Category Archives: expat

My Family Photos in Wales

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While we were in Wales this summer for our 10th Anniversary Vow Renewal, my friend Miriam took our family portraits.  You can see the ones I took of her family at Travel: Cymer Abbey Family Portraits.   If you love travel posts, remember tomorrow is Travel Tuesday and you can link up with us on the blog.  We just got back our family portraits this weekend from the Cymer Abbey and I was so excited to share them all with you today on the blog.  Since I had so many favourites I have kept out the romantic ones of just Ryan and I, to share for another day.  These photographs are so precious to me because they contain our family members.  It meant so much to us for our vow renewal that our family be there to support us.  My mum and sister were ready to book their tickets once they heard the news last Christmas and I know my dad would have been here if he was still alive.  I must have taken so many photographs myself of my mum and my sister with my boys, photos I know that Ronan and Maddox will cherish as they grow older.  Family is everything to Ryan I and why we enjoyed our time in Wales so much.  Here is mia familia (thank you so much Miriam!): 

* Photography © Miriam Pinkston Visual Artist, 2009-2013 All Rights reserved. www.miriampinkstonphotography.com

To Solsbury Hill at Sunset

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It has been a good several weeks since we have gone on a country walk.  At first it started with choosing to go kayaking instead as the end of summer was approaching.  However, in the last few weeks we have been so busy that we have not been able to schedule in one of our favourite pastimes.  It is our favourite reason for choosing to live on the outskirts of Bath where country meets town. Being able to just walk outside of our house to go on a country walk is a simple pleasure we all enjoy.  So this Saturday, Ryan made sure we fit in a country walk even if it was getting closer to evening.  It was our goal to end up on Solsbury Hill to watch the sunset.  We saw cows, sheep, and a pair of each of the following animals: horses, deer, and rabbits.  The boys collected their first round up of conkers for the 2013 autumn season, to play against each other back at home.  Then we watched the sun go down as we made our way to to the top of Solsbury Hill, where we got to see all the twinkling lights of the towns down below.  It was our first evening hike and a great one to start off the season here in England.  I really hope then when we find our new place to live in the coming months it is close enough to the country so we can continue this favourite weekend ritual of our expat life. 

*photography by Bonnie Rose Photography © 2007 – 2013 All Rights Reserved | http://www.bonnie-rose.co.uk

My Expat Life | 860 Days Later

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860 days ago my husband and I kissed my kids goodbye to get on a plane from the US to England. It is hard to believe that next month it will have been two years and a half since we embarked on this Expat journey. I thought I would look back on the time so far with a little recap of some of the bigger moments and hurdles we have had to overcome.

May 2011 | A tearful goodbye at the airport as we say goodbye to our kids, not knowing when we will next be together.  We are leaving them in the US with family until we can find jobs, a place to live, and a school for them to attend. We joke that Ryan and I will end up living on the streets like Dennis and Deandra in a  tongue-in-cheek spin off called  ‘It Is Always Sunny in England’.  We were living one step up in a hostel for our first few weeks in England in a room with up to 10 other occupants. I did not have to fend off meth addicts, but did have my beauty products stolen from two girls who arrived late one night and left early in the morning.

