The next day I was speaking to Miss Ana, my fellow first grade English teacher. She was lovely and always ready to support me. I admitted I was still struggling with the class control. “It’s tough,” she agreed, “especially with that group.” She’d been doing the job for three years now. I’d seen her class…
Six months of teaching first grade English in Mexico. Part One.
Life lessons from twenty four seven-year-olds. **This is a long post. It felt cathartic to write and I doubt that anyone aside from my parents will actually read it all, but I have changed the names of all teachers and students mentioned.** In my teens living in the UK and my early twenties in New…
Travels With Our Mother: Girls Holiday in Mexico – Aguascalientes, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Querétaro.
It was about a month before my mother and sister’s recent visit to see me in Mexico that flights were booked and a rare Girls Only family holiday was officially on. My newly-retired father, conscious as ever about money, had decided to stay home and look after his fifth (and we suspected, favourite) child, the…
Yucatan Road Trip
A Brit and a Spaniard rented a car and spent nine days travelling in the Yucatan and Quintana Roo. Adventure ensued. I have had a few absolute real wow life-is-beautiful moments in my life, after which I really reflect on where I am, and how lucky and grateful I am for it. Finding myself with…
Getting Married to Open a Bank Account: Overcoming the Bureaucratic Obstacles of Living Abroad.
After the love marriages and the visa marriages comes the need-to-open-a-bank-account marriage. I haven’t ever really thought about how I might propose or be proposed to. But sweaty and stressed on a hot July afternoon in a bank, of all places, with my boyfriend and I in equally bad moods, is not how I would…
Is going home after travelling harder than leaving?
I was 21 when I left England to travel and work in New Zealand and I was almost 24 when I came back. So, afew things had changed in that time. I wanted to write about going home and adjusting to those changes. Warning: post is long and contains some feelings. Part 1: Pondering what…
6 things you´ll miss as a Brit in Mexico, and how to deal with them.
Aside from the ones which go without saying (family, friends and being able to speak your own language everywhere you go) these are 6 things which from my own experience you may miss/find strange about moving to Mexico from the UK, plus how to cope. 1. Not having to do horrendous amounts of paperwork. Let’s…
Book Review: After The Crash by Michel Bussi.
A plane crashes over the Swiss Alps, and leaves just one small survivor, a baby girl barely a month old who is thrown from the window of the plane and kept warm by the fire of its wreckage which kills her parents. Two very different families, the rich and powerful De Carvilles and the relatively…
Book Review: The Expats by Chris Pavone.
Chris Pavones 2012 debut, The Expats is a crime/spy/mystery novel with ex FBI agent Kate Moore as it’s protagonist. Kate has recently quit her job to move with husband Dexter to little-know-about Luxembourg for his job (another area that little is known about.) After years of undercover service for the FBI, Kate is adjusting to…
Book Review: The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson.
Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ First off, I’ll admit I’m *a bit* behind the masses reading this book. Jonas Jonasson’s quirkily titled 2005 *ahem, eleven years ago, ahem* debut was met with much acclaim when it was first released, and now that I’ve finally read it, I see that all that praise wasn’t for nothing. The 100 Year Old…
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