To be fed up with 'expats'...

[EveWasFramed72]

I am an American, living here in England with my British husband and children (who have both nationalities, but have only lived in England). I've been here for 4 years, and when we were first here, I was miserable;I was at home full time with a new baby, then preganant running after a toddler, basically no close friends, etc. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and got myself a life: went to uni, got a job, driving licence and created a life for myself outside of my husband. Now, I love our life here, I have loads of friends, a job I like, etc.

But...I am part of a group of American women living in the UK, some of whom have been here longer than me, married to British men. They won't drive, work, survive without several care packages of food from home(because they can't possibly eat what's on offer in England), basically, they sit around and moan about England, and how much better EVERYTHING is at home.

Now, I love my home country, and I do get homesick sometimes, but I just find myself fed up with these women who have given up on life because they are living abroad (and didn't they REALISE that marrying someone from another country means living in said country at some point???). When they aren't moaning, I do enjoy them...it IS nice to have home connections, but this attitude of deliberately NOT acclimating drives me nuts , and I feel like they make the rest of us who enjoy life in England look bad!!!

Rant over...I know, you're going to tell me to cut them off...and I have largely...just not completely.

I just want to know if this is 'typical' expat behaviour?????

Yes Mme that is dead on. Food I tend to miss from the US is often food I almost never ate anymore when I still lived there. :o Comfort foods which I knew I could have if I wanted to. Like donuts. (don't get me started on what's available in some cities here. I don't live near them, and besides, those aren't really the ones I crave!)

I stock up one a few sweets (Sour Patch Kids! Anything Reeses) when we visit but then it tends to sit in the cupboard here, waiting for the day when I decide it's a special enough occasion to eat a Tootsie Pop or whatever. If my German husband takes a fancy to anything, though, forget it. The Nutter Butters we brought back? Gone in two days. :o

It's all been snowed in by the few bags of Worcester Sauce Twiglets we found at a Waitrose in Somerset, anyway. Are those actually back? Because I have yet to see them elsewhere...

5and - oh yes. Having to change the way you dress, particularly as clothing in the UK is so loaded with "social" meaning. South Africans are much more casual, whereas in the UK if you walked around in a tracksuit it's viewed as "lower class" (see snob thread) and then there was the whole thing on knowing how to dress for cold and wet weather. I still struggle on that front.

Bling - yes, when you go to a super market and you have NO idea what products to use, or even which shops to go to for stuff. I remember thinking that Clintons was like CNA and that you could buy magazines in there, walking in and ... nope. Just cards. Or spending ages staring at different yogurts trying to figure out which one was any good.

The weirdest experience I had was seeing a cap from a bottle of Castle Lager (which was quite rare in the UK at the time). For a second, it was literally like being back in SA and seeing the lid on the grass pavement near our old house. Crazy.

I think there are (at least) 2 types of expats - those who make an effort to integrate and those who don't.

I don't think you can generalise about all expats based on the expats you meet in expat groups. As others have said, often the only you have in common with those people are that none of you were born in the country you're currently living in.

I've been in France 6 years and have never been to an expat group. I just haven't felt the need or the inclination. Although I did feel ridiculously happy when I met an Australian through my studies and an American through my work....Both have now gone back "home" so once again, my only friends in France are French.

As for the products, the only things I bring out from the UK are things I can't find substitutes for in France (Shreddies spring to mind). At first I was bringing out a lot more, but over the years I've adapted and now I hardly buy any British food to bring over.

I also get people asking me when I'm going back "home" and they are very surprised when I say I'm not planning to. Why would I? My home is here, my DH is here, my job is here...and soon even my parents will be here

every expat or immigrant is an individual struggling with an individual situation. You cannot judge someone else's failure to feel at home with what you perceive as your own success in doing so. Not every expat feels liked, accepted, treated as an equal, maybe they experience daily rejection for the way they look or dress or act. Not everyone is in a happy marriage, is financially secure. If you judge those who integrate less successfully than you think you have done so harshly, it seems to me a lack of empathy more than anything really.

No different really to expecting foreigners in Britain to all like it or leave.

sorry not directed at you fluffy, just musing aloud really

I did read (Daily Mail, which explains a lot about what I'm going to say) an article about people who had emigrated, and then their relationships broke down etc. There was one couple where they'd bought a cheap(er) house in a French village and moved there, with the idea of fixing it up and starting a B&B. Apparently it ended up being very difficult and the marriage broke down and i was thinking "shame, that must be so tough" until I read that the woman spoke French and had made friends and tried to integrate into the community, while her (douchebag) husband refused to learn French, and (unsurprisingly) didn't fit in, couldn't make friends and wanted to go back. I lost all sympathy for the man at that point

yes but it is a two-way thing how you react to the new environment and how that environment reacts to you. No place reacts to two expats in exactly the same way, so their experiences are not the same.