June 2011 | Unfortunately sometimes the best made plans can go wrong. Ryan has to leave to go back to the US to apply for a different visa, which he cannot apply for outside of his home country. Leaving me alone in England. Before he leaves I am able to find a room for rent and can leave the hostel and I have been able to find a temp job available for a couple of weeks.
July 2011 | I land a salon job and try to keep busy with work and enjoying my new life in England while Ryan and my boys are still back in the USA.
August 2011 | With his new marriage visa, my husband returns to England just in time to celebrate our 8th Wedding Anniversary.  I surprise him with a weekend getaway to the historic town of Lewes.  We stay at a bed & breakfast, Ryan visits a castle for the very first time, and we see the Anne of Cleaves house. 
September 2011 | A busy month that begins with a move into our own flat in a town near where I work.  My kids finally join us in England, making our family complete once more.  The kids begin school and start assimilating to their new culture.  Ryan begins his semester at the Uni of Sussex and a part time job on the side. 
October 2011 | Our first Halloween in England and we found two houses and a pub that were participating in trick or treating.  Not that we are very big about Halloween in our family, but it was definitely a little culture shock for the boys. 
November 2011 | A really exciting month for our family. Beginning with the first Bonfire night my husband or boys have ever experienced.  We got to march in the procession with my boys’ school which included being able to carry a flaming torch! Also it is a big birthday month and my husband turned 30 this year in England. 
December 2011 | Our first Christmas in England and it was a very special and memorable one. Great cultural aspects like my boys seeing their first panto and participating in the Christmas plays at school and church.
January – June 2012 | We start of the new  year with my son turning seven and holding our first ever birthday party in England.  We get our first snow fall and life continues being busy between school and work for our entire family.  Even the weekend are quite crazy as Ryan and I work alternating days and the amount of time we are all home at the same time is very small. 
July 2012 | We again kiss our boys goodbye as they visit grandparents in the US for an intended short break as Ryan and I take a trip my home in Italy and our 9th Anniversary in Paris, France.
August 2012 |  I fly to the states afterwards with the intention of a short stateside vacay before the three of us all return home. However after visiting with my husband’s family and my family we realize going back home to England now will have to wait.  Ryan is still searching for a job after completing his masters course. 
September 2012 | I start homeschooling my boys while being in an very uncomfortable situation living at my in-laws. Not worth my breath stating the reasons why again for this post. 
October 2012 | I miss Halloween with my boys this year as I fly back home to England for a job interview. While the interview was hopeful and went really great, they ended up hiring from within.
November 2012 | I celebrate my big 3-0 at home with Ryan, a much quieter version of the party I had planned.  But at this point I just want to find us both jobs so we can get our boys home sooner.
December 2012 | Ryan lands two jobs, one in London and one in Bath.  We end up deciding to move to Bath and now have to find a place to live very quickly.  Within a matter of weeks were are packing up our stuff and moving to Bath.  My boys arrive with my mum just a few days before Christmas.  We move into our house on December 23 and unpack the christmas decorations first.  My sister arrives and we celebrate Christmas with family in our new house.
January 2013 – July 2013 | My boys are both in different schools due to cap size limits on class sizes, and neither school is the closest school to our house.  However we enjoy our location and make the most of it by going on country walks nearly every weekend in the sun, the rain, and the snow.  We are making friends and I start blogging every day on ACR. When we reach our two year mark of our expat life, I hardly can believe it. Time is flying by very fast.
August 2013 | Ryan and I celebrate 10 years of marriage with a vow renewal ceremony in Wales with an intimate gathering of family and friends.  We also visit London with my family and go up to Oxford, the city of my birth to show my husband and kids the first house I ever lived in.
September 2013 | The boys are back in school again and life is resuming back to normal after the summer break.  
October 2013 | Ryan’s two year marriage visa is now expiring and he is applying for his ILR. This begins with taking the Life in the UK test which he has aced.  Since visas are expensive it is just a little added stress in our life, but another hurdle we have to overcome in our expat life. We also find out our landlady is not renewing our lease in December (for unknown reasons) so we will have to be moving days before Christmas again this year.  Please send good wishes that the leasing agent will allow us to stay an extra month as obviously this is the most inconvenient time to move, especially with children already excited about Father Christmas. 
So that is the overview story of our so-called Ex-pat life in England and the 860 days later that followed.  I really love November through January with all the things I can do with my boys for the holidays and birthdays. Especially as an expat there are so many things I have been looking forward to since the beginning of the year.  Just really hoping that the stresses and costs of visas and moving do not overshadow the awesome memories we hope to create.  I am aiming to remain positive.
Things I’m looking forward to in our Ex-Pat life for the rest of 2013:
– Halloween, making costumes, and going trick or treating with our expat friends.
– Bonfire Night and Fireworks on the 5th of November
– November Birthdays as my husband and I celebrate birthdays a week a part.  
– Celebrating Thanksgiving with our expat friends
– Hanukkah 

