Working Overseas Archives

Kayaking on the Danube in Bratislava

April 25, 2020April 25, 2020 Bratislava, City Break, Europe, Expat, Expat Life, Featured, Nature, Tourist Attraction, Travelling, Working Overseas Bratislava, danube, kayaking, lake, Slovakia

Peeping through the trees ahead of me, the iconic shape of the castle reminds me that although I am kayaking in the countryside, I’m actually still in the city. That’s the beauty of Bratislava, one

Clothes May Be Optional, but Masks Are Not!

April 11, 2020April 11, 2020 Bratislava, Europe, Expat, Expat Life, Featured, Health & Fitness, Life, safety, Working Overseas coronavirus, face masks, naked bathing, social distancing

Approaching a large metal gate crossing our path, my friend whispered ‘Do you think we can walk here?’ ‘Well, it’s open, and there’s no sign saying we can’t’, I replied, trying to sound more

Lockdown! A Teacher’s Thoughts on the Corona Pandemic

April 5, 2020April 5, 2020 Bratislava, Europe, Expat, Expat Life, Featured, Health & Fitness, Heartbreak, Life, Relationships, School, Teaching, Working Overseas international teaching, teaching, teaching overseas

It’s been 26 days since my world shut down. It’s been far longer for others. It began slowly. Back, in January, news of an unknown virus in China reached us here in Europe. I barely took

The Hidden Dangers of Quarantine

March 28, 2020March 28, 2020 Bratislava, Expat, Expat Life, Featured, Humour, Life, Working Overseas Bratislava, coronavirus, humour

Stay indoors. Stay safe, they said. They're right, of course: if you stay indoors you won't catch Coronavirus, and – more importantly – you can't spread it. But what I didn't know is that being

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

March 21, 2020March 22, 2020 Bratislava, Europe, Expat, Expat Life, Featured, Friends and Family, Health & Fitness, Teaching, Working Overseas Bratislava, coronavirus, europe, international teaching, Slovakia, teaching

With coronavirus currently decimating the travel industry, it’s a good time to write about my life as an international teacher instead. I don’t write frequently, because I can't travel full-time like I'd hoped I would

Why I Love Working in Europe (And Never Want to Leave)

October 14, 2019October 15, 2019 Advice, Europe, Expat, Expat Life, Featured, Life, Teaching, Working Overseas europe, expat, international teaching, living overseas, teaching overseas

Recently, I've been reflecting on why I love living in Europe out of all the places I could go. And, yes: publishing this post as Britain perches precariously on the brink of Brexit is ironic.

A Year in the Life of an International Teacher

July 15, 2017July 15, 2017 Bratislava, Europe, Expat, Expat Life, Featured, Travelling, Working Overseas austria, bojnice, Bratislava, castle, cornwall, expat, heviz, hungary, iceland, international teaching, lake, looe, mountain, salzburg, Slovakia

I often get people asking me about life as an international teacher, so to honour 10 years of living overseas I have put this post together to show you what a year in my life

The One Where I Moved to Bratislava

August 23, 2016September 12, 2016 Bratislava, Europe, Expat Life, Featured, Travelling, Working Overseas Bratislava, expat, living overseas, Slovakia

Just like that, two years passed and I was standing with all my bags at Mumbai airport ready to leave India for another new life somewhere else. You can see my last day in India by

Kare Ayurveda Retreat: Eat, Stretch, Love

October 25, 2015March 28, 2016 Advice, Asia, Featured, Food and Drink, Health & Fitness, India, Life in India, Nature, Tradition, Working Overseas ayurveda, health, iyengar, KARE, lifestyle, mulshi lake, pune, retreat, yoga

Life in Mumbai can get pretty chaotic: it’s a big city, filled with—literally—millions of people. Like Raj says in ‘Big Bang Theory’: ‘it’s hot, and it's loud, and there are so many people! You have

