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Living overseas

Whether you're considering emigrating or an expat abroad, you'll find likeminds on this forum.

Expats, what are your pet peeves about your family abroad now ?

92 replies

expatinscotland · 05/03/2007 22:46

Mine would have to be people who say they'll come at a certain time, so you go all out planning.

Then they cancel it for some lame ass reason.

I stopped planning, I just get on with it and plan our own deal and if they make it over and fit in, great, if not, fuck it.

OP posts:
SweetyDarling · 09/03/2007 19:46

Invisable sounds good to me. Our family/friends/vague aquaintances come to stay in a constant stream!
Shouldn't have ever mentioned that spare bed!

mamama · 09/03/2007 20:03

lol

We have the same thing with the Lakes (I live on Lake Michigan) - it has waves and a beach and bit ships on it, therefore it must be the sea..

I don't think I knew that Lays are Walkers crisps - for some reason I prefer Lays!

The branding is odd, isn't it. I don't understand the Home Depot/ B&Q thing (what does B&Q stand for anyway?) and others. They are EXACTLY the same place, same signs etc, so why the different name? It does seem very strange. But then, there are lots of things I don't understand about this place..!

It's warming up here too - I think it was 34F today - almost too warm for a coat!

DaddyCool · 09/03/2007 21:17

sweetdarling - i had that problem in the uk and severely p'ed off my family when i started pushing back on it.

mama - B&Q = we used to call it 'big and queer'... not sure why really.

brimfull · 09/03/2007 22:55

daddycool,No real problem,they've been there since 1969!
But they would love to end there days in a Scotland near the sea.Largs to be precise.I suppose they could afford a smallish place there now as I think they mentioned that their house in dundas has increased in value recently.

Chandra · 09/03/2007 23:28

My sister saying, but... Chandra, you have to pay more attention to your DS's language skills, he has started to speak Spanish with a slight English accent in it, do you remember about cousin X, who decided not to speak Spanish anymore?

Perhaps Cousin X had somebody like my sister who rather than congratulating him in the great triumph of properly speaking a second language he only practised with his mother had somebody like my sister for whom things were never good enough...

Oh and my mother and her comparisons, oh yes DS does that but GS2 does it better, bigger and more often and so on. The only thing that makes things a bit better was the realisation that she does exactly the same when she visits my sister. So I guess she is pleased with every GS but is creating an unwelcome feeling in both sister and I.

DaddyCool · 10/03/2007 12:02

strange that someone wouldn't want to promote a second language... or a mixed accent even. I've got a mixed accent that works very much to my advantage.

ggirl - dundas is growing big styley. very very popular place right now. quite nice i think and really close to the main boom centers in toronto. it's getting very expensive to be in dundas so your parents may be in luck! some housing markets are still growing dundas is certainly one of them.

Pruni · 10/03/2007 12:28

Message withdrawn

mamama · 10/03/2007 14:02

lol Pruni.

And at your mum Chandra.

What are they thinking?

Will we end up like this one day?

We also have weather comparisons - when it is -30c here, the in-laws will tell me "Oh, it's ever so cold here too. You wouldn't believe how cold it is. We've never been this cold". Errr, really? In Yorkshire? Try being over here in the winter then!

SweetyDarling · 10/03/2007 20:59

The brand differences have lots of dif reasons. Often when a brand is big in one country and then wants to open up in another country they find that someone else has registered thier company name and wants money for them to get it back - so they don't bother and just come up with something new.
Otherwise it can be market research based - sometimes a name that is fine in one place doesn't go down well with test groups in another market.
Lots of other reasons too.

expatinscotland · 10/03/2007 21:10

Oh, here's another one! Family 'correcting' DD1's use of British or particularly Scottish terms.

WTF.

'You're denying her heritage! She's going to be all Scottish.'

She's a Scots girl who happens to have an American mother.

She speaks like she hears everyone else but me speaking. She uses terms that she hears everyone around her using.

Winston Churchill had an American mother.

Sounded like the Englishman he was, though.

OP posts:
SweetyDarling · 10/03/2007 21:15

Expat - what terms don't they like?

paulaplumpbottom · 10/03/2007 21:19

I admit though I correct some of my DD's. I refuse to let her say "ach" put "So I am" at the end of a sentence. She won't be calling supper or dinner tea. She won't be calling a napkin a serviette. There are others but these are the ones that stick out.

expatinscotland · 10/03/2007 21:44

Where do I start, SweetDarling!?

FFS, they wouldn't dream of doing that themselves just because the mother was a foreigner if the situation were reversed, so why would I do that to my own child?

My own mother's mother was a Frenchwoman. My mother speaks French, and Spanish like her father did, but when she speaks English she speaks it like the Texan she is.

My father's native language is Spanish. He never spoke a word of English until he went to what you call P1 - no nursery/kingergarten in those days, 1941. But when he speaks English, he uses the terms of those around him. He's an American, and a Texan, who had foreign parents.

It's not my folks I get schtick from - because as I stated my father had two foreign parents and my mother one. It's mostly my sister.

Don't like it? I don't care!

I make my life here. I chose this life, and everything that goes with it. Believe you me, there's a price to be paid, and I pay it everyday.

But that just doesn't make sense to try to get my daughters to speak in a way that's foreign to them and makes no sense to them.

How silly!

I am the foreign one, not them.

OP posts:
Ivor · 11/03/2007 13:58

My DH asked the other day if DS will have an American accent, of cource he will, he's American!
Hear what your saying Expat, think it's going to be the same the other way round too.

paulaplumpbottom · 11/03/2007 14:39

My DD has a mostly American accent but thats because she mostly spends the day with me. I imagine once she starts school that will change.

Pruni · 11/03/2007 17:44

Message withdrawn

brimfull · 12/03/2007 21:43

My parents cannot understand dd's accent.She and her friends speak so quickly ,the vacant look on my mum's face is priceless.

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