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Living overseas

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

from our own correspondent

825 replies

teafortwo · 24/09/2008 15:23

Old thread...
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/2423/576865?ts=1222265998268&msgid=12499051

New thread...

to be created below!

Enjoy!

OP posts:
Sibble · 05/07/2010 20:42

FOOC Auckland

Well it's winter here and although it doesn't get that cold in Auckland, ground frosts but no snow, we get some beautiful winter days, clear blue skies, crisp, cold weather. The past week or so however has been relentless rain to coincide with the school holidays of course. So we have a 2 week programme of museums, movies and play dates lined up to help stop us all going stir crazy. One great thing about Auckland is that alot of child friendly activities are free or very affordable, especially if like us you take a packed lunch. So in preparation last night we made chocolate brownies and cookies for our days out. If yesterday's anything to go by most of Auckland seems to be out of town - trips to Fiji are very popular this time of the year - a bit of winter sun, so the traffic and queues should be minimal.

Hoping this thread picks up again I love reading what is happening around the world.

MmeLindt · 07/07/2010 08:55

FOOC Geneva

Glad to see this thread back up and running. It had rather fallen by the wayside.

Summer has finally arrived in Geneva, after a promising week or son in April and a long cold miserable June. I even put the fire on a couple of weeks ago as it was so chilly in the evenings.

Schools out! We have almost 8 weeks holiday, starting this week after a wonderful fete on Saturday, to celebrate the end of term.

The whole village is invited, not just the children and their parents. First the children march through the streets, this year the theme was the sea so there were ships, and the shipwrecked pirates, fish, divers and massive life buoys.

After the parade, which is led by the village bank, the children sing in the playground then play as lunch is served. The village council provide lunch - generally it is chicken and rice curry with salad - and we sit in the shade of the massive trees, drink wine and chat to friends.

It is a lovely end to the school year before everyone heads off on holiday.

gorionine · 08/07/2010 07:06

FOOC Greater Manchester

Hi all! So nice to have a bit of news!

MmeLindt, on the side of Switzerland where I grew up, there was no parade after school but my mum was born and spent alll her childhood in Geneva and she has very very fond memories of them!

kitbit, this year was a particularely good one for seasons, it is not every year so nicely clear cut. We do sometimes have only 2 seasons too but they are autumn and winter

Sibble, enjoy your activities!

Not much happening arround here (part from the local shop having been brocken in 5 times in the last 12 weeks, at night for cigarettes!!!)

School is still on until the 30th of July. DD1 getting prepared to start high school, it is just unbelievable, as she only started nursery yesterday! I have no idea of what things like "form" or "house" mean.

To mark the end of the school year there will be the school production for which the children have been working very hard. They are doing a mixture of several musicals. Some schools have banned the signing of school T/-shirts (not our school as far as I know) because it makes the school look bad apparently. A bit of a shame considering it is just a once a year thing for just the leavers class.

glacierchick · 13/07/2010 13:45

I hope you don't mind an entirely new correspondent gatecrashing the thread, but I thought I would submit a short little piece:

FOOC Copenhagen

It's mid July and baking hot in Copenhagen. The city is very quiet as most of the locals have gone to their summer houses on the coast, or in Sweden, for the month, leaving the streets to tourists and musicians here for the jazz festival. In some ways it's the best time of year to actually be in the city. The boulevards and streets are lined with sweet lime trees which has a very beautiful scent and the city is perfumed with it.

The parks and gardens are filled with flowers and in the evenings the few remaining residents sit out in the parks with little barbecues. There are lots of areas set aside for sports and games and local teams spring up seemingly spontaneously to play street hockey, table tennis and football.

The zoo has a new elephant enclosure with an outdoor area open to the rest of the big park of which the zoo area is a small part. The elephants have a big natural pool and sandy beach and many of the park visitors outside the zoo spend hours watching the younger elephants bathe and play in the water and throwing the sand over their backs, sending the ducks scurrying off in a panic with their brood of ducklings.

Cycling through the city is wonderful just now, especially in the evenings and especially if there's no place you really need to be; the smell of flowers and charcoal smoke and grilled food all mixed in together, music being played in little bars and big open squares, even the careless tourists who forget to look for bikes before crossing the cycle lanes without looking are tolerated with amusement, not everyone is so lucky to have a lifestyle like this after all. It really feels like a blessed place and a blessed time to live.

teafortwo · 14/07/2010 21:44

FOOC PARIS in London

I was in a tiny shop in Greater London recently and there was a big queue.

