Friends, bloggers, correspondents, I give you – courtesy of Ms Mausi – the Expat Meme.
You have to:
5) Name five things you love in your new country
- Freshly-baked bread from the bakery
- Walking everywhere, and only using my car a couple of times a week
- Feeling safe, and knowing that my family are safe
- Easy access to France
- The Refreshing Frankness of Everyone
4) Name four things you miss from your native country
- Landscape that curdles my blood with joy
- Monkeys in the garden, zebra on the hill and deer eating the roses
- My mother and my girlfriends
- Eating calamari and chips and drinking cider while watching the whales play in Plettenburg Bay
3) Name three things that annoy you in your new country
- Stinky cigarette smoke in every restaurant, cafe and bar
- Neighbours who complain
- Not being able to get ingredients that I consider to be staples (lamb, lime leaves, coriander, virtually all kinds of fish, butternut, purple sprouting brocoli)
2) Name two things that surprise you (or surprised you when you arrived) in your new country
- The rules
- That the rules are taken seriously, unlike in South Africa, where rules exist only to be flouted
1) Name one thing you would miss in your new country if you had to leave
- My friends – a heterogenous group of Germans, South Africans, Argentinians, Mexicans, Nicuraguans, Brits, Americans, Belgians, Canadians, French. They keep me sane.
Charlotte's Web 
July 9, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Oh, thank God: a meme I can’t do. No coriander? How horrible! But being able to walk everywhere sounds great.
July 10, 2007 at 1:00 am
Calamari, cider, and whales? Man, I’ve GOT to go back to SA. It sounds like you have a great international contingent of friends as well.
July 10, 2007 at 7:44 am
Wah, stop posting cool memes! This is another one I have to join in with! I’m back to being a creaking gate but I’ve got lots of lovely memes to do when I’m better.
Freshly baked bread from the bakery, that sounds delicious. Eeh, I remember monkeys in the garden from when I lived in Africa. My dad told me they were little boys and I believed him.
July 10, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Well done! I love what you came up with. “The Refreshing Frankness of Everyone.” LOL!
Thank goodness the cigarette smoke will soon be a thing of the past.
July 10, 2007 at 3:41 pm
I’m going to have to do this one too..it’ll be yours in reverse!
No lamb in Germany, no coriander? How can that be?!
I also love βThe Refreshing Frankness of Everyone.β Sounds like a title for an ironic play of some sort.
July 10, 2007 at 5:34 pm
We have butternut in the natuurwinkel! I also have some in my garden. Yum π
July 10, 2007 at 8:39 pm
This is so fascinating. Love your choices. And I’m so happy for you to have such a globally representive group of friends!
July 10, 2007 at 10:54 pm
I can’t do this meme, but I surely enjoyed reading it. No lime leaves? Kaffir lime, I assume. We can’t get that here either, but as soon as I have a greenhouse I am going to grow one of my very own, right next to the lemon tree.
July 11, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Lovely Charlotte. Walking everywhere (without sweating) sounds wonderful.
I’m with Helen, I’ll have to join in and do this meme.
July 11, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Charlotte, I know I have nothing to compare it to — but living here in this new state, in the middle of now where, I am beginning to feel like an Ex-pat. I just found a source of good olive oil, so things may be looking up. I love your list — it is the little things that make our home our home. And, many of my British friends living here, have brought up many of the same things you list here.
July 13, 2007 at 6:59 am
I’m trying to think of the things that I miss in my native country but I don’t think there there a lot. Number one would have to be everything that is new and modern. And number two would be the convenience. The things I don’t miss are the hideous 1960s architecture that permeates the cities, the fast food, and the people – they lack intensity.
July 22, 2007 at 6:47 am
5) Name five things you love in your new country
— The food! Tiramisu, fried zucchini flowers, gorgonzola cheese…….
— The almost completely free healthcare
— The language
— Aldo, Giacomo e Giovanni
— Other mom friends: wonderful people
4) Name four things you miss from your native country
— Landscape that curdles my blood with joy, yes, ditto this one
— family members, of course
— the neighborhood where I grew up
— bagels
— Tostitos salsa, I could eat it in industrial sized jars
3) Name three things that annoy you in your new country
— Nosy neighbors
— Limited selection of cereals at the store
— Stores that close every day at lunchtime
2) Name two things that surprise you (or surprised you when you arrived) in your new country
— Everybody studies English at school, but so few people seem to actually speak it well
— The preschool classes have so many children in them, about 28 kids per class
1) Name one thing you would miss in your new country if you had to leave
— Our home: it’s full of big windows, always has sunlight and soft sea breezes, and has many wonderful memories in it