– St. Nicholas’s Eve and St. Nicholas’s Day in December

– Creating an advent calendar of activities for my kids to do in December
– Decorating for Christmas (if we can)
– Making lots of yummy Christmas cookies and holiday treats
– Pantomime rehearsals (for the show in January)
– Christmas
– New Years Eve

Q: What are you looking forward to for the rest of 2013?

The War on Girls: Education & Bloggers

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I have two sons.  I am their biggest advocate when it comes to their education. As a nomadic family you have to be.  With moving frequently my eldest son at eight years old has been home educated and has gone to five different schools in three states in the US and two countries. For me as a mum the biggest challenge facing my kids and education is just making sure my kids are not being held back from their potential.  I look at the spelling lists, the math work, and the lack of homework my sons have in the UK and I see how behind it is from schools my son attended in the US. My eldest went to an accelerated learning school for first grade and was doing algebraic equations for his math level.  That school worked with kids with what level they were at individually and did not hold them back or push them forward for the group.  It opened my eyes to the potential kids at young ages have to learn.  My first grader here in England came home this week with spelling words that included: go, to, and we. I have my son reading chapter books at home and he helps in reading paragraphs aloud in Harry Potter with us as a family. Not to mention I am certain the spelling words I worked with him on in home education a year ago were much harder.  It can be really frustrating as a parent especially as in the expat life and dealing with cultural differences.  Our solution so far is to do as much home education as we can in our free time on top of everything they are learning at school.  We have talked about revisiting the plan of home education full time at home if things do not progress at school.  This is my personal story with education and raising boys. What does it mean for the girls of our world?

I am glad that we are highly involved in our boys’ education and that we did not let the in-laws hostility towards home education ruin our plans to continue with it.  However not all children all over the world even have the luxury of freedom to go to school.  There are people who think girls should not get an education. Those who say ‘what is the point when they are not going to get a job’. These girls face the challenges of distance, poverty, and child marriage.  Instead of families advocating for their daughters education, there are girls who are banned from going to school and beaten for attending. Girls can be harassed by the community on their way to school. Dreams of girls continuing their education become dashed when forced into child marriages where taking care of the family replace their role of a student.

There are people standing up for change.  Like Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl who is an activist and blogger standing up for education and women’s rights. She was shot in the head and the neck a year ago ‘in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus’.  This past friday Malala was at Harvard to accept the 2013 Peter J Gomes humanitarian reward.  You can read Malala Yousafzai’s blog here.

There are also groups of people advocating for change for girls around the world. I recommend you watch the video below about Because I Am A Girl, an initiative formed by the international charity organization Plan International. 
In the end I believe it is all our responsibilities to make sure our younger generations get an education.  I am so inspired by all the young girls out there advocating for their peers all over the world. It truly fights against the Miss Representation post I shared last week.

