expat

An expat´s confessions

I always think in terms of an expat, I wonder how come I didn´t write about this topic earlier. I was inspired by a friend of mine, Lavinia, whose blog I get to read every once in a while. She lives in England and mentioned a couple of things she had to change since she´d moved there. So I thought I should explore the topic myself, since Romania and Norway are two very different countries, indeed.

First thing that stroke me here was the weather. I´m sure that´s no news to the ones of you who have been reading my blog for a while now. 😉 You see, I´m from Southern Romania where we get temperatures close to 40 degrees C in summer. It seldom rains (or I chose not to remember rainy days) and I´ve always felt like staying inside when it does. In Norway, rain is just an everyday phenomenon and even though Oslo is much drier than the West Coast, it´s still too much rain for this cutie! After 13 years here, I went and bought myself a pair of rubber boots and a rain coat last year, to be able to walk my Sammy without swearing and fussing about. Yesterday it poured though and I ordered a cab. I just couldn´t bring myself to get an umbrella and risk getting wet.

Another thing I didn´t managed to change entirely is my way of dressing. I don´t wear as much makeup any more and my clothes are definitely simpler (I adore Scandinavian wear!), but I´m still overdressed for most occasions. Haha!;-) I stopped caring long time ago though, instead I just enjoy every opportunity to shine. 😉 haha!

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Easter blues

It´s strange how holidays always are a bit tricky when you´re far away from your family, even as a grown-up. It´s like the thread of  “the way it´s always been” gets cut. And I like things to be the way they´ve always been, even though I have an ambivalent relationship to traditions.  Like it or not, traditions are the glue that keeps together past and present. We can chose to keep some and forget others, but they do define us in a way or another. All these years, I´ve let customs go and embraced others, we´ve created our own traditions as a family of two and we´ve been with the big family sometimes, too. Since my husband was born a Buddhist, Easter never had loud resonances in his family. In Romania however, we celebrate by going to church, meeting family and friends and eating until we end up in a hospital. 😉

Norwegians are said to go skiing on Easter holiday. The paper said it´s more of a myth nowadays, but I still feel it´s the general rule. Since we don´t ski, we go to Romania every now and then, take a city break other times, but mostly stay at home and celebrate an urban Easter. We´ve had amazing weather, we´ve gone on lovely trips, met people for lunch and coffee and still I feel there´s something missing. I´ve been trying not to fall prey to melancholy all this time, but the church bells this morning were too much. Why don´t I go to church or dye some eggs then? Because it wouldn´t be like home anyway. So why even try?

Source: uneromaineaparis.com