Today at Southern Fried French
: The ex-pats weigh in— What’s it like leaving your native country? You may love it, but will it ever be home? It’s complicated…
Thanks so much for all the comments, I loved hearing everyone's thoughts on home--and all so different. For me, I'm caught between 2 worlds, but I see that as a good thing!
Read one posting recently which clarified peoples general confusion.....it said....'on a visit home i purchased...blah blah..then returned home...' guess having homes in more than one country can do that to you anyway....having spent 50 plus years of my life in the UK...it will always be home..no matter if I live the rest of my life in France...having two children who are expats also...living in Dubai...one of my children has lived away from the UK for 8 years...living in Malaysia and the far and near east....for her, home will always be the UK she said...but she will never choose to live there again...
Home for me is where I make my life. It's France now but it could be anywhere. I love living where I do but only because I've got things arranged to suit myself (plus the weather). If I found somewhere else where things suited me, I'd call that home too.
I love going back to the UK, that is my second home because it's where I grew up.
We have just returned from London where we had a great time with collections of friends...EATING
really well in some excellent restaurants and experiencing dreadful meals in Bordeaux airport and Gatwick airport Marriott.
Cafe society of London where everyone seems to collect in Lounge areas with their lap tops and newspapers
spending a few hours sipping at fairly bad coffee.
I longed to go home to France to my coffee machine, my cats and my acres of heaven on earth.
Glad to be home.
Glad you are back Lynn. We are off to UK soon to see our new grandchild, so we should be able to get together sometime in May!!
I love both places and find things exasperating in both places. For me, home is the North Lancashire/Westmorland border. It is where I grew up. I love the Cotswolds and lived there for twenty years, but, as you can see, there is nowhere as beautiful as the Clunysois with the wild cherry and the blackthorn blossom. It looks as though the countryside is covered in lace.
Everytime we leave Calais, we are so glad to be on french roads!!
For me France is my home.This does however sometimes leave me feeling a bit bewildered.Someone once asked me if I felt French or English and the answer was neither or maybe a bit of both.Obviously ,here I am known (fondly I hope) as" l'anglaise" My husband who is French has been called (to his face) "le mari de l'anglise" but when back in England I don't really feel English anymore
On a recent trip back to England things were familiar but I didn't feel like I fitted in anymore. Waiting to cross the road,for example .When I first arrived in France I used to find crossing the road a rather harrowing experience.In England I was waiting to cross the road the little man was red but there was no cars in sight so being "sort of" french I marched across the road.I could almost hear those waiting tutting at my rashness!
I have been in France for only 10 years and often travel to UK to visit my English grandchildren.I find increasingly that France is home and UK is a dear place I know very well.I love going to UK but I love 'coming home'!
What does "home" really mean? To me it's where my nearest and dearest lives, where my own coffee cup is on the shelf, where I have planted plants, pointed walls, painted shutters... to make it a pleasant place to be. For some time in our prolonged move to France a caravan was our home, be it in a French or an English caravan site or in an aire on the autoroute. I haven't been back to the UK for over four years and have no plans to do so. I don't need pots of Marmite and Heinz Sandwich Spread and I love the way a "distress purchase" in SW France can turn into a fulfilling and thoroughly pleasant experience because the shop assistant is so nice to me.
Chez nous? C'est ici!
Was in the UK a couple of years ago with French OH and our kids and we all felt like we were foreigners (well OH and kids are French and don't speak much English so that figures!), home is here and always will be I think (again it obviously is for OH and kids as they're all French anyway, well kids are anglo-french to be exact but are 99% french in every sense apart from me taking English to them when I remember!) but for I can understand, especially fot those who shuttle between countries or are in anglo-anglo couples, that it must be a bit confusing at times ;-)