Note to a small island

By: Lindsey

“Let me guess… Australian?”

“Ummm, no, English.” 

“Oh, I thought so. I really have an ear for accents you know."

Really? I sound really English to me. Which doesn’t sound very Australian, but apparently there isn’t much in it if you live in Maryland. 

I blame Nicole Kidman for confusing everyone with her English/Australian accent in Australia - the film that is. It certainly wasn’t a question I was expecting to be asked once a month when I moved to the US, but I guess in the enormity of moving overseas, it’s not such a big deal.

I’ve become one of those ex-pats who moans about the fact you can’t buy ‘proper’ teabags here. You can buy UK things here, it just costs a bit more. And with the food packages from family and friends, I have no right to moan about that. I still moan about the money though. Why are all the notes the same colour? And why is a five cent coin bigger than both a dime and a quarter? 

Going on an American bear hunt. 

I miss my family like crazy. The world is small, but it could still be a little smaller when I want to give my Mum a cuddle.

There are so many things I like about living here. I like the heatwave we’re currently having; especially while the UK bathes in, well, rain. It’s Wimbledon isn’t it? Is it really a surprise it’s raining? 

I’m growing tomatoes! And chili and broccoli and radishes and potatoes and a whole range of other things! They will mainly get eaten by deer and groundhogs and rabbits and chipmunks, but at least they would have a chance of growing big and strong, not like my pitiful attempts at tomato growing in Glasgow. 

So far we’ve had a snake in the basement, a groundhog living under the porch, a black bear in the neighbourhood (the black sunflower seeds in bird feeders are apparently crack to bears) and of course the family of deer who forget they're meant to be scared of humans and eat everything in their path (not humans thankfully).

I love the fact my babies are happy. Boy 1 has grown confident and brave and continues to amaze me day after day. Boy 2 is American, born but not bred, so I guess he will still have some roots in the UK. 

I do wonder a lot about things. If we stay here, my boys will identify with being American. I will always identify with being British. I don’t know how I’m going to feel about that as the years go by, and they don’t realise that you should offer a cup of tea to every visitor who comes to the door. 

Will we stay here? Who knows, but it is a good life for my family. We smile a lot more and do a lot more, and we all have a lovely tan.


~ Part of Strangers in Strange Lands. Lindsey is a doula, tea drinker, and forensic biologist, which means she spends a lot of afternoons wondering if snails need doulas. This being the 4th, she is obligated to attend some sort of BBQ thing, after which she is entitled to a restorative cup of Yorkshire Gold. 

Call me broccoli

By: Britt

Foreign is what I felt for the first 19 years of my life. 

I was condemned by birth to a country that totally creeps me out. Nobody ever thought I was funny there. I got out of there like a bat out of hell first chance I got, and have been engaging the universe in uproarious encounters of the foreign kind ever since. 

The Economist wrote an article on being foreign a couple of years ago, from which I remember this nugget for the purposes of scintillating dinner party conversation: “For the first time in history, across much of the world, to be foreign is a perfectly normal condition.”

Valkyrie Vegetables. (Jessica Mullan)

Being Caucasian, I slide into western European, North American and Antipodean locations very nicely.

There are two caveats here. First, I have the shoulders of an incredible hulk. I am foreign-looking in the kind of feminine outfit that a large proportion of the female species of all countries seem to slide into. Don’t get me wrong: I am not fat - I'm Valkyrie.  

When I leave the bright lights of the city and enter central Manitoba, the mountains of Cyprus, sheep farm country in New Zealand, I slide into place much better. It's something about hard physical labour, the free fresh air, rising when the sun comes up, and jumping into bed when it goes down. Too bad I HATE the countryside.

I know you are all waiting breathlessly for caveat 2, and it's in my mouth: my command of various languages is perfect, but I don’t sound like I fit into the geographical locations where I find myself. And I can't find the strength to stay mute for a couple of days to try fitting in. 

If I picked a mid-size town - let’s say Chattanooga, Tennessee - I'd slide right in. It’s countryside-like enough that there'd be a fair influx of broad shouldered country gals. And if I didn’t speak at all, how could anybody in Chattanooga think anything of me but the purrfect Tennessee woman? Now if that sounds like a goal I want to achieve in my lifetime - sliding in and NOT being foreign - then dude, you got another thing coming.