8 Things that Might Surprise You About Living in Mumbai

October 11, 2014April 12, 2015 Asia, Beaches, Featured, Life in India, Travelling, Working Overseas beef ban, Bombay Expat, Living in India, Living in Mumbai, Mumbai Expat, Teacher Overseas

All these points are specific to how I feel about Mumbai, where I live and work. I am not an authority on what living in another Indian city is like. Of course, I am also well

Pigeon Purge

August 24, 2014March 28, 2020 Asia, Featured, Humour, Life in India, Nature, Travelling, Working Overseas anecdote, humour, india, Mumbai, pigeons

Before I moved to Mumbai I read many blogs about living in India, and became an avid reader of Rachel, the Hippie-in-Heels. She writes a regular feature called ‘This Is India’ in which she shares

Making Myself At Home In Mumbai

August 17, 2014August 17, 2014 Asia, Featured, Life in India, Working Overseas andheri, asia, expat, india

It has been a while since I last wrote anything on this blog - over a month in fact - and I can’t quite believe how quickly my first month in India has passed. When

So Long, Sweden! I’m Going To Miss You.

July 14, 2014July 19, 2014 Europe, Featured, History, Nature, Swedish Climate, Swedish History, Swedish Tourism, Travelling, Working Overseas expat, nature, snow, stockholm, sunset, sweden, travel, water

Four years ago I moved to Sweden; a country often associated with long, cold, snowy winters. But, little did I know that after the harsh winter Swedes are rewarded with beautiful summers where the sun

25 Signs You’re a Long-Term Expat

March 15, 2014August 8, 2016 Featured, Friends and Family, Humour, Working Overseas expat, living overseas, resident

I have been an expat for almost a decade. After a year in Tokyo waaaaaay back in 2002, I left the UK permanently on July 27th, 2007, when I moved to Vietnam. Since then I

Too Afraid To Seize The Day

January 25, 2014April 13, 2014 Asia, Teaching, Travelling, Working Overseas action, changes, expat, fear, job, life, life overseas, moving, relocating, searching, travel

This is a post that has been languishing in my drafts folder for four months. I have simply been too afraid to post it, because if I post it I have to commit to the

Discovering Lovely Looe, Cornwall

September 22, 2013December 21, 2013 Europe, Nature, Travelling, Working Overseas britain, cornwall, england, fishing, looe, smuggling, uk, village

In British English the word loo is a colloquial term for the toilet, so when my sister and her husband announced that they were moving to Looe—pronounced in the same way—they received a few sniggers

Reasons You Should Travel, And the Obstacles That Hold You Back

October 13, 2012November 10, 2012 Travelling, Working Overseas career, debt, excuses, family, fear, reasons, travel

If you look at some of my favourite books, you will notice a theme: journeys and adventures. As a child I loved Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, later it was Lord of the Rings and

Why I Want to go Back to Japan

September 9, 2012April 10, 2016 Asia, Beaches, Food and Drink, Japan, Nature, Partying, Teaching, Tradition, Travelling, Working Overseas buddhism, festival, food, hiroshima, izu, japan, kyoto, landscape, okomiyaki, peninsula, shintoism, tokyo, travelling

I lived in Tokyo for a year between August 2002 and August 2003 and I can’t believe that it was ten years ago. I had barely used email before I left for Japan, and I

What Happens When Plans Don’t Work Out?

May 8, 2012July 7, 2012 Europe, Travelling, Working Overseas changing plans, living overseas, relocating, tenerife, travel

You may remember a post not all that long ago when I revealed that after our travels around South America we would be relocating to Tenerife, with the aim of trying out a new life

What Makes Britain So Great?

April 23, 2012June 16, 2012 Europe, Food and Drink, Travelling, United Kingdom, Working Overseas british isles, great britain, uk, united kingdom

I recently read Mallory on Travel’s brilliant article ‘What’s So Great About Britain?’ with a huge grin on my face because, all things considered, my homeland really is an amazing place, and what better day