It is the same for immigrants in the UK, they all have their own story and it is harsh to dump them in a heap and describe them as failures to integrate/assimilate or whatever. Hard to like a place that does not like you. It isn't always down to whether you learn the languatge and make an effort.

It's very challenging when one partner has a linguistic advantage though. I practically have a phobia of speaking French in front of DH :( which does limit me in social situations. He has to go away before I'm happy to talk!

That doesn't happen in any other language...

I too have a phobia of speaking French in front of French people frakkin (assuming your DH is French). I find it's because they ALWAYS correct me, or look at me like I'm torturing their language (probably true).

I got stuck having to speak French in front of French people all day, every day :o.

Yes, they do correct, but I got over it quickly because 99% of the time it was to help me, which I needed to become really fluent.

Now, I have no problem. I mean, they can tell I am foreign by my accent, so I just let them correct me away!

I once lived in a very bad area of Edinburgh, however, with my Scottish husband and our young child.

An American student and her friend and mother got on the bus and obviously didn't understand the bus driver, but pretended to.

I told them they were not anywhere near the neighbourhood they wanted to go to, in fact we'd passed it a couple of miles back, and got them to get off with me, where I waited for the bus going in the other direction and gave them explicit instructions where to get off.

It took me a while to get the hang of some of the heavier accents here.

I had to watch Rab C Nesbitt with teletext subtitles

I can almost guarantee that my DH and I would be in serious trouble if I hadn't taken some steps to integrate. It was understandably really difficult for him to come home every night to an utterly miserable partner, who did nothing but complanin about living here. He was patient and supportive, but I wouldn't have wanted to listen to that long term...who would??

LLHK said in her post that she felt more at home in England, and that's how I feel now. My personality is a bit better suited to life here, which I would never have known if I were still under the duvet!

As for food, I don't miss much anymore. I used to bring loads back with me, but now I only get Good Seasons italian dressing mix (it's the BEST chicken marinade EVER) and Crystal Light drink mix! I tend to eat lots of stuff I like when I'm home, but leave it there...most of what I like is crap, anyway!

Yes abs, that's it exactly!

Whereas when I'm speaking French to non-native speakers (in my class) - pas de probleme. (see?)

But Zzzzen even if you are struggling, does that mean you simply give up? Or never try to begin with? I mean, I've sure been rebuffed, and there have been plenty of people who have not been nice, but I just get on with things, and concentrate on those who have been kind. If you don't try to integrate at all into a new culture, how can you KNOW that you aren't accepted?

Oui, c'est ça! Avec des 'vrais' francophones je peux même pas dire 'bonjour'...

My Danish partner has always said he'll never move back to Denmark. A shame because I wouldn't mind a spell over there for a bit.

It's touted as one of the best places to live in the world, there's plenty he moans about in the UK, yet he can't articulate why he wouldn't in back. Maybe some personalities are suited to some countries better.

Mon phrase preferere "c'est bonne" ou "je suis un experte en francais " and then switch to English.

Eve - I agree. Moving to a new country is incredible difficult, and in ways you wouldn't expect. It took me about 18 months to adjust to the UK originally, and when I moved from Scotland to London, it took about a year (but there was a lot of other crap going on). An acquaintance's GF moved over from Paris to be with him and to see if she could live in London, and gave up after 3 months because it was "too hard". I just thought "you didn't give it enough time".

With regards to the correcting of the language expatinscotland I had the opposite problem here in England. The wouldn't correct it because they thought it was rude. Which I thought was irritating as how was I ever going to learn if nobody told me I was doing it wrong?

Although after saying so to friends and family members, they all were very helpful!

we also relocated here from spain, because we like it here, true, i get some food from home that isn't available here, but apart from that, we are very integrated.

i am also very annoyed at spanish expats that spend all their energy in antagonizing the locals, i have cut them off, they grow to resent you for being happy and sucessful... they live in guettos, but then again, isn't that what brits do in malaga?

concentrate in being happy and each to their own...

Isn't there a difference between 'expats' i.e. people that are somewhere for a few years to work and people of a different nationality that have every intention of settling indefinitely in a country?

Genuine question?

Abs I've had that same thought about people who give up so quickly. I think it takes something to 'spark' you into creating a life...for me, it was the thought that NOW I could pursue a Master's degree, which I'd always wanted to do, but never got around to. From the minute I made that plan, things improved; suddenly, I had another reason to be here than just because I was a trailing spouse. And that's even more so now...I am definitely here for my own reasons, which I think was an important place to get to. I love my DH dearly, and it was a conscious decision to follow him, but it doesn't mean I have to be a follower...

Bob I think there is a difference; I don't actually like being referred to as an expat, because we are living here indefinitely, and I will apply for British citizenship sometime next year. When we lived in China, we were definitely expats...loved it, but didn't plan on staying forever! :)