Think of me as the crunchy, utterly out of place broccoli on a plate, mingled in between a hunk of bbq ribs, themselves slathered with a sauce that makes your arteries squeak like a ventilator that has just busted its last ball bearing, a mountain of mash the size of McKinley and some buttered corn on the cob that slips through your fingers like your 2 year old who doesn’t want to go to bed.  

As Mr. Melville would say:  Call me Broccoli!


~ Written for Strangers in Strange Lands. Britt Permien is a graphic designer who left behind the foreign climes of Germany for the familiar comforts of Britain and British Colombia. 

The expat brat pack

By: Mia

As a child of wanderers, I have always felt like a foreigner. I do even now, after more than a decade in the UK. I've discovered that looking foreign invites people to put you in a neat little box. 

Not Greek - honest.

With freckles and curly hair in Hong Kong, I certainly looked the part of the expat brat. But in Cyprus it was trickier, because I could pass for a native. On discovering that I am not Greek-Cypriot, the common response was “Are you sure? Because you look Greek and your name ends in ‘OU’.

I always found the insinuation that I do not know my OWN ORIGINS mildly annoying but extremely amusing. 

The 'where are you from' question tends to get people truly confused. They don't get the answer they expect, so they usually try with increasing desperation to find the correct pigeon hole for me. 

I have fine tuned my answers over the years. This is a typical exchange:

“So where are you from?"

"Many places."

"Where did you grow up?” 

"My parents traveled a lot."

“OK, so where are your parents from?”

"My father is from Brittany and my mother is an Egyptian Jew brought up in Rio, then London."

"And where did you go to school?"

"Paris, Jerusalem, Cannes, Hong Kong, Cyprus, London."

Then, with escalating panic over the seemingly impossible but strangely necessary task of finding my ONE TRUE ORIGIN, they ask the clincher question: "Hah! Where were you BORN?”

Here I grin like a happy Cheshire cat grin and pull out my aces: “Tokyo.”

~ Part of Strangers in Strange Lands. Mia Navellou is is a voice-over artist based in London, however her ONE TRUE ORIGIN is always liable to change at any time without prior notice. You can ask her "why London?" if you like, but your line of questioning is likely to end in futility and frustration. 

Location fatigue

By: Claire

The other day in Brussels, where I live now, this guy had to know exactly where I come from. He seemed nice enough, but I bit the nose off him anyway.

"I'm from Dublin, is that not enough information?"

He looked shocked. He meant no harm, but I knew he wanted me to be more precise. How did I know? Because most Dubliners I meet are preoccupied with which square meter of the sprawling town you come from. 

Universal. (Glenn Euloth) 

The beauty of living away is the anonymity that goes with it. But I learned early on in places as far away from Dublin as St Petersburg that Dubliners won't let this one go.

"Okay, so you are not from the Northside so you must be from the Southside. You're a posho aren't you?"

Well-intentioned people might assume that it's just about striking a familiar chord with someone, walking the old streets together, homesickness, but this kind of questioning usually brings out an argumentative streak in me.

The reason I refuse to answer is because I can predict the reaction: "Ooh Killiney? Isn't that near where Bono lives?!" Yes it is close, but not a strone's throw. Bono lives in a mansion on a hill overlooking the sea. My parents live more like at the very bottom of the hill in an estate of small bungalows.

I told Bono where the carrots were once when I was working at the local grocer's checkout counter during the summer of 2004. He nodded, grabbed a bunch, paid and left carrying them nonchalantly by their leafy top.

I grew up outside Ireland, apart from a two year stint at a convent school in Killiney during my teens. Back again at 23, I tried to fit in. I happened to arrive at the same time as many Poles. When I wasn't immediately outspoken, I became just "the Polish girl." The name followed me when I took up work at a bar in Sallynoggin, at the far other end of the income scale.

All in all, which end of the scale I live at means little to me. Abroad (in Germany and the Netherlands to be as precise as I want to be) we always got by easily because the cost of living was low. But even Dad, who was part of Ireland's industrial book, is now paying for recent excesses with other Dubliners.

Recently some Occupy types thought they were doing a good thing by pitching up outside an old couple's house in Killiney because they were being kicked out for late repayments.Then it transpired they could just sell one of their other ten houses.

That's Killiney! So don't ask me where I'm from, ok?

~ Part of Strangers in Strange Lands. Claire Davenport writes for Reuters and (currently) lives in Brussels. She won't tell you which neighbourhood, but she will help you locate the local green grocers if you ask nicely. 

