Everyone suffers from the settling in blues, but what happens when they just never seem to fade? That feeling of arrival at the school gates with no definite person to stand next to. A blank space on the emergency contact list and yet another Saturday night when you’ve joined together with a bunch of people who seem so vastly different than you.

We often talk of living the fat expat life but what happens if you’ve been to every coffee morning, every work function, and every possible social group you can think of but you’re yet to lock eyes on a potential friend.

Maybe it’s just the place? The landscape doesn’t feel right. The weather just doesn’t suit you? How do you go about finding your tribe.

We interviewed Australian Natalie Potter on her life as an expat in Paris and why it was so hard to fit in.

Articles we shared on the show:
Expat Loneliness Does It Get Any Better
Where Expatriates Belong
How to Beat Loneliness in the Expat World

While it can be really hard to get the courage up to head out and face your brave new world we’re encouraging you to take advantage of your wonderful new phase in life. You will see many strange, exciting, breathtaking and totally foreign things, which is possibly why you decided to make the move.

What about when the place you don’t fit in is actually home? Are you a triangle in a square or circle world?

We spoke to Naomi Hattaway on her thoughts about repatriation and her triangle analogy.

You can read Naomi’s article here and join her Facebook group here.

We also spoke about Maria who has this fabulous Facebook page which documents the photos she’s taken on her walks in Qatar.

Sarah’s Podcast: Spark London – real stories told live across different venues in London. It’s an open mic night where people can share their real life stories and it’s now been made into a podcast series. Some of the stories are as short as 5-10 minutes others are a little longer. I loved “Baby Giraffe” (Jacqueline falls madly in love…but there’s a catch). “Breaking into Dance” (Kirsty has a dream…to own it in a break dancing circle, that’s Kirsty the break dancer not Kirsty the fat expat).

Kirsty loved this blogpost from Grenglish.

A big thank you to everyone who has tuned in week after week. As usual, we would like to beg and plead for you to subscribe and give us a review so we stay high in the charts.

Until next week.

✕

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