Those ishers who live abroad

[TheGoodEarth]

I have noticed compared to other forums I visit that there seems to be a fairly large percentage of expat ishers who live abroad. France, Spain, Portugal etc.

What intrigues me is how you all manage to get by in a foreign country with a different language, culture etc. I assume you have to work to earn a crust so did you learn the lingo before you went?

What type of work do you do? I would imagine for any professional or customer facing roles your language skills would have to be excellent.

Also for those who have kids it must be very tough for them to integrate and to be so out of their comfort zone.

Would be very interesting to hear your stories.

[oldjerry]

Well speaking as a Cornishman living abroad (england) you have to put up with a lot of strange customs,and everyone talks funny,I cant understand a bloody word they're saying.

[MKG]

I have the same problem living 14 miles from where I was born. I just smile and nod in apparently appropriate places.

Mike

[Green Aura]

You think you've got problems! OH won't go in the local shop - he thinks everything they say sounds like "diggly diggly day"

[pelmetman]

Dave's brother, his wife and two children went to live in Spain some 7 years ago.

None of them spoke the language but within no time at all the children, the youngest was about 5 soon picked it up and had as many if not more friends than she'd had here in England. The older girl too soon learnt the language but couldn't seem to settle and came back to UK.

As to work brother-in-law still has his business in UK but has also started working in Spain. Can't really see them coming back here to live.

As for us we only need to travel about 1/2 hour to be confused with different languages - go to Boston in Lincs. I think half of Poland and Portugal live there
Sue

[southeast-isher]

I'm still in England get me out of here! I'm ishing in the UK but slowly but surely looking to move overseas - just because i like change. Have thought seriously about living back in Nepal but it is quite far away so may end up in southern Europe, but there's trade-offs for each.

[oldfella]

My daughter aged 11, and I came to France in 1989, and as soon as she went college, within four days she was of out with the local kids playing. Within 2 months she was teaching me, taking all the phone calls and doing the talking when we went shopping, and all the rest of setting up our lives in France. So children have no problems, in fact my daughter, is now a qualified English teacher in the French education system, but prefers to works with the old folks home as a carer.
I worked in a local Engineering company so my learning was basically, workshop talk, but all the guys I worked with, would try and teach me, so the result was that most of the words were not to found in any Dictionary, however we became great mates, and as France is ( or at least in my neck of the woods) very family orientated, we were soon dragged into any goings on within the villages and communes in the area, for example the Mayors News years Reception, , The local Hunters annual in which the hunters do the cooking and their wife's serve the meals, which great fun, but hurts in the morning, as the meals consists of Wild Pig, Deer, Hare, Pheasant, and goodness knows, what else cooked in buckets of wine, to go with the buckets of wine on the table. We are out now most weeks for meals with neighbours, we are part of the community and are invited to all our friends, and their families weddings, Funerals, we buy no animal feed, or straw for their bedding, when I went to enquire about running 2inch water pipe 300 meters long, under the neighbours land, to my reservoir, spoke to the Mayor who said " talk to the neighbours" which I did but had to wait until after the Harvest, had a problem medical came home and the pipe was in and the field ploughed. My closest neighbour Rene and his wife Simone, both in their 80s, and still gardening, and the standing joke in the neigbourhood is that we are brothers, and our father was Tommy that passed this way during the war.
Would I come back to England? No way, but I realise that my way of life now, is the way of life in the UK back when I was kid, from the 30s, 40s and early 50s, so I feel my life has come full circle and I am now Home.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

My elder two were three and two when we arrived in 2003; the youngest was born here. They consider themselves to be French but able to speak English and with English parents. They almost always choose to speak French when the choice is presented.

Integration in a different culture is as much (no, more) about attitude than linguistic ability. For the most part people want you to succeed.

Like Old Fella we just got involved and the language followed on. My wife is a village councilor and treasurer for the village school governing body (which means she handles all the finances, deals with the accountant and the overseeing authority) which requires her French to be very solid indeed.

She failed French "O" level.

I act as a parent representative at my daughter's high school which means I get involved in discipline matters and sactioning special support for pupils in difficulty.

I've got a CSE on French Studies, which means I knew something about cheese when I left school but spoke sod-all French.

We run our own business in France (holiday lets) which is hard work and not infrequently precarious.

I'm very fond of the country of my birth and still find much to admire about Britain her culture and her population, but my remaining links to the UK are tenuous to say the least and this is my home. I can't see myself ever returning for any more than a visit and sometimes think I may never set foot the country again.