To read Malala’s blog: http://www.malala-yousafzai.com/

My Expat Life: Comforts

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Today’s Blogtember prompt is ‘React to this term: Comfort’.  I decided to make this a post in part of My Ex-Pat Life series. Some of the things we talk about as expats are the harder and not so pretty things people do not think about when glamorizing the expat lifestyle.  So we share our homesickness stories, the challenges of fitting into another culture, and moving woes.  In the mist of it all we look for comforts to help us through unexpected appearances of culture shock and the ‘rainy days’ of life.  For me personally, I have found it very beneficial to find comforts in both my ‘host’ and ‘home’ cultures.    There is something to be said about finding balance to gain focus and happiness in your life.  To be able to pick yourself up and find the best of both worlds.  I love finding comforts to enjoy when I am already in a really great state of mind.  They become the cherry on top of my expat life. 
Yesterday was definitely a cherry on top moment. I had the pleasure of getting to meet up with Sarah from The Wanderblogger. At the beginning of the month I was mentioned by Chelsea when Sarah announced she would be coming to Bath with her husband for a few days. I was so excited for the chance to meet up with a fellow expat. We were going to do more of a tour around Bath, but got caught with rainy weather on Thursday.  Luckily it sounds like Sarah and Cory had a very fun filled time in Bath and I look forward to seeing her recap it on her blog. We met up outside Sally Lunn’s for our blate at around lunch time.  Sally Lunn (Solange Luyon) was a Huguenot refugee who came to Bath from France in 1680. She started making these buns which are now infamous here in Bath with both the locals and the tourists alike. You can get them in savory and sweet variations.  I have seen the line of people outside waiting to get in but this was my first time at Sally Lunn’s.  We ordered our buns and cakes and talked up a storm.  If it was not for her husband Cory, we may have talked without eating until it was time for me to be home for when my sons get home from school.  Unfortunately some how our order got ‘lost’ and Cory had noticed that people who had sat down after us had already eaten and left while we were still drinking our water. We eventually had to order a second time and did get our food in time before needing to leave.  The food did come, was really good and hit the spot. 
Despite that small hiccup in service at Sally Lunn’s, we had a great time.  Sarah is one of those amazing people you would be blessed to get to know.  I felt that way when I found out about her blog. I just love finding new expat blogs that bring me back every week as a loyal reader.  It was that way when I started reading The Wanderblogger.  When you connect to another blogger online, to me it is like making a friend in real life. I just feel blessed to have gotten to meet Sarah and her husband yesterday.  Yes we are all Americans, but talking together to me I felt as comfortable as if we had known each other for years.  It was an awesome comfort that as an expat I cherish. I love living in England and getting meet new people here but it is also nice to just be able to connect to someone who is living the similiar expat lifestyle.  As a global nomad myself I love trying things for the first time. So in the mist of a new friendship, getting to try the sweet comforts of a local delicacy was perfect for the occasion.  It became the nice blend of comfort from ‘home’ and ‘host’ culture in one. I loved getting to meet Sarah in person because she is very sweet, authentic, and has the biggest heart. I just wish we had more time so I could have heard even more about their time in tour in Amsterdam. It was a lovely blate and it makes me want to nudge Selena for a group blate in London soon. 😉 

Linking up with Jenni’s Blogtember challenge
*Photography belongs to Bonnie Rose Photography © 2007 – 2013 All Rights Reserved | www.bonnie-rose.co.uk 


Expat to Expat Q&A: 09/13

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Question from Belinda: How do you fit in to your new culture without losing some of your identity? 
This is a really interesting question for me to answer because I did not simply leave one culture/country to enter another one.  In fact I became an ex-pat into the country I was born into as a child.  Technically I am a UK citizen and have been since I was born.  Technically I am also American, with American parents, who spent ten years of her adult life actually living in America until embarking on my ex-pat life.  As a Third Culture Kid I will constantly be stuck in the ‘Neither / Nor’ category of life where I immerse myself in these different social groups, countries, and cultures while never fully being in one. 
With that said I can now try to answer the question the best that I can.  I am a chameleon soul. The type of TCK that I am when I am around someone or in a certain culture I start soaking up customs, mannerisms, expressions.  A good example would be how I realised recently I start talking like my expat friend here who is also American.  She has expressions that are from both cultures however I know when I say something that I have heard her say and I only speak that way when I am around her. Back at home with my husband and those words do not just come out without me consciously thinking about it.  My identity is made up of every country and culture I have spent a significant period of time in, especially during my developmental years growing up in Europe around military bases. My way to keep true to my chameleon soul and the heart of who I am is to just be me. Which means staying authentic. My words, my feelings, my heart and soul are the pieces that make up who I am and as long as I can share that freely with the world I will not lose myself entirely.