Stranger radar

By: Emma

I am not a Refugee. I have not left my country, exiled for reasons so utterly terrifying that you wouldn't believe me even if I tried to explain.

I am an expatriate. Someone who is privileged to live in another country for work reasons. I am privileged to explore the world at will, rather than forced to travel out of necessity.

Same ground, different footing.

I am however, someone whose eyes have been opened to the feeling of what it is like to be an outsider. Who at times has been made to feel unwelcome and unwanted in another's land. And that's the only thing I have to worry about. I can just forget about the feeling of unease that might have momentarily upset my day, and carry on. I am lucky, it probably won't happen to me again, not for a while anyway.

To those that are in exile, I am grateful for what you have taught me.The best privilege yet, has been to meet some amazing people from a multitude of backgrounds and cultures in the two countries that I have lived in away from my home, the UK. And I have yet to meet more gracious and lovely people than the friends who fled Sri Lanka for example, or the countless others we have met along the way, who had to leave home behind.

We all have one thing in common “us foreigners”. A special skill, only granted to you when you have been a foreigner yourself. A kind of inbuilt radar system that alerts us to mutual “strangers” in the vicinity, whether on a train, or just passing each other in the supermarket. When it’s activated, you might see us smiling at each other, for we have a mutual understanding of what it feels like to be different, and to not truly belong. In this respect at least we are always the same, despite our backgrounds and cultural variations.


~ Written for the Strangers in Strange Lands series. When not taking in the delights of Copenhagen with her family, Emma can be found on A Bavarian Sojourn. 

Careful Construction

By: Arina 

My baby daughter is British. I am not. 

I was born nearly a third of a century ago in a country that has ceased to exist since then. I acquired my fatherland in 1991, when in the aftermath of a failed Soviet coup, Latvia regained independence. Ten years of carefully constructing my Latvian identity have followed. 

The grass is greener. 

So when I left Latvia for the greener meadows of England, I hoped to come back one day in order to singlehandedly pull the Latvian economy out of the post-Soviet mess. Ten more years have passed, and in contact with reality the dreams of a romantic teenager have withered somewhat. 

During my years spent in the UK, I have learned to hold the swinging doors for strangers, instead of inadvertently slamming them in the face of unsuspecting victims who are used to and thus take the courtesy of fellow human beings for granted. I have also learned to give change directly to shop assistants instead of seeking for a little plate to use as a neutral space in the exchange of coins. 

I got used to the idea that if ever I were to afford a house, it would be a hobbit house with tiny doors and tiny windows and I would always have an uncontrollable urge to stoop before entering it. I no longer fear that the local food will unrelentingly make me go up in dress sizes. And on cold winter days I no longer look with horror at cyclists wearing shorts or mothers taking their babies for a walk without a blanket and with bare feet under never-ending drizzle.

By now I cannot imagine going back to Latvia, where border police never smile, and women in the broad daylight wear skirts so skimpy that Westerners frequently mistake them for sex workers. After the
birth of my daughter I started to feel that London is my home. Yet it still feels so strange to watch Postman Pat with my daughter. It is so quintessentially British. 


~ Written as part of the Strangers in Strange Lands series. Arina describes herself as a mother (translation: waitress, cleaner, transportation device), lecturer (subverter of young minds), theoretical economist (creator of toy worlds), modern art junkie and a traveler.

Strangers in strange lands

I have been reminded by Refugee Week that there is a joy to being foreign, and a joy in knowing foreigners.

Songs of innocence and experience. 

To celebrate this joy, I am handing over the reins to some of my favourite migrants over the coming days, and instructing them to write on the vague topic of 'being and foreignness'.

My guest writers are a handful of the wanderers I have met in the green and pleasant land that I am proud to call my second home.

For me, being foreign is the experience of being a snowflake out of water: forever unique and eternally lost. Of course, being unique ain't always great, and being lost can be pretty cool.

Please tune in daily this week for a new story from a faraway land.

This week at Chaos HQ

We are boldly going where no short person has gone before: the interdisciplinary world of alien mechanical engineering. Luckily we are aided by Q Pootle 5 and a trusty tin of cat food.

Earth to Moon Unit: Do you read me?

Isil, the talented virtual pen behind Smiling Like Sunshine, is highlighting Children's Book Week over on her home planet. There you can discover short person books on alien mechanical engineering and everything else under whichever sun you happen to live by.

This week at Chaos HQ

Noted from the underground. 

