I’m a Canadian repatriate, married to Chef Boyardee (not the famous one, obviously, but an excellent cook nonetheless), and proud mum to two darling TCKs I’ll call Elder Daughter and Younger Daughter to spare them oodles of embarrassment when I spill the family secrets.
We share our home with a yellow Lab I’ll call Jeff because, well, why not? He doesn’t answer to his real name anyway. To complete the family, we recently added a Beagle/Jack Russell Terror called Max. (No, that’s not a typo. He really is an absolute terror.)
Born in England and raised in Canada, I’ve also lived in France (twice), Australia, and Singapore. We’ve been back in Canada for three four five six years, and in some ways, this is the toughest gig yet. So this blog is my online therapy: a chance to work through my ambivalence about repatriating, revisit my glory days, and share whatever snippets of hard-earned wisdom I picked up in my years abroad.
Although I later picked up an MA in Intercultural Communications, most of what I know about expat life came from bumbling through my daily life overseas. I made lots of mistakes along the way — I hope you can learn from them.