by hjunderway | Sep 28, 2012 | Bilingual, Communication, Culture, Education, Family, Family Travel, France, Husband, International, Kids, Language, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Parenting, Preschool, Relocating, Travel, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Photo of author’s son in Paris, France.
In my other life, as I like to call it, I was the translator. I often found myself sitting at a kitchen table with school documents sprawled out between me and an anxious mother. As a family therapist with seven years of Spanish classes behind me, these were the moments that most overwhelmed me. A mother sitting across the table, watching my mouth for familiar words, nodding her head with approval, or murmuring, “No entiendo” when confused. Slowly translating each document using basic Spanish vocabulary and many hand gestures, together we unraveled the mysteries of new school enrollment, calming her fears and reservations about sending her child to yet another new school.
In the fall of 2011, I said good-bye to that life and hello, or rather, “bonjour” to a new one. My husband, two-year-old son, and I had accepted an expatriate assignment to Paris, France for two to five years. Once our things were packed and shipped and our house rented, we checked into a hotel and patiently waited for our visas to be approved, a wait we were told could be as much as two weeks. (more…)
Jacki, or “MommaExpat,” as she’s known in the Internet community, is a former family therapist turned stay-at-home mom in Paris, France. Jacki is passionate about issues as they relate to mothers and children on both domestic and international scenes, and is a Volunteer Ambassador for the Fistula Foundation. In addition to training for her first half marathon, Jacki can be found learning French in Paris and researching her next big trip. Jacki blogs at H J Underway, a chronicle of her daily life as a non-French speaking mom in France.
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by Natalia Rankine-Galloway (Morocco) | Sep 20, 2012 | Living Abroad, Motherhood, Relocating, Tunisia, World Events, World Motherhood
Tunis: 1st impressions….hot, beautiful, ancient….and dirty.
Between the bustle of the Medina, the rocky remains of Carthage and the white-washed walls and crisp blue sea views of Sidi Bou Sa’id lie fields, highway divides and alleyways of litter.
While the omnipresence of trash and it’s accompanying odor, flies and wild dogs are something you quickly become accustomed to and learn to look past, it is hard not to think about how much more lovely this city could be without it.
Why, I asked myself, can people not find a better way to get rid of their trash? Don’t they care about their city? An editorial in a local French language paper echoed my thoughts and reported the shame of having to apologize to visitors for the state of their public spaces; asking them to look past the litter to find the beauty of their country.
As a scrupulous sorter of my trash, compost and recycling back home, it was a shock to the system to see all manner of glass, plastic, paper and vegetation strewn willy-nilly along the road leading up to our beautifully maintained and manicured Embassy home. I reduce, reuse and recycle! I care about the the future of the planet my kids will inherit! I could never do such a thing…
And then it came time to dispose of our own garbage. (more…)
Natalia was born a stone's throw from the Queen's racetrack in Ascot, UK and has been trying to get a ticket to the races and a fabulous hat to go with it ever since. She was born to a Peruvian mother and an Irish father who kept her on her toes, moving her to Spain, Ireland and back to the UK before settling her in New York for the length of middle and high school. She is still uncertain of what she did to deserve that.
She fled to Boston for college and then Washington, D.C. to marry her wonderful husband, who she met in her freshman year at college. As a military man, he was able to keep her in the migratory lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. Within 5 months of marriage, they were off to Japan where they stayed for a wonderful 2 and one half years before coming home to roost. Baby Xavier was born in New York in 2011 and has not slept since.
A joy and an inspiration, it was Xavier who moved Natalia to entrepreneurship and the launch of CultureBaby. She has loved forging her own path and is excited for the next step for her family and CultureBaby.
Natalia believes in the potential for peace that all children carry within them and the importance of raising them as global citizens. She loves language, history, art and culture as well as Vietnamese Pho, Argentinian Malbec, English winters, Spanish summers and Japanese department stores...and she still hopes one day to catch the number 9 race with Queen Liz.
You can find her personal blog, The Culture Mum Chronicles.
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by Dee Harlow (Laos) | Sep 7, 2012 | Culture, International, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Relocating, Siblings, Uncategorized, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Well we made it to Vientiane, Laos!
As I typed that exclamation point it feels slightly anti-climatic after going through all the pre-move drama of logistics and planning, the emotions of saying good-byes, surviving the 36-hour journey across the globe followed by the trauma of transitioning into a new life.