[Alice Abbott]

Before I was a foreigner in France I was a foreigner in England. That has its own problems, believe me. We spoke more or less the same language but it took me a LONG time to adapt. Socially it was not a problem but dealing with the legal issues was a pain from day one, also adapting to driving on the wrong side, strange sockets and a million other silly things. In fact France is more or less the same with the language problem thrown in but, being married to an EU citizen by then, without the legal problems. And of course, re-adapting to driving on the "right" side again having forgotten how. Our French is only adequate yet we get by really well. People are forgiving and helpful. We live in a totally mixed community so there is always someone to explain how the "system" works and we trade experiences. On the other hand, Pia and Luca are as fluent as any French child of the same age, something they have picked up entirely themselves from their long suffering elderly "friends" in the hamlet and Mireille, the little girl I collect from the school bus each day.

At the moment we have no income, living on savings and carrying out massive renovation work. We hope to do holiday lets and open a restaurant once we are all organised. We get by now with lots of help from our neighbours, innovation and ingenuity. It's a wonderful old-fashioned system of trading and bartering and involves French, Brits and Dutch with our mongrel family of American & Irish/Italian joining in. I love it here, the lifestyle is so relaxed and safe. I know we will move away eventually but I will certainly enjoy it for as long as we are here.

[contadina]

We took Italian lessons before we moved over, which helped with the grammar side of things but we only really picked up the vocabulary when we moved here. My experience of expats is that there are those who only mix in expat circles, so never learn the language nor integrate, while those who learn the language and throw themselves into the local community generally get more out of the experience and are more likely to put roots down and stay.

I went freelance a few years before we moved so built up a portfolio of clients I can work for thanks to the wonders of skype. I'm really pleased I did this as owing to a lack of work it can be really difficult for expats to get a foot in the door. More often than not expats tend to work for other expats - so there is lots of gardening work, handyman work, property management, estate agents, translators, holistic health practitioners etc and as everyone is trying to find the same work it can get a bit dog eat dog. Alternatively you can run holiday rentals but you should take into consideration how saturated the local market is for holiday rents.

[oldjerry]

To be serious for a bit (we lived in Emiglia romagna but returned when my late mum became infirm,and we return to Italy for good as soon as Mrs OJ's and kids citizenship is finalised,'bout Feb),I think Contadina puts the whole thing in a nutshell in her 1st paragraph.
I spent every summer from the early 70's to the mid 80's casual farmworking in Europe,as there wasn't enough work for the two of us on dads smallholding,and soon realised that subsistence/small-scale farming is pretty much the same all over,people just get on.
What really gets up my nose is expats who look down on the locals,bang on about how beaurocratic/inefficient/overtaxed etc their chosen home is ,how much better the old country was under Thatcher/Churchill/the Queen Mother/Josiah Gradgrind..bla..bla..bla..
(its not Josiah,thats Bounderby,but whatever..)

[123sologne]

Well I am an expat in England and I have seen the same thing as describe above with French living in London, only meeting other French and then complaining that they couldn't meet English people... They all spoke pretty good English as they had to use it for work, but as soon as there were 2 of them together, even if there were 10 English around, they would refer to speaking French. I find it very rude when you can actually speak the language! For me it is very important, wherever you go and wherever you come from, to try to join in. This is what gets my nose up when I imagine how much money is wasted by this country to translate everything for everybody. It is not necessary! But that is another subject... My English was pretty rubbish when I arrived here, but as I was an au-pair, I had time to improve it and as I joined a snooker club for a while, it improved greatly... I will not give any further details at this point...

[MKG]

Ah - the linguistic snooker club - I know it well ...

"Oh dang and dash. I just went in off the red".

"Golly Gosh - he's just snookered me, the out and out bounder".

That kind of thing

Mike

[theabsinthefairy]

We moved to rural France 4 years ago with just my GCSE French from several years ago, now our teen is happy to consider herself French, both my OH and I work in the local community, we socialise with french, dutch and english families here, take part in community projects and generally love it here.

[TheGoodEarth]

Fascinating stuff and it all seems very positive so far. Keep em coming!

One of my friends emigrated to Austrailia 2 years ago with a kicking and screaming, determined not to go 17 year old daughter (who I must say I sympathised with - that's a tough age to leave your mates and home town).

The deal was that she waits until she is 21 then decides if she wants to stay in Oz or return to the UK. Guess what - she has already decided there is no way she is returning to the UK.