We are bothering pigeons and annoying strangers. Please check out my post over at In The Powder Room on just that.

August has very nearly handed the reins over to September. School is around the corner and our museum days are numbered. So we are riding the rails while we may.

Today we discovered that the Keats House doesn't cause boredom-induced narcolepsy in small children. It's actually kind of a fun place. Ana reckons it's a lot like the bathhouse from Spirited Away.

The end of summer always feels a little sad. Especially if you're a kid who's been munching on a continuous supply of popsicles courtesy of your slave mama for two months.

But time stops for no man, not even a short one.

And this mama is pretty tired of foraging for popsicles and would quite like a nap. 

Bonkers in-depth analysis

'The bomb Rupert, the f-bomb.'

For remotely relevant commentary on phone hacking, pillaging and other quaint London pass-times please refer to blogs written by actual grown-ups with intentional hairstyles.

Otherwise, please check out my post on phone hacking for amateurs over at In The Powder Room. This is the first time Chaos HQ has caused major disruption at the illustrious ITPR, and we are currently toasting our excitement with (non-looted) fruit shoots.

Speaking of guest posts, Chaos HQ recently sang the praises of capsaicin to Working London Mummy. Please have a good look around her delectable blog.

As no one seems to have lit Chaos HQ on fire overnight, we will have a cup of tea and carry on posting.

Squashed tomato stew

Chaos HQ is currently lobbing tomatoes at unfortunate pedestrians from the window of Truffle's previously immaculate grown-up flat. Which is to say, please check out my gazpacho guest post over at Cinnamon & Truffle!

Cure for the summertime blues. 

But as a warning: don't try to read C&T on an empty stomach. I tried this recently, and now my keyboard looks like a surfboard that's been through shark-infested waters. Although in fairness this may have more to do with mt sharp-toothed pair of short people.

Bon appetit!

The news from Arroyo Wobegon

This week I'm broadcasting the news from Arroyo Wobegon out on the open llano of the mind. Which is to say in plain old non-silly English: I have a guest post up at OneArmGirl HQ - please check it out!

Riveting. 

OneArmGirl, aside from being one of my longest serving (and suffering) friends, is an expert horsenasticist who was born with one arm and the gift of a golden writing voice. She once improved editorial standards around Chaos HQ tenfold by guest posting about her wonderful dragon boy, Eli.

Please do have a good wander round her excellent blog. It will put a spring in your step and convince you to see the detail in things you never noticed before.

You may even get lucky and pick up a good hippie vibe from the virtual land of enchantment to power you through the week. A particularly timely thing if you live in Blighty like I do, where the weather is forecast to be total unmitigated rubbish for the foreseeable future.

Typical.

Tortillas

This week's post is a gastronomic tortilla ramble by way of the Cinnamon and Truffle blog. Please check it out.

Food, as you may have gathered from my previous post, is my second great love after family. The two are so closely connected; food is a deliciously messy, hands-on way to show love. Families who eat together stay together—it's true—their mouths are too full to argue. And food-flingling provides an alternate channel of communication to young babies whose verbal repertoire is so frustratingly limited to burping and 'googaleebababa'.

Thank you to the ever-wise Cinnamon and Truffle, my favourite transatlantic food experts, for indulging me in this post.

Dig in.

Make tortillas, not war.

Pure boy

In response to my recent inventory of Monster Dog's victims, the lovely and eternally wise Oma sent me the following story about her very own Monster Puppy. 

Scott's bedroom (wood) floor is a chronicle to his many different phases, probably a better one than any baby book could be. 

There was the spur marks from his cowboy phase during which he refused to take the boots and spurs off, and wore them even to bed. Before that we thought he'd never get past the hammer-a-nail-into-everything-wooden stage. After the cowboy phase came Machete Man with lots of collateral damage to not only the wood floor, but also window screens, bushes, trees and everything else that looked like it might benefit from some pruning. 

There are pocket knife gouges, Gorilla Glue chemical fusion experiments, battery acid burns and counteless other insults to the once beautiful pine planks. Looking at the floor I'm so thankful that we humans have the ability to heal!

Boy meets world. 

My advice: keep St Jude around, give him a place of honour in your house! You will need him, since I suspect Monster Dog and Little Sister are working on their next stunt as we speak. Oh, by the way, I looked at the floor in Scott's room the other day and briefly thought that I should sand it down and re-varnish it, but then I looked again at all this evidence of my little boy exploring his world and I decided that it just might be a very, very long time before I need a shiny new floor in his room. 

