Tag: Expats

Day 1: The Happiness Project
April 20, 2014

Day 1: The Happiness Project

  It’s a cruddy, grey day today, with heavy white skies hovering low. Everything out there is sodden; the roof tiles on the houses opposite are matte silver with rain. The blossoms on the big tree in the back yard are falling to the ground, …

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More Things That Are Ridiculously Easier in Your Own Language: Food!
April 7, 2014

More Things That Are Ridiculously Easier in Your Own Language: Food!

  The other day, we decided to order dinner in from a kebab shop in our neighbourhood here in Leicester. The menu was online, but it wasn’t linked to any of those nifty websites that also let you place your order and pay in advance. …

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Waiting For Godot (or a Baby): Notes on Identity, Change and Public Presentation
February 15, 2014

Waiting For Godot (or a Baby): Notes on Identity, Change and Public Presentation

  Any day now, I’m going to have a baby. Like, an actual baby that I get to keep indefinitely. Which is, admittedly, an awfully long time. I still haven’t wrapped my head completely around this concept, even though I’ve been quite pregnant for many …

17 Comments
Things That Are Absurdly Easy in a Country Where You Speak the Language: Haircuts!
January 28, 2014

Things That Are Absurdly Easy in a Country Where You Speak the Language: Haircuts!

Welcome to the beginning of what will probably be an ongoing new series. I’ve been really, really bad at writing this season. Partly because I’ve been so busy setting up house in a whole ‘nother country (and buying the same freaking things from IKEA that …

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Ch-ch-ch-changes: In Which I Attempt to Talk Coherently About This Past Year
December 31, 2013

Ch-ch-ch-changes: In Which I Attempt to Talk Coherently About This Past Year

  I wrote a paltry 22 posts here in 2013, just under two per month. Some months far quieter than others. Most of them somehow ended up hovering around the thousand word mark, which I’ve been told is way more than people want to process …

13 Comments
I Want to be Sedated: Adventures in Getting my Act Together in Leicester
December 14, 2013

I Want to be Sedated: Adventures in Getting my Act Together in Leicester

People, my mind is muddled like a big ball of muddled things all muddled together with a muddling pestle. I’ve been trying to get my act together to write all of the posts that this particular point in time deserves. Of these, there are many. …

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On Existential Migration, Home, Leaving, and Scaring Yourself Silly
December 6, 2013

On Existential Migration, Home, Leaving, and Scaring Yourself Silly

One day, not so long ago, when we were still in the exhausting throes of impenetrable visa applications and living out of two battered China Post boxes, partly in my parents’ basement and partly in the little house in the big woods where I grew …

18 Comments
Why, Hello Leicestershire: Notes on Suddenly Moving to Middle England
December 1, 2013

Why, Hello Leicestershire: Notes on Suddenly Moving to Middle England

People, I have moved to England.     The seemingly interminable spouse visa application process suddenly terminated and within a week of getting our surprise approval we were safely ensconced in a ridiculously genteel, chocolate-box village just outside of Leicester. That’s the one pronounced Lester. …

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Let’s Just Leave the Country Again, Shall We?
November 15, 2013

Let’s Just Leave the Country Again, Shall We?

Yesterday we went luggage shopping, for proper hard-shell wheelie bags, the kind that grown-ups buy. The kind that cost more than, say, free. It’s not that I don’t own any luggage. I do. I own all the bags and suitcases that people all over the …

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Killing Time in Familiar Places: Notes on Learning to Enjoy Enforced Stasis
September 30, 2013

Killing Time in Familiar Places: Notes on Learning to Enjoy Enforced Stasis

  It’s been raining for about three days now. The kind of rain that comes with leaden dark white skies, streams of water everywhere, and cacophony on metal roofs. Yesterday, near hurricane winds led to all ferries to and from the mainland being cancelled. A …

9 Comments
Seriously, I Have No Idea What I’m Doing: Notes on Being Knocked Up Whilst in Transit
September 17, 2013

Seriously, I Have No Idea What I’m Doing: Notes on Being Knocked Up Whilst in Transit

  Back when we first found out I was pregnant, about a million years ago in Shanghai, we thought it utterly rational to carry on with our plan to pack up and leave our jobs, our flat, and China, embarking on a road trip down …

18 Comments
We’re Not in the Middle Kingdom Anymore, Toto…
July 23, 2013

We’re Not in the Middle Kingdom Anymore, Toto…

I have a feeling I may need to change the name of this blog, or at the very least acknowledge that its impracticality is about to soar to new heights of uselessness.     I have, you see, buggered off. I’m actually in rainy, green …

25 Comments