And yet adding more than one exclamation point feels overdone after four weeks of being here and starting to feel settled. Things are starting to come together logistically and emotionally, which compared to how I felt upon our arrival is a world apart from where we began.
I can hear everyone asking, “So what happened?” “How was the flight?” “How’s Vientiane? ” “How are the kids” “Tell us everything!” – all the things I would be asking myself if I wasn’t the one writing this post. And I wish we could all gather around with coffee or wine or both and have a long long chat, a much needed mother-to-mother chat. A chat that would be more for me than for you because this move was TOUGH.
It was tough on me, tough on the kids, tough on my husband. The transition was tough, just like all major life transitions are tough whether it is a move, a divorce, a death, illness, new sibling – it’s all tough on the kids despite of how much we believe they can “bounce back”. Sure. They do bounce back but those bumps can be hard for us parents to take. (more…)
One of Dee’s earliest memories was flying on a trans-Pacific flight from her birthplace in Bangkok, Thailand, to the United States when she was six years old. Ever since then, it has always felt natural for her to criss-cross the globe. So after growing up in the northeast of the US, her life, her work and her curiosity have taken her to over 32 countries. And it was in the 30th country while serving in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan that she met her husband. Together they embarked on a career in international humanitarian aid working in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan, and the tsunami torn coast of Aceh, Indonesia.
Dee is now a full-time mother of three-year old twins and continues to criss-cross the globe every two years with her husband who is in the US Foreign Service. They currently live in Vientiane, Laos, and are loving it! You can read about their adventures at Wanderlustress.
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by hjunderway | Sep 6, 2012 | France, International, Living Abroad, Parenting, World Interviews, World Moms Blog Writer Interview, Writing
Where in the world do you live? And, are you from there?
My family and I moved to Paris, France seven months ago on an expatriate assignment through my husband’s employer. Before moving here, we lived in many northeastern states in the U.S., including Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts. If I had to choose a place to call home, it would be Boston. We loved attending college in Massachusetts and we have so many great memories there.
What language(s) do you speak?
English is my primary language, which has made life in France very difficult. I blame my father for my lack of French-speaking abilities (sorry Dad)! In the seventh grade, I had the opportunity to pick French or Spanish to study as a second language. I desperately wanted to learn French, my paternal grandmother’s native language, but my dad was insistent on me learning Spanish. Since moving to France, I’ve been trying to learn the language but often find myself using Spanish words instead of French. It makes for interesting conversation!
When did you first become a mother?
I became a mother in September 2009 to a beautiful little boy named HJ. Before that, I use to call the students I worked with “my kids” but after parenting my son for the last three years, I now realize that I was nowhere close to being a real mother. (more…)
Jacki, or “MommaExpat,” as she’s known in the Internet community, is a former family therapist turned stay-at-home mom in Paris, France. Jacki is passionate about issues as they relate to mothers and children on both domestic and international scenes, and is a Volunteer Ambassador for the Fistula Foundation. In addition to training for her first half marathon, Jacki can be found learning French in Paris and researching her next big trip. Jacki blogs at H J Underway, a chronicle of her daily life as a non-French speaking mom in France.
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by Mama Mzungu (Kenya) | Sep 6, 2012 | Childhood, Culture, Discipline, Kenya, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Multicultural, Parenting, Sleep, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I hunched my back to fit through the doorway of the mud and thatch hut, my baby in my arms. The woman inside welcomed me with a “karibu,” her own baby suckling at her breast. The hut was dark with only light spilling in from two small windows but my eyes adjusted quickly. It was decorated with free calendars and unsmiling photos of family members hung high on the mud walls, like so many other homes I’d entered in my two years in Kenya. As we spoke, through a translator who knew the local Luyha dialect, chickens wandered in the hut and were shushed away without a thought.
I had spent the past two days living with a family in a rural village with my baby and 3 year old son talking with local woman about their experiences as mothers. My son was outside playing easily with the children in the compound despite the language barrier.
The conversation was going well. Her 2 small children had entered the hut and sat quietly during our discussion. But at some point my son came rushing in, insisting emphatically, in only the way a 3 year old can, that he was ready to go. His whining was incessant. “Mama mama mama. Can we go? Can we go? can we go?!” The conversation stopped and everyone turned to view the spectacle. Summoning my best “parenting in public” skills, I lovingly (with an undercurrent of “you are going to get it when we get home”) told him to stop and that we’d leave shortly. This was met only with louder and more insistent, back arching whining.
