The FastDay Forum

Now for something lighter I have noticed that there are quite a lot of people who don't reside in the country of their birth and was wondering that there must be some wonderful stories behind some of these moves. Or even living in different cities. I'll start:

I was born in New Zealand and like lots of Kiwis in my youth I left (not long after dropping out of Uni and enrolling in the University of Life ) and headed to Melbourne Australia, then Sydney (my sis & family lived there), then London (3 summers and 3 summers in the antipodes). I have been a gypsy from that day till this, probably as I never married or had kids (or possibly the other way round ;>) I have lived in Brisbane, Perth and some smaller spots. 10 years ago I travelled around Australia in a motor home with my trusty dog Mintie (yes just the 2 of us). Always sort of drifted back to Sydney and now live about an hour north (cheaper houses here!) I guess i should have added cheap housing to my subject LOL...a;most added Good Wine for Wineoclock

Wine, yes please!
Sorry I'm a bit boring for this post. Lived on the Blue Mtns since I was 11.
I've done a little bit of travelling and want to do a lot more. Highlights have been meeting hubby's family first in Italy and later in Estonia. Off to Vietnam later this year so another place to tick off the bucket list.
Sounds like an interesting life GMH.

I'm an "army brat". I was born in Japan and this is my second time back to live. I was in Okinawa from when I was 8-12yo and have been back for 6 years so far this time. I've also lived in the UK twice, in London and in Sheffield. I don't really like staying in one place for long. I am an academic scientist, and at least in the States, you are encouraged to move to a new university at each stage of your training (undergrad, grad school, (sometimes multiple) postdocs. I took full advantage of that to mix my training between the US and UK. I don't always love Japan, but it will do for now. I'll probably move at least once more.

Hey is hubby half Italian & Estonian? Or Italian with rellies in Estonia? yes interesting life...My 50th birthday would be your cup of tea...or glass of wine Rolls Royce wine tour of Margaret River - the best!

[janeg]

*engage mysterious accent* I could tell you but then I would need to kill you :ninja:

His father was Italian. His mother was born in Australia but to Estonian parents. I'm boring Aussie so it's nice to be able to adopt his family.
Margaret River is on the bucket list. Now I will have to add a Rolls Royce tour. I had planned to be in Venice for my 50th birthday but as we are building a house we had a party at home. That was just as good as I got to celebrate with everyone else.

Interesting topic!
I've lived 1 year in London as an au-pair - then worked abroad for shorter periods of time - Canada, Malaysia, USA.

I'm half moroccan and half swedish. My hubbie is islandic and danish. My mothers siblings married a greek, a persian and a czech.
So when ever we have a family gathering it's like an international circus full of different languages, traditions, religions and generally crazy - but in a good way

My maternal grandmother who was Japanese was adopted by her British officer father who lived in Singapore. She married 4 times ( the horror in those conservative days in Asia). My grandfather happened to be Indonesian (She married a Malay/Indian/Indonesian/British). My mother then married my dad who was a Malay from Malaysia. I was born in Malaysia and lived there until about 11 to which I went to live full time in Singapore (before that it was back and forth). I then met my husband online when internet was still in diaper, he asked me to visit him in Norway, I came and he proposed and I said yes. I joke about being on the world’s longest vacation.

So here I am in Norway confused as to how I got myself here……….

I was born in Malaysia (to Indian parents), then lived in London a few years, a year in Pennsylvania (in the mountains), before we moved to Ohio where I stayed til I went to Washington, DC for college. Stayed there for over a decade, then went to Mongolia for a year to do some research. Traveled through Asia for a few months (where I met my boyfriend), then back to DC for a few years to work. And now I'm in Dublin (Ireland) having moved in with my boyfriend. We'll likely end up somewhere else in a few years - I vote for France or Sweden.
Love traveling, and am a semi-nomad - like to spend time in places to really get to know everything.

