Have you ever wondered how your expat friends would get on with your home-home friends? Let’s be honest here – most of our friends back home are very… well… us-like. Nobody would say anything about them being unusual or different from who you usually hang out with because most of your home-home friends represent your home-home [...]
Archive for the ‘Friendship’ Category
Finding funky foreign friends
Posted in Friendship on September 18, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Redefining friendship and ‘culling’
Posted in Friendship on March 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I am visiting friends and family at the moment. Each time I come back and see friends, I realize the ways we have stayed the same and the ways we have all changed over the years. Sometimes we change and sometimes they do. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not. One of the most self-defeating [...]
Looking beyond the obvious
Posted in Friendship on February 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The friends we have grown up with and friendships we have created at home evolve of their own accord. Natural evolution. When we travel and live in other locations, the friend gene pool can become very shallow. We may be so used to our original friendship base that we tend to look to replace what [...]
Leaving friends and finding new ones
Posted in Friendship on February 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
If you thought I was a little light on ‘What makes a good expat friend’ yesterday, you are right – I was. Being authentic and anabolic are starting points after which follows having similar interests, sense of humor, background (regardless of cultural differences), attitude and other things in common. In addition we look for traits [...]
When the amazing new friend’s partner is transferred before yours…
Posted in Friendship on February 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
This is one of the toughest parts of being an expat – and most of us have faced it. You feel lonely when you arrive, make a real effort to get to know some people and then you meet a ‘kindred spirit’. That person who makes you laugh and cry and just ‘gets you’ suddenly [...]
Maintaining and sustaining existing friendships
Posted in Friendship on February 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I believe that in many ways living as an expat makes us better friends because we know what it feels like to be isolated and sometimes without friends. I have friends I email once a year and friends I phone once a week. That’s the way friendship is. Only you know what is ‘enough’ to sustain [...]
What being a good expat friend means
Posted in Friendship on February 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
A lot of my expat friends often complain about how bad they feel about not keeping up with their friends at home. Yet what amazes me is just how often we are the ones who initiate each contact because we are the leavers rather than the leaves. Of course, we want to do this as [...]
Friendships – for better or for worse
Posted in Friendship on February 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
If someone asked me what the hardest thing about being an expat was, I would say being away from my adult kids. The second hardest thing would be being away from my amazing friends. Today I dropped a mango in to one of those amazing friends because yesterday she did a fearless, courageous thing at [...]
