Expat Mums Blog

Home is where the heart is -- but where's your heart

“Don’t you ever miss home?” an old friend asked me on Facebook a few days ago. She was referring to Sardinia, the Italian island where I was born and lived until the age of 17. More specifically, she was referring to Nuoro, the “city” so small it is barely a city at all – more of a town, really – where we all lived, went to school, met in the evening to walk up and down the Corso Garibaldi, the main street, and then stop at the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, the square where we all went to play as kids, because our parents would take us back to where they used to hang out with their friends; the square where we also, as teens, started hanging out with our friends.

The Little Things I Miss

Proper bacon butties on a soft white bun
Greasy spoon caffs, the crossword in the Sun.
Office gossip, discussing last night’s TV
The little work crushes and builder’s tea.

Boots the Chemist, Greggs sausage rolls
New M&S pants to replace mine with holes
Football away days, the Balti pies
Wins over Derby and FA cup ties

One New Year’s Resolution I Won’t Be Breaking

My foremost resolution for 2010 is to bring our baby into the world.  I’m 39 weeks pregnant; baby and I are cramped and uncomfortable; there’s no turning back now. 

I’m ready to become a mom.  My pregnancy has been a wild, sushi and brie free ride of new understanding.  I never pondered the ins and outs of pregnancy until I joined the club.  I’d never heard of quickening, TENS machines, toxoplasmosis or perineal massage.  I also never considered giving birth any other way than spread eagle on my back in a hospital bed, numbed by an epidural and probably shouting obscenity at my husband for impregnating me in the first place.  Birth would be just like in the movies, right?

A Serial Short Term Expat

OK, so I’m not really officially an Expat mum … at the moment … but I have been and well, with the way my feet are itching at the moment, I’m pretty sure I will be again. So, on the invite of the lovely Emily at Brits in Bosnia, here I am!

I first entered the world of being an expat age 23 when I spent six wonderful months living in Japan – minus a baby. I remember stepping off the plane and navigating myself in a daze around the busy airport swarming with people. I had a broad smile on my face and burning flames of excitement deep in my stomach. It took all I had to stop them from leaping right out of my mouth. I remember thinking “this is the life for me.”