am one of those fellow ‘third culture kids’ turned third culture Mums, as well as a British American. Bonnie and I have a lot in common, including the fact that we are both photo geeks and grew up in Asia and Europe. It is confusing (very) and can frequently lead to odd conversations with people ( ugh).
My family and I currently live in the Southern Thailand, on the beautiful island of Phuket. I started our family blog The Bradleys to share our daily life as a family that values spending time together above anything else; we especially love holistic living/parenting as well as travel. Despite being a ‘third culture kid’ I had never heard of this term before I discovered Bonnie’s blog and TCK series. For 30 years I have struggled with my cultural identity, expressing who I am and where I am from to people. It sounds odd at first but when you think of how many countries across the world are filled with immigrants, in reality this is quite common. In fact here in Phuket, the local population isn’t 100 percent Thai but a mixture of Hokkian (Chinese) and Thai, which is called baba. I found this fascinating as I was ignorant on Thai heritage until I first visited Phuket Town and saw all of the Taosist temples and realized that there was a heavy Chinese cultural influence.
Our little 5 year old daughter Kaya is a fellow TCK and global citizen. When she was born, we decided we want to raise her outside of the US (living in LA for 8 years had taken a toll on us) and closer to where I grew up in France. My husband however, felt hesitant to move there and instead decided to take a job teaching ESL in Korea. The experience was interesting but my husband ended up coming home from work late in the evening, with more work to do before bed. It was exhausting. We ended up moving back and forth for several years until we came back to Phuket a few months ago. We’ve lived here for two years in total, with a 4 month stint in Scotland. Our intention was to settle down there permanently but due to changes in the spousal visa, we were forced to leave until the politics get sorted.
Phuket is a lovely place to live. Safe, excellent food, and permanent good weather ( well we do get a lot of rain too…), it’s been a lovely place to be based. This week is the vegetarian festival where the whole island adopts a vegan diet and street vendors sell vegetarian delights such as coconut icecream! The Thai culture is very respectful of foreigners and our daughter has several close friends that she plays with. She is also picking up Thai, which is fantastic. And yet, we are craving settling somewhere permanently, and we’re not sure Phuket is the right fit. With having family in the US, UK, and Canada, we’d like to be somewhere closer for them to come visit and vice versa. There aren’t many homeschooling families on the island, nor is there a close knit community for expats per se. The majority of foreigners living here year round are in their 50s and up.
Travel is an important form of education and we feel from the last 4 years of traversing the globe our family has experienced things we never would have if we had let our dreams get diminished. We had many set backs along the road to finding home, so to speak, and even though we haven’t found where we want to call home, we have picked up pieces of ourselves where ever we have visited. The world is filled with beautiful people looking to express themselves and find fullfillment. We share flaws and goals. We are more similar than different.
*images original to The Bradleys blog. Please get in contact if wanting to use anything from their site.
4. Hop around and meet new travel loving bloggers! Link up will be open for a few days, make sure to check back to visit some of the newer travel posts!