T̶w̶o̶ One p̶e̶r̶p̶e̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶a̶t̶s̶ immigrant settling into home country number five.
Remember back when Brexit was our biggest problem? Yeah, I miss those days. A few weeks after the referendum shock, we received news that made us forget all about Nigel and his bus. After three years in remission, Scott’s leukemia has come back. So here we are again, life revolving around rounds of chemo, infections, … Read more
I’ve lived in the EU for a third of my life. I’ve always dreamed of the day when I’ll have my very own EU passport. Unfortunately, it now looks like that day may never come. You see, I’m being dragged out of the EU against my will. It’s possible that I’ll be doing a little kicking and screaming along the way.
I was amazed to realize we’ve now been in Scotland for longer than we lived in Switzerland or Italy. I mean, our first year here was so strange that it almost doesn’t count. And the past two years have had a different quality about them, as well – a combination of “WTF just happened to us?”, “Yay, everything’s fabulous!”, and “What if it comes back?”. But the longer we live here, the easier it becomes to separate the Edinburgh experience from the leukemia experience. These days we have a lot of acquaintances here who don’t know Scott was ever sick. We’re just two regular old American expats in Edinburgh, two among many.
We’ve been expats for a long time now. Trips back to visit the US are still strange, yet extremely familiar in their strangeness. There were no big moments of reverse culture shock on our Christmas trip “home”, but there was plenty of culture-based amusement.
Read moreScenes from an American supermarket, and other notes from a trip to the motherland
There are certain laments you hear amongst American expat communities the world over. “I miss peanut butter!” “Why is there no good Mexican food here?” “Where can I find canned pumpkin?” After several years out of the country, most of us learn to adapt to these grueling hardships one way or another. There are expats who lug giant suitcases full of ranch dressing and jello back from every visit to the US. There are those who just fill the peanut-butter-cup-shaped hole in their lives with exotic local sweets (Cadbury Egg, anyone?). And then there are those of us who use such deprivation as an excuse to expand our skill sets. Which is why I know how to make pumpkin pies without using canned pumpkin.
August in Edinburgh was a whirlwind of activity: long days filled with festivals, tourists, and fireworks. And then September comes, and the sunsets are suddenly much earlier than they have been, and there’s a tiny, delicate whiff of fall in the air. But that’s not all that is different.
(*not really a how-to guide of any sort)
The craziest thing just happened: we became the owners of our very own little piece of Edinburgh. It’s an old piece of an old building, tucked away in a corner of the Edinburgh New Town UNESCO World Heritage Site. It combines the wear and tear of an almost-200-year-old structure with the overlaid decor aesthetics of a 1970s-era DIYer, and it’s ours, all ours.
Today we have a guest post by Dana Newman, writer and expat vlogger at Wanted an Adventure. Read her tips and then run off to live in Munich. You know you want to.
Given that there’s a big American TV event coming up, now seems as good a time as any to share this fun little morsel. Last Thanksgiving Julie was hoping to watch the Macy’s parade, but we were surprised at how difficult it was to find it live online. I did some poking around and came … Read more
Back in April I posted about how we were getting all settled into Edinburgh, how life here was starting to feel normal. The whole settling-in business was quite violently interrupted by Scott’s cancer diagnosis, which made us feel like ‘normal’ was a thing of the past. But here we are again, back on track.
Read moreEdinburgh: notes from the pub and other bits of daily life