A Peek At My Expat Life

Living overseas was never really part of my life plan.

Yet it happened. And it was an amazing experience: twelve years living outside of my home country of the UK in Japan, Germany and South Africa.

I enjoyed travelling as much as I could – within my allotted holiday entitlement – mostly adventures in backpacking solo whenever I could. During one of these trips in South America, I was offered a job as a tour guide. And I seriously considered accepting it – as an amateur naturalist, it was a lifelong dream to live in the jungles of the Orinoco and the Amazon. However, I had a mortgage in the UK and I had been promised my City job was safe in the midst of redundancies. So, my head ruled my heart and back I went to London life.

And was made redundant a month after my return.

Yeah, so that was fun.

Right place, right time

Fortunately, I was in the right place at the right time to hop on the IT contracting train: PCs were becoming a ‘thing’ and Microsoft was just getting underway and I was very good at training people how to use the new tech. I clearly remember the first time a PC was installed on my desk: I had no clue how to use it, but I’d been reliably informed to just try it out and if I broke something, it could be fixed. Remembering this fear enabled me to teach others how to use this strange new beast.

Between contracts I went off travelling as before.

Then the best thing happened – I got a contract to teach people how to use computers in a whole other country. Being paid to travel, heaven!

Travelling for work

For a couple of years, I bounced around countries as diverse as Finland, Hong Kong, Russia, Australia and most bizarrely, the Solomon Islands. And many more in between. The work was tough, often working through the night to make systems work in short timescales before bouncing into the training room at 9am. Not much sleep was had for a couple of years, that’s for sure, and ultimately, the experience was incredibly rewarding. I made sure to find time to explore the countries I was fortunate to stay in for a few weeks at a time.

During this period, I was staying in hotels and therefore not getting a sense of actually living overseas. Until I went to Florence, Italy for a few weeks work. Rather than a hotel, I somehow ended up staying in an amazing, yet ancient, top floor apartment a street away from Piazza del Duomo. Coming back at the end of a day’s work next to the Ponte Vecchio, shopping for real Italian food and sitting on the balcony in the evening was a life changing episode of my life. I could really see myself living abroad.

Life changes

Luckily for me, my personal life had changed somewhat during the couple of years I was ricocheting around the world as I met my husband on one of my trips. He was also doing similar work, so it worked out quite well. We weren’t often in the same country together for about a year so met up in various places overseas when we could. It was all wonderfully good fun. Because I am so independent this was absolutely fine, and he continued to travel for work a lot, with my blessing (and a little jealousy!).

Cutting a long story short; in the space of about 3 years, stuff happened. I left London, we moved in together, had a baby, then a couple of years later my dad died unexpectedly and traumatically. All this took a while to recover from. When the time was right and, of course, after much discussion, my husband started applying for overseas postings.

We got lucky

Our first overseas relocation, in 2006, was to the amazing city of Tokyo, Japan. We plunged into expat life in possibly one of the most ‘foreign’ countries in the world with little preparation, learning as we went.

Why wasn’t I prepared? Well, I had a publishing company that needed to be wound up and sold. Plus, parenting and life and packing and so on. I was busy!

Tokyo was an incredible start to expat life. Daughter was only just five years old when we left the UK and pretty much her entire education has been overseas.

She was learning Japanese from her first day in school, and has since learned German, French, Afrikaans, and Russian.

Speaking unbroken English has been a learning curve for her in more recent times!

Husband's postings are generally for around three or four years – yet we ended up staying almost five years in Japan for various complex reasons.

Finally, we were all set to leave in April 2011 when the big Japanese earthquake hit in March. Our remaining month and eventual departure was fraught with problems and we all left a large part of our hearts and souls in Japan.

Moving to Germany

From Tokyo we moved to Berlin, Germany, which was a very different expat experience for us all, and for the first time, I experienced culture shock. Our stay there was cut shorter than normal when husband was offered an unexpected opportunity in Pretoria, South Africa, so off we went at short notice after just a couple of years in Germany.

Personally, I wasn’t sad about that. Not all countries suit all people, and it’s important to remember this.