The shop was full.

It was a hot day.

Everyone was argumentative with the men behind the long counter who replied with grace and calm professionalim. They were doctors. The ops they carried out were in the lifeline of phone technology. The shop had "Phone repairs" above the door.

"I dropped it and it just went like dat!"

"But will it still work if I take the plastic cover off?"

"Come on - I know you can do it fuur cheaper dan dat, man..."

A group of teenage lads jumped in twitching and giggling. They were eating KFC, wearing caps and complaining about having to pay thirty pounds to repair an iphone.

Just then a group of carefully dressed sassy girls strutted past. Acrylic finger nails with tiny flowers and gems stuck on, straitened hair artfully sculptured, short skirts, baggy tops and faces so carefully made up that they almost looked like paintings of themselves.

The lads dropped their KFCs onto the counter and rush outside the shop.

"Aaawriiite darrlin?" one brashly called out.

"Piss off" the girl he was specifically addressing hissed and stuck her nose up.

"Lesssbiayaaanssss... innit?" He began the payback on the same beat that she finished speaking and in pefect time to the roar of the traffic.

OP posts:
frazzlenz · 14/07/2010 22:01

Brussels

At 3.40pm me and and my youngest son were feeding swans at a park in the blazing sun. At 4.30pm I had picked up my 2 older boys and was driving in THE WORST weather ever. The roads flooded in 5 minutes and I couldn't see past the car for the rain. The only reson I didn't stop was the side of the road was under 2 feet of water!

We only moved here 3 weeks ago and the weather has bee crazy.

teafortwo · 14/07/2010 23:49

Frazzlenz my dh phoned me early afternoon just to tell me about the weather in Paris today. I think basically the same thing was happening here. It is really like something out of a movie, eh?

This morning Paris looked like this:

fr.news.yahoo.com/3/20100714/img/pwl-france-bastille-day-9c5-1dd616870725.html

BUT - When I stepped off the Eurostar from London at around sevenish in the afternoon it was blazing sunshine!?!

On account of the weather there are no fireworks tonight where I live.

So far what are the best and worst things about Brussels?

OP posts:
gorionine · 15/07/2010 07:00

T42, I missed your posts, thanks for your London one! Felt like I was actually seing there!

welcome Glacierchick!

MmeLindt · 15/07/2010 18:53

Welcome Glacierchick.

T42
Loved the London post. Saw pictures of Sarkozy in the rain yesterday. It has been glorious here, hard to imagine the chaos further north.

glacierchick · 21/07/2010 15:27

Thanks ladies!

I really like it here in Summer, Winter is somewhat different, but you'll have to wait for that report.

(If you need travel tips for Copenhagen I'm your woman btw )

We haven't had any torrential rain yet, it's amazingly dry everywhere, but it's so hot I feel sure it's in the post....

gorionine · 02/08/2010 07:08

FOOC GREATER MANCHESTER

The Dcs are now on holiday! It was about time, I thought this school year would never end.

We went to DD1 "leavers assembly" on Friday morning. I had no concept of it as there was nothing of the sort in Switzerland when I was her age. We just finished primary school with no fuss. Bit of a shame as I can now definitely see the point of doing something special for them.

All the children did something they were good at (karate, singing, dancing...) then said nice thing about the teachers they had over the years and about each other. They had little anecdotes of funny things they did to each other or hat had happened and it was very sweet.

They also sang beautiful songs. It was a morning full of laughter and tears. DD1 and her friends, who had taken bets as to whose mum would cry first were actually the first one to show a tear and set off everybody else

After school they were cheered and applauded by all the other classses and went on to have a giant silly string fight!

Oh what a day!

CindersIsNotApoet · 02/08/2010 07:19

lol

ds has been on holiday

here in Austria for four weeks already..

gorionine · 02/08/2010 07:23

How nice to see you on here Cinders!

CindersIsNotApoet · 02/08/2010 07:24

well thank ye

need more coffee
but will return later

have a good day

kitbit · 13/08/2010 20:03

FOOC Manchester

Hi All, apologies for bad typing, using netbook with black keys in a dark room...! Let's see how my touch typing is...

Since we have just moved back from Spain we have no desire to go sun-seeking for our family holiday so we decided to embrace the great british institution of camping. We figure it's cheapish (we are ohhhhh so skint!) and ds will love the adventure so we have thrown ourselves headlong into ebay and kitted ourselves out.

