Expats????
Hi Kadmiels. We moved to Northern Sweden from England over five years ago. We love our new lives and could not go back to our old way of life as much as we enjoyed it when were were younger.
We have many friends who have moved away from the UK. Some as far as Argentina and Australia, but also Spain, France, Norway and Southern Ireland.
Everyone we know moved under their own volition and not through work. All to start a new life. Some had the luxury of an early pension and others like us just needing a change when hitting forty years of age.
We have learnt a reasonable amount of Swedish and can now chat with the 70 year old's that crossed the street a few years ago for fear of having to speak English with us. Swedes are generally very modest about their excellent command of English.
Children take compulsory English lessons from age 8 or 9 and are well versed in English and American slang very quickly due to the large presence of both countries TV programmes aired every day, not to mention music and computer games and of course the internet.
As the winters are long, the children have plenty of time to watch TV and use the internet. We have real seasons up here in the north. It is now the beginning of October and we have +14c in the daytime and -8c at night. From midsummer through to midwinter we lose about 7 or 8 minutes a day.
One Christmas we sat indoors looking outside at -36c. On days with those temperatures, most people leave their cars running outside of the supermarket when they are shopping. We have to plug our cars in 2 hours before using them most of the wintertime and then six months later in July I will be painting our house in shorts burning in +30c.
It really is like living in two different worlds. I could not imagine leaving now.
- ryankettposted 14 years ago
0Just a clarification, I think if a person become a citizen of the country outside the country of birth, he/she is no longer an expat, unless the resident country recognises dual citizenship. Eg, if Eaglekiwi takes up US citizenship, she is no longer an expat, unless NZ allows dual citizenship which I think it does.
I'm one Kad. What do you want to know?
Calma Ryan ... calma (portuguese for calm Ryan Calm - learn with the frog
)Indian, Living in Singapore at the moment.
My only advice would be dont try and change the country to fit you , you fit in with it
ie learn the language and /or traditions, get to know ya neighbour,eat the food, smile alot
P.S Im part way through learning Americakiwi
Cracker idea ,aight!!Yeah, as Ryan said, Russian expat in the USA.
10 years as of next Monday
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