A family meet up in Cambodia. We will meet up anywhere in the world, since we do not have a ‘home’. 
Question from Bailie: What do you think your biggest trigger for homesickness is?
The hard part of not having a ‘set home’ or being from one place specifically is that my triggers for homesickness can really come from anywhere at anytime.  Sometimes homesickness can make me sad, sometimes nostalgic for wanting to go back, and sometimes it can make full out sob in tears.  I got homesick from watching a friend’s blog video about being in the Alps in Austria. This place holds a special place in my heart because we use to visit this area and go snowboarding with my family during the eight years that we spent in Germany and Italy.  If I had to choose a ‘home’ it might be somewhere where I felt closest to the memory of my dad and any place in the mountains of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland will be able to do that for me. I cried watching this sweet happy video that had cute music playing along with it.  I was not just sad because I missed my dad, I missed that place, and I wanted so bad to just go back there. It was not about returning to a place I traveled to as a traveler it is about returning to a place that holds my heart and might as well have been my surrogate home.  I get homesick thinking about Austria and elements like germknödel.  Something I talk about lot on this blog, and have not eaten in over a decade.  I was probably sixteen the last time I had this sweet austrian dumpling covered in custard from an mountain lodge in the Alps. It is something I crave and can not get easily.
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Just One day left for the Giveaway!

Why being a Brit in Suburban USA isn’t so bad

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Today my blog is being taken over by a guest post from my sponsor, Gillian of Gladley. A veteran of LDR,  the English blogger now lives the expat life in America.  I have loved getting to know more about her this month and look forward to letting her tell you more about her ex-pat life with her post, ‘Why Being a Brit in Suburban USA Isn’t so Bad’.  
When I first told people that I moving to the US to be with my American husband, people first assumed I’d be living in a big city.  Sure, it’s because I told them I was moving near Philadelphia, which is the USA’s 5th biggest city (population 1.5million!). But Philadelphia isn’t on the cultural radar of many Brits, so I had to explain my location in terms of somewhere Brits really knew: New York (I’m just a couple of hours away).

The truth is, I think I’ve only been to New York once in the year that I’ve lived here in America. You see, I actually live on that cusp between rural American and suburbia, between corn fields and super Walmarts. People in the city think we’re nuts for living this far out, and for a long time so did I! But, even as a Brit accustomed to hedgerows, local pubs, and walks through the town center, I’ve learned that living in suburban USA isn’t so bad. Here’s why:

Farm Fresh Food

At first when I moved over I was dismayed that I could no longer pop out for a five minute walk to get a pint of milk and some biscuits for my tea. This kind of thing is the metric for acceptable living for Brits. But if I take a little drive, I can buy farm fresh milk from a small mom and pop farm, served in a giant glass jug. I can stop and buy corn from a kiosk by a country road, and maybe chat to Bob the farmer about this year’s crops. I can take hay rides in Fall and pick my own pumpkins. I can buy fabulous ice cream from a dairy farm, and even visit the cows responsible! I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to the food I eat.

Beautiful work commute
Driving through rural and suburban PA is a pretty good commute as things go. Even as you get closer to the city, there’s still plenty of wide open spaces, and trees, until you get into Philadelphia proper. Sometimes when I’m traveling even further away from the city I’m the only one on a hidden country road, and I thank my lucky stars I’m not on a busy road caught in traffic.

It’s the best of both worlds
I really miss living in the heart of a busy city, being able to arrange last-minute coffee catch-up with friends, or being able to stroll through neighborhoods filled with different cultures in the space of a few minutes. But we’re still so close to Philadelphia that we can get that urban fix whenever I want. I love Philadelphia, it’s an amazing city and would like to move a little closer to it, but life surrounded by trees and open roads without sidewalks – it’s not so bad.

Recommended Posts by Gillian:
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*images in today’s post from Gillian of Gladley