~Oma

The dragon and his boy

Mama is terribly excited to announce the first-ever Mañana guest blogger: the one and only OneArmGirl. In addition to being one of Mama's longest-serving friends, OneArmGirl is a wonderful writer and an exemplar human being. Thank you OneArmGirl for taking the plunge. You will receive a complementary Molvanian cake and two free psychotherapy sessions with a seal of your choice. 


Elijah is distraught. Toothless the dragon has gone missing. Eli’s looked everywhere...in his bedroom, the playroom, the kitchen. He’s even sung a special dragon song to no avail. The only thing left to do is cry. Little Gen and I happen upon this unfortunate incident because we’ve come to my best friend Audra’s house to do laundry. Eli is Audra’s five-year-old son. Just when he’s accepted his sad situation, Little Gen finds Toothless, a four-inch plastic dragon with wings that flap, lying innocently next to the couch. The universe has been righted.

Dragon in distress.

This episode is only one of many in Eli’s world; where it’s not at all odd to find a dragon eating Cheerios next to you at the breakfast table. As Audra is tucking Eli into bed one night, he sits up in alarm,

“Mom, you’re stepping on my dragon’s tail!”

“Well, tell him to pull it under the bed, then.”

I love her for this. She makes the intersection of Dragon World and a world where little boys still need to go to bed delightful and seamless.

Gathered with girlfriends in my living room one night, Eli suddenly runs out of a back bedroom where he’s watching a cartoon, and plops into his mother’s lap. “Mom, I need to tell you something,” he says solemnly. Something indeed, as Eli is reluctant to pause a movie even for a potty break.

“My dragon has been waiting outside and he needs to get in.”

“You can go let him in,” Audra reassures.

“But, I’m watching a movie.”

“Well, I guess you have to choose your priorities.”

Oh, the moral dilemmas of an imaginary world; life hits hard so early. But I think it might be a good idea for every kid to get a dragon before trying a puppy.

Puppy-training.

There have been other worlds: the 'Toy Story' World where Eli told every new acquaintance for a year that his name was Buzz, and I was constantly being shot with lasers from his outstretched arm; the 'Cars' World with Lightning McQueen leaving a trail of race car pyjamas and bed sheets; and the Thomas World, wherein I felt consistently silly for not knowing the name of every tiny engine I accidentally stepped on while naively walking barefoot across the carpet.

But we’ve been in Dragon World the longest. And I’m not complaining; this is my favourite world so far. Turns out, I’m a huge fan of dragons. What is it about these giant lizards that we love? Though dangerous and sometimes fire-breathing, there seems something majestic and beautiful and lonely...a creature in a world not fit for it, where courageous knights are constantly sent on missions to seek its life and save the village.

Stopped at a red light, I try to explain to Eli, sitting behind me in his car seat, that in addition to having swords and fighting dragons, brave knights also follow a code called ‘chivalry’ that requires them to save damsels in distress and open doors for little girls. His listens quietly, processing. Then, “But knights go to fight dragons with swords and shields and...” Apparently I don’t have Audra’s touch.

And I never know if I’ll be met with a sword or a growl. Lately, Eli’s taken to coming within inches of my face, emitting a surprisingly deep-throated roar, sometimes accompanied by a shower of saliva. Have to admit, it is a little scary. Walking down the supermarket isle with Little Gen, Eli suddenly squats down. “I have to lay my eggs,” he informs her. Unprepared, she smiles awkwardly to a confused woman passing by.

Bring him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.  

“I’m getting tired of this dragon thing,” Audra groans on the phone last night.

Recently, Eli ran into her bedroom: “There’s a dragon or a monster in my room!,” he cries, quivering
with terror; real or imagined, Audra’s not sure. But she decides it’s time to draw the line.

“Ok, Eli, there are no dragons in your room. Dragons are imaginary; they don’t exist in our world.”

This morning after blueberry pancakes and much growling and flying about the room (me rather awkwardly with only one and a half wings), Eli suddenly tells me, “Listen, there’s no such thing as dragons in this world.” I’m crestfallen.


“Really?” I ask. Is Dragon World over? Are my days as a dragon-sitter really done?

Then reappears a mischievous smile on his pixie face: “What that means is dragons DO exist.”

Ahh...I get it; they’ve just gone underground.

~OneArmGirl