What happens when you pack up your life, including three children in Australia, and take them on a year long US road trip? I’d like to say magic. But I’m thinking that it’d be more like 365 days worth of swings and roundabouts. And an adventure of kid wrangling and…

It’s no secret that I’ve lived in the US for a good while now (just over three years). And for the most part, the questions about Australia have slowed to a trickle. But every now and then I’ll meet someone new and get bombarded with a variation on this list…

Moving overseas is almost easy nowadays – from the bunch of expat groups and businesses ready to give you advice, to organisations ready to help with the visa process. But that’s mostly if you’re using the well-worn path of the common westernised expat countries. How many of us have really,…

Americans have a special talent for making cuisines from other country their own. Usually by employing the use of a deep fryer and various condiments. It’s all about catering to the American tastebud, which seems to be big on saturated fat, salt, and a tonne of sugar (to wildly generalise).…

When it comes to preparing for natural disasters, expats can be excused for feeling lost. They might not have grown up in a country or city prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tropical storms, wildfires or tornadoes. So they don’t have the experience of watching parents of friends prepare themselves for…

Doing maths in the morning is never a signal that the day will go well (for me). But when it means working out exactly how long I’ve been hopping on planes to the other side of the world, there’s a slight silver lining. Yes, I’m older than I feel or…

I went home to Sydney last week for a few days, which meant a big chunk of flying in a small amount of time. It gave me the chance to experience some pretty awful behaviour on the part of some travellers. And since I’m nothing if not polite and accommodating,…

While the Australian government truly begins the job of convincing people that its online health record plan will ultimately benefit them, Australian expats might be left scratching their heads. Will it be at all useful to the thousands of Australian expats spread across the globe? Should we be worried about…

Confession time: I am a World Cup fan and the 2018 World Cup tournament will be the first where I won’t be setting alarms for 1.40AM to watch my favourite teams take to the field. Instead I’m in the US (on the east coast at that), and have no clue how…

Bringing pets to Australia is a much more nuanced and prolonged process than taking them out of the same country. Australia’s stringent quarantine laws are well-known throughout the world. And they can strike fear into the hearts of expats and repats alike. If you’re looking into bringing your pet into…

There’s a ring on my left hand that wasn’t there a couple of weeks ago and it’s sparkling at me as I sit at my laptop (eating Cheetos). I’m trying to figure what to say about finally being engaged to the man that I’ve wanted to marry for a while…

Every time I think that I’ve scraped the very bottom of the ‘Only in America’ barrel, I come across more delightfully US-centric things that leave me laughing or shaking my head. I’d promise that this will be the last in my series of posts, which have so far included: US…