I was embarrassed. I had done all that I could to avoid this scenario. Before we left for this particular visit, I got down on Caleb’s level, looked him in the eye and made him promise to behave if he wanted to join me (he had begged to come along). We agreed that if he couldn’t behave he would not be coming with me again. All of this to no apparent effect. (more…)
Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.
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by Natalia Rankine-Galloway (Morocco) | Aug 24, 2012 | Being Thankful, Culture, Family Travel, Husband, International, Language, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Moving, Multicultural, Tunisia, World Motherhood, Younger Children
As anyone who has executed an international move knows, the process is as much excitement as pure terror. In addition to the myriad concerns flying through your head about never seeing your cherished belongings again, there is the fear of the unknown. Where will I buy milk? Will I find a circle of friends? Will I be able to learn the language? What on earth have we signed ourselves up for?
As I make the final preparations and move onto my final five fingers to count the days until we move to Tunis, I have found a way to categorize, if not altogether deal with my fears. I’m a compulsive organizer…what can I say! If I can’t solve a problem, it is at least sitting in the right pile.
As a wife, I fear for the demands that this move will place on my husband’s time. This fear is mitigated by the fact that since we found out about this move, he has been as giddy as a school boy… more excited by his chosen profession than he has been in a long while.
As a mother, I fear for my 18 month old’s fragile understanding of his little world and how we are about to shatter it. He won’t be waking up in the same room, his little friends will all change, and people will be speaking to him in strange tongues, just as he was getting the hang of this English nonsense. But I take comfort in the fact that, although he may not remember this year, it will permanently lodge itself in his psyche, and that I will love discovering this new world through his eyes.
As an entrepreneur, I fear that I won’t be able to accomplish all that I have set out for myself in this upcoming year. While this move is offering me numerous opportunities, I doubt my ability to seize them and to properly maintain my control over the business I have so carefully built over the past year. But as with all things in business, the reward is in the risk….and if nothing else, I will blog my little heart out!
As a woman, I fear the changing political climate in Tunisia. As the country struggles to find its footing after the Jasmine Revolution and the ouster of long-time dictator Ben Ali, a long repressed undercurrent of conservative Islamism is attempting to take hold. What implication this holds for the women of Tunisia, no one can yet say. The nation seems, to this outside observer, to be
so fiercely proud of its moderate stance on women’s rights that a curtailing of their ability to work outside the home or a mandatory enforcement of the hijab seems unlikely. But I am excited to be able to come to know these women and experience first hand how they will play a role in determining their country’s future.
As a traveler, and especially as a traveler with a small child in tow, I fear the baggage, and the train schedules, and the changing of diapers in public restrooms. But I am also happy to infuse my tourist dollars into the many
Tunisian communities desperately missing their visitors since they launched the Arab spring and to discover the vast historical, cultural and culinary treasures my new home has to offer. I can’t wait to introduce you all to my new home as I get to know it thoroughly.
Have you endured the stresses an thrills of an international move? What coping measures have you used to get through it?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by our new writer and newly exported “Tunisian,” Natalia Rankine-Galloway of Culture Baby.
The image used in this post is credited to ReeccaLeeP. It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Natalia was born a stone's throw from the Queen's racetrack in Ascot, UK and has been trying to get a ticket to the races and a fabulous hat to go with it ever since. She was born to a Peruvian mother and an Irish father who kept her on her toes, moving her to Spain, Ireland and back to the UK before settling her in New York for the length of middle and high school. She is still uncertain of what she did to deserve that.
She fled to Boston for college and then Washington, D.C. to marry her wonderful husband, who she met in her freshman year at college. As a military man, he was able to keep her in the migratory lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. Within 5 months of marriage, they were off to Japan where they stayed for a wonderful 2 and one half years before coming home to roost. Baby Xavier was born in New York in 2011 and has not slept since.
A joy and an inspiration, it was Xavier who moved Natalia to entrepreneurship and the launch of CultureBaby. She has loved forging her own path and is excited for the next step for her family and CultureBaby.
Natalia believes in the potential for peace that all children carry within them and the importance of raising them as global citizens. She loves language, history, art and culture as well as Vietnamese Pho, Argentinian Malbec, English winters, Spanish summers and Japanese department stores...and she still hopes one day to catch the number 9 race with Queen Liz.
You can find her personal blog, The Culture Mum Chronicles.
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