How do you take an eleven-year-old blog, equaling 1,000 posts and around 1,400,000 words, and turn it into a 150-page book someone would like to read? Well, that is the question I have been contemplating since coming home to Canada. Getting my head wrapped around which stories to tell has been challenging. To decide which…
New country, new house, new job, new life. Bringing in the new year was bittersweet. We were tired from the house set-up and really did need the rest over Christmas and New Year’s. We have had no friends over yet, which made for a quiet evening. My mom did make the trek over the water…
Another showing, another bid and another rejection. This was how October 19 week started for the Hamori family. House Hunting in Nanaimo is not for the faint of heart, but neither was Budapest or Capestang to be fair. No matter where you end up buying, it comes with stress. Add in the hottest market Vancouver…
When people think of rainforests, they often think of the tropical variety with pygmy monkeys, big leafy green trees, muggy heat, colourful and poisonous frogs, high pitched birds calling from the cathedral 75 metre canopy ceiling above and streams of light falling through to the bottom where debri and matter form the nutrients to create…
Dear Universe, all powers at play, and all residents thinking about selling their homes in Nanaimo, Please send us a home to buy! The house in the above image is going for 1 million Canadian dollars in Victoria, BC Canada… but you could probably say that about most Provincial capitals across Canada! I have a…
These are the ramblings of me trying to figure it all out. It has been a long while since I posted; been taking time getting my head around things. When I close my eyes and imagine the future, where we will buy a home, what life will look like, honestly, I am too tired to…
What is a community? According to Google, a community is a social unit with similarities such as norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place being in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighbourhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms. It seems my journey, no matter where I…
Saturday first thing in the morning, the instant we got Angelina’s negative PCR test results, we were already packed and ready to go to Victoria for the day! We drove the 1h23 minutes south towards the province’s capital city. We first stopped off in Duncan, my hometown, to see our family house. It was strange…
These last two weeks went by so fast. With Angelina in quarantine, we really did not want to go to the lakes, swim in the ocean or anything really fun until she got out. Like a prison sentence for the entire family. Happy news, she will be out tomorrow! So the first thing we are…
Food. How we taste and smell things can transport us back in time, making us feel old memories. We are so connected to what we eat on so many different levels, it is hard to sort out if it is the memory we are after or the actual food. Yesterday I dropped off Alfonz and…
“Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for happiness of other human beings or other animals, resulting in a quality of life both material and spiritual. In the last 48 hour I felt more love, respect and kindness from perfect strangers than I have in the last ten years combined. Where ever we…
I guess it is time to change the blog’s name from “My Expat Life” to “My New Island Life” because I am officially not an expat anymore! It is funny, some actually believed I should change the name when we moved to Hungary, saying I was not an expat anymore, however I had never lived…
Yesterday I folded up all my clothes and neatly placed my worldly belongings into two very large suitcases, one carry on bag and a large purse. When I look at it I find it strange how small a life can be reduced to. What makes a person a person; if it is stuff I have…
The story of Elvis has been going on a while now. A little kitten saved from certain death, rescued by a six-year-old girl on the other side of a fence. Angelina and Elvis could be a children’s book, a sentiment to how much we love animals. It went on 9-years, five-years in southern France where…
I sometimes wonder if I am absolutely nuts, I mean what kind of person sells everything to go on a gap year with little kids and simply doesn’t come back for ten years and thinks, ‘Everything will work out just fine?’ Oh I guess that would be me! When we left Vancouver for the prospect…
Seperating from our family pet is probably the hardest thing that we will have to do moving home to Canada. At first we found Elvis a new home with a lovely family with a little girl who already has a cat she loves, but also knows Elvis from taking lessons here at our home. She…
The picture of me that I posted with this blog post, is of our weekly walk around Margaret Island. During quarantine it is one of the only places left that we can find some solace. It is in the ritual of it, as much as the exercise of it; breathing in the fresh air, taking…
Hello! I am a teacher. Over the course of 10 years I have been teaching kids to save our planet or at least squeezing it into every element of English class that I can! I encouraged them to take less than 2 minutes showers, use energy efficient & long lasting light bulbs, use water efficient…
It is time! I am turning the blog, and all ten years of journally, into a book! I promise to share the good, the bad and the ugly! Even the silly and stupid things, like the time I accidentally told my friend’s husband I loved him, inplace of telling him I loved his wine. Very…
Ok so we put our house on the market. Now what? I know it seems strange because according to our Hungarian life and Hungarian standards we are doing well. But what is lacking is balance. The equilibrium between work and life is swayed, heavily loaded with too much work which was the exact same reason…
Now that we are selling our home here in Solymar I am reminded of all the reasons why we bought it in the first place. I have serious home love! I first spotted this three story home online when we still lived in France back in 2016. It was listed on multiple real estate sites…
It is time to tell our New Year’s resolution. We have put our house in Solymar Hungary, just outside the capital city of Budapest, on the market! Hopefully, this will be our last international move! We are moving ‘home’ to Canada. There is the link to our listing over here =====>>>>>> And to our apartments…
There comes a time in every expat’s life when you feel the need to go back home to the comforts of what you grew up with, whatever that means, wherever that is or feels like to you. If only to see if you have made the right decision by moving away in the first place….
Funny thing happened. It’s my birthday today, and my husband and daughter decided to take me out for Christmas shopping Sunday on Vaci Street in downtown Budapest on the walking strip next to the Danube River. We figured we would buy a sandwich and eat on a park bench somewhere during the pandemic. I love…
What is a quest? ‘A long or arduous search for something.‘ It happens to be the most prominent theme of the book The Hobbit written by J.R.R. Tolkien; the transformation of the Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. He starts off a shy creature living in the shire, small and meek, with a very tiny radios of…
At first, I thought the book would be called The Gap Decade. The idea came from the concept of a gap year—a chance to step away from everyday life, travel the world, and squeeze every drop out of a temporary sabbatical before returning to normal. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that…
In my father’s time of dying, I learned so very much, not only about him, his faith, and on how to die with dignity and grace, but also about myself. How to handle stress It is true. I can handle a great deal of stress. Of course, I have coping mechanisms in place, mostly red…