However there was one important thing - clothing. dh (getting into the spirit) decided that we needed outdoor clothing of the quick-dry and active-wear variety if we are going to go back to nature. Hmm So we took ourselves to a major outdoor/camping type shop and I dutifully tootled off to the ladies section.

Half an hour later and dh is modelling some very groovy looking super-cool snowboarder type outfit and looking slim and 10 years younger. My foray into the best of the ladieswear left me looking like an elderly caravan enthusiast. Bah. He can keep his rip-stop high-top drip-dry, I'm off to M&S, in support of another great british institution.

And if it keeps pissing down I shall patriotically check into a B&B :o

Signing off from Manchester and shortly from West Wales.

x

takingtheplunge · 14/08/2010 16:30

FOOC SEVILLE

I haven't posted on here before, just read. Not as good a writer as the rest of you, but here goes.

Currently very hot indeed here (41 degrees yesterday). Most people have decamped to the coast, as have we...we're actually about an hour from Seville this week, by the sea.
It's so hot that the air is super heated, like an oven and it's hard to even breathe at times. Washing has to be hung out at night so the clothes don't get bleached by the sun and it's too hot to get them in except first thing in the morning.

Days are spent indoors with the blinds down or wandering round shopping centres with air con, or for those of us at the beach, floating in the sea.

We're here with DH's extended (Spanish) family so spent all morning at the beach with DS running around in and out of the water with his cousins. I got to have a lovely long swim in the sea. It was fabulous...floating on the swell, looking out at the horizon Smile.

teafortwo · 18/08/2010 23:47

takingtheplunge - I am soooo Envy at you being in Seville and really enjoyed your post!!! Thanks - it was a real pleasure to read.

OP posts:
Sibble · 22/08/2010 05:38

FOOC Auckland

Havn't been on here for a while but have very exciting news. Went away to the beach for the weekend, ds's and dh have been sick with the flu, both dh and I have been job hunting and we were over winter, all in all we needed a break.

Anyway, we returned from a great relaxing weekend at the beach to find that 4 of our sheep had had lambs, 1 set of triplets, a set of twins and 2 others and 3 of the sheep still to 'drop'. Some black faced and some pure white, the boys are besides themselves with excitement. I've even had to take photos to email to their teachers for news tomorrow. It's the first time we have hired a ram for the season and have had a 100% hit rate - all very very exciting. I can see them now from the living room on the laptop unsteadily keeping up with mum, stopping for milk and a lie down.

The boys need to hand rear a lamb each (or other farm animal) for Agriculture Day on Oct 16th so somehow when 2 are a few days old we'll need to take one of the triplets and one of the twins from the mother and hand feed them milk until the big day. They get put back with the others afterwards. More about Ag Day later but we are now working out how we are going to get into the paddock, past the very protective ram to get 2 lambs away from the mothers....Hmm

WheresTheEvidence · 01/01/2020 17:42

Yes! I know it's a ZOMBIE thread but just remembered how awesome these threads were.

Any stories from our correspondents

IHaveBrilloHair · 03/01/2020 14:35

I used to love this thread, I read it every Sunday with a cup of tea.

TanteRose · 06/01/2020 02:58

oohh, how amazing to read this thread!

I was RoseoftheOrient - this thread spans from 2008 to 2010 Smile

the writing is so wonderful and evocative - really gives a sense of where we all were and what we were all doing.

I am still in Japan - my little DS who snuggled with me on Christmas morning 11 years ago is now a 6ft-tall, 20 year old Grin

any other FOOCs around?

allfurcoatnoknickers · 07/01/2020 15:23

Oh I love this thread. So interesting how everyone lives around the world. I wonder what happened to the poster who was in Syria?

IJumpedAboardAPirateShip · 08/01/2020 02:49

Awesome to see this zombie thread resurrected! I’ve been abroad since 2012 so wasn’t aware of it before, let’s reignite FOOC!!!

TanteRose · 08/01/2020 06:24
Smile

innit fab?!

unfortunately this one doesn't seem to show up in Active Convos (maybe because its a million years old Confused Grin )

@MNHQ should we set up a new one maybe? if this can't be shown in Active anymore?

Flurries · 23/01/2020 12:36

What a great idea this is! I have loved reading back through these :-)

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