Into Africa

South Africa was incredible. Feeding my naturalist dreams again, Africa was an extraordinary place and I will remember my time there forever. The wonderful people, the wildlife, the scenery, all so beautiful.

Day-to-day life was quite tricky. Not in the sense of hardships that more developing countries offer, but it's not the easiest of places to live, particularly for a teenager who needs independence.

Repatriation

Then Husband's office realised we hadn't actually been back in the UK for all that time and recalled him at the end of his posting in 2018.

We arrived back in the UK just in time for the coldest winter in years. Repatriation is hard, folks!

To fill my time, I wrote a book - 'Expat Education: An Expat's Guide to Choosing a School Overseas'.

And we are still working on settling into ‘normal life’. Daughter is now at college, filling in the gaps of her overseas education which was slightly fractured due to school issues.

Of course, I continue to write articles for my main site, ExpatChild.

Just as we were getting back into the swing of life back in the UK, COVID hit and turned everything upside-down again.

Working overseas

As I’d sold my business prior to our move to Japan, I needed something to do that fitted in with school runs and the extra-curricular activities of my daughter. So, I worked as a freelance writer and webmaster to a publishing company in the UK. The time zones worked in my favour. I also started blogging in a personal sense then, too. Once the earthquake hit, I was online almost 24/7 – live blogging, Twitter, dealing with journalists and all sorts.

By the time we arrived in Berlin, I was burned out and simply stopped writing in the same way. In retrospect, there was some PTSD going on too.

ExpatChild.com

ExpatChild came about after our move from Japan to Germany. Whilst trying to plan that relocation I could find nothing online that spoke to expat parents in general. No advice on how to choose a school from halfway across the world, no information about preparing your child for a move, nothing.

So, I started ExpatChild! Initially I planned to write a book on the topic, but technology called me back and a website seemed to be more gratifying to me and provide value to more people. The original format in 2012 was as an online magazine - I guess I was missing my print publishing past. It took off very quickly and ExpatChild soon became the go-to site for parents moving overseas with their children. It's full of articles about moving abroad with children. And without children. And moving back home again. And everything in-between.

ExpatChild simply has lots of practical, honest and useful advice for anyone considering a move and life overseas. Expat life isn’t always the Instaperfect dream many imagine, and as my audience grew, I learned more from them about the challenges, trials and tribulations moving and living abroad can produce. And so it grew more.

The Expat Directory was born a couple of years later to fill another niche - to showcase genuine, expat-friendly businesses.

And Expatability came about because during my twelve years overseas I met many fellow expats that simply weren’t realistically prepared for life in a new country. This meant they were unhappy, unfulfilled and some even returned home early due to a lack of realistic preparation.

We are all individuals!

There's a lot of information and advice on ExpatChild. However, it's very generalised information as I'm aiming for all readers to get something from it. And there are a lot of readers. Therefore, it can be difficult to sift out the information you need.

And this is how I can help you – with one-to-one, totally bespoke support.

Instead of swimming against the tide of an ocean of information, I can give you the guidance you need, when you need it, to help you take control of this busy and often stressful time.

If I can speak to people before they move; to discuss the particular arrangements of their move, and their individual family dynamics, I can offer personalised advice and support. They are then better prepared and have a much better expat life as a result.

Also, I can help people who are struggling with their current life overseas and even help them prepare for repatriation. As mentioned before, not all countries suit all people. Not all lifestyles suit all expats. Not all schools suit all children (and boy, have I had experience of that particular game!).

I can give you personalised advice. That's the support, information, advice and hand-holding that you need. Being treated as an individual is crucial to your well-being. Everyone is different and every relocation is different. Just because you had a marvellous time in a previous country, doesn’t mean your next posting will work out the same.

I’m dedicated to helping you have the best overseas life from the very start, by helping you prepare realistically, and share in your challenges with empathetic advice and tips.

I can help you build your foundation for a successful life abroad, so that your expat life is your dream life. Let's get YOUR expat adventure off to a brilliant start!

For more information on how I can help you and your family have a wonderful life abroad, get in touch.

DM me here or email me at [email protected]

I look forward to chatting with you soon!