You know what brought me from New Jersey to London? Mary Poppins - no joke. When my twin brother and I were 5 we "graduated" from kindergarten and as a present our parents took us to Radio City Music Hall where we saw the Rockettes and then Mary Poppins on a huge screen. It was the first time I'd ever been in a cinema. Kensington in 1910 seemed such a magical place - and to a 5 year-old it was! And (I blush) I just fell in love with the AAAAAAccents! I found it so wonderful that they talked in a way that was so foreign to me yet I could understand them all, especially the children (let's leave Dick Van Dyke out of it, shall we?).

Since then I have been fascinated with London. Of course I also got up at 5am in the morning in 1981 to watch Prince Charles marry Lady Diana, which fuelled the fire. I always wanted a job when I finished university that would take me overseas, so I went to law school and started working for an international firm. They posted me in 1999 to their Frankfurt office for a year, and then I got my dream of London. I had a ball - very much living a Bridget Jones life. The posting was only meant to last a couple of years at most, but I had already decided I wanted to stay longer (or at least to go back to New York when I wanted to, not when a firm sent me) so I switched to a firm that would let me stay in London as long as I wanted. Shortly after that I met and fell in love with an Englishman, we married and have 2 wonderful kids and live in Surrey. My husband has dreams of buying a farm somewhere out in the West Country and of us running something like an upmarket B&B, but we'll see. I've told him that my next move (I'm still practicing law though don't see myself doing it much longer) has to be something food-related, so to the extent we can manage that within a farm I might be up for it.

Wow everyone, thanks, interesting lives! Mummybunny2005 I also was/am an Anglophile...I mostly watch British TV and remember my first arrival in UK...love of all those rose covered cottages, the poms...er the Pommy men LOL I have also spent 25 years working 5 star hotels and as a restaurant manager - worked for/with some super chefs...and let me tell u it's hard to make a buck! stick to law LOL. for the Perth (WA not Scotland) people I used to manage the restaurant @ The Left Bank...what a place!We had a lot of fun

So many interesting stories - great idea for a thread GMH!

I was born in Finland and lived there until my early 20s. My first experience of living abroad came when I spent three months in the Scottish Highlands at age twenty. Couple of years later I spent a year working in Germany and then a few years after that moved with work first to Switzerland for three years and then the Philippines for two and a half years. While in the Philippines I decided to do something about a long-held dream of mine and applied to emigrate to Australia. Two days after I received my permit, I met my now husband, an Australian, so figured it was meant to be. His work sent him to Malaysia and we lived there together for eight months before we settled down in Australia, and here I still am, twenty years later... Love it although I miss the easy travelling of short distances in Europe.

Wow! What a great thread! So interestingn to read everyone's stories. Unfortunately I can't add to them as I have lived in England all my life, mostly in the central region where we are not only 'accently' challenged but hindered by the weather too!!!

I like this thread!

My mum is English and my dad is Swedish, so growing up I always had the two cultures and never felt properly English though we lived in London, and languages always fascinated me.
At some point in my early teenage years I read a magazine article about a woman who worked at Disneyland Paris and decided that I wanted to do that too, though I had never been to France (except when driving through on the way to Sweden). When I was 18 I went to Sweden for 8 months, then to France for four, where I got my wish and worked at Disneyland Paris. After that I went back to the UK to study French and Swedish at uni, I had a year out in Paris teaching and more working at Disneyland, and I met my husband who was working in the shop next door to me. After a year in England together while I finished my degree we moved back to France and have been here ever since. From time to time we talk about moving to Sweden, or to Canada, or elsewhere in France, we both love Paris but unfortunately the cost of living is getting out of our price range and we have two children so we need more space, but I think Paris will always be special to me.

I'm a living cliché! I'm Swedish (you'd never guess from my name would ya now), came to England at 18 to work as an au pair. Started in London - disaster, then got a job for a lovely family in Brighton (who subsequently emigrated to Australia and now own a restaurant in Sidney, but that's by the by), and met a guy at in a pub just after three weeks in the country......and, reader, I married him! So, at 19 I was married and emigrated "for real"....my parents were delighted. Not.

Loving all the Swedish connections on here, for a small country we really are everywhere!!!