Life of an expat...

Means that you will say goodbye to friends all the time!!

Which I HATE!!

Like now, we just said goodbye to Tehmina (second on the left) and now Marta is leaving as well, the one on the right.

Tehmina went to London, UK and Marta is moving to Westport, Connecticut.



And then another friend of us, Hyun, second on the right, is going back to Korea. This was our last DOTT lunch with these 2 friends. (DOTT = Diversity on the table cooking club).



We as expats learn to make friends fast, and we spend a lot of time together. Friends as an expat mean so much more to you than in regular life. Since none of us have family around, friends mean we use them as extended family. When we need help with babysitting, taking care if you need to go to the hospital, moral support when something bad happens in your life, we go to our friends. So we are a tight group.

And because we have so many different backgrounds, cultures, religions we talk a lot about these differences and understand much more about each other than when we would just stay in our home country!

Life of an expat is great, divers, adventurous, fun, but also SAD... when one of us is leaving.... a part of you they take with them.

Good Luck Marta, Hyun and also Tehmina... you will be missed!!

But stay in touch!! We are friends forever, wherever!!

Love, Mireille

~ Friends ~

Friends care, Friends share, We need friends Everywhere!



Taken at one of our Xmas parties, the girls having fun with lots of friends. Did you notice the new trend they are setting... colored hair extensions!
Jasmine has an orange one and Juliet a purple one, another way to keep them apart :-)

Enjoy the first day of the week...

Mireille

~ Friends ~

We are blessed with a lot of friends, new ones and 'old' ones, we met quite a few in Bangkok and we had so much fun meeting them! We played with them, we had a drink and some food in the park or met for dinner in a fancy restaurant.
We connected for the first time and shared some experiences, we LOVED to meet their children and see all those pretty faces. We talked about the past, future and present.
Friends... it is a good thing to have and to treasure... and we DO!

Thank You all for meeting us in Bangkok! I hope to see you ALL again sooner or later in life!!



After meeting in Pattaya all these lovely kids met again in Bangkok, to play for a few hours together, so much fun!
Vicky, Emelie, Jasmine, Patrick, Juliet, Nathalie and Martin!



Meeting for the first time!
Jasmine, Juliet, Khye & Jaxin! Such a great looking boys and girls all from Thailand!!



And here their parents Darren, Sharon, with me and Dirk. Just a quick last meeting before going back to Australia! How fun to finally meet after blogging together and being FB friends!



Jasmine and Juliet with Lily and Mik, meeting at a park, having fun together even though also meeting for the first time!



Here Dirk with Aod and Mel Ita, parents of Lily and Kim the proud father of little Mik! So fun to meet after chatting on FB for a long time now, but meeting for the first time!! So fun!! We missed Sharon though :-(



Here meeting our dear friend/brother Golf and his fiancee at the time Toey, now married just recently! So great to see again!



Here the girls together.



And the boys Golf & Dirk, former colleagues when Dirk was working in Thailand for Van Leeuwen.



And another shot with Juliet and Jasmine. By the way this was a great restaurant in BKK, worth going to: Long Table. Check it out and go there, great views and superb food!



And here we went with a previous colleague of Dirk khun Siriporn and her husband Khun Somdej. Dear friends of us who we meet all the time when we are back in Thailand! We had a delicious lunch at Chinese restaurant Lin-Fa at the Siam City hotel. We had the crispy Peking duck in pancakes, which was so divine and such a delicacy!!



So as you can see we are blessed with so many friends, all great people who we loved meeting and seeing again!!
Hope we all will stay in touch and one day meet again!!

Love you all!
Mireille

Great weekend in NYC!

Georgous weekend! Open House planned at 446 Bennetts Farm Road in Ridgefield, so we decide to stay in the City for a weekend. Couldn't have picked a better timing, it was soooo nice!!

Saturday afternoon we drove to the City and stayed in a hotel in Times Square. Perfect location, not too far to walk for the girls.

First we had planned a play at a theather for Children. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (by Laura Joffe Numeroff). When a boy shares his snack with a hungry, demanding mouse, he learns a hilarious lesson about cause-and-effect. "Sixty minutes of theatrical enchantment. This is pure theatre, with a capital 'I' for imagination!" And that indeed was true, the girls had a blast. It was so much fun! Now, we had to buy the book, we walked around to look everywhere, but of course when you want to find something you won't find it. So instead the girls saw Toys'R'Us and bought a Barbie instead...they happy, we happy since the search was over. And we could enjoy the rest of our stay and explored Times Square. Dirk and the girls were making silly faces while walking around, stopping now and then to pose in front of the camera.

After we walked around a bit we decided to go to Queen of Sheba, an Etheopian restaurant. We read on the internet that it was quite authentic, so we had to try it out! The atmosphere is lively and full of excitement. And since it was in midtown and close to our hotel, we went and we were not sorry. Indeed very authentic food and the wine from North Africa we ordered went well with it. Jasmine and Juliet didn't eat much, but loved the 'princess' atmosphere and played with their new bought mermaid Barbies, while we enjoyed our dinner eating only with our hands, since that is the tradition!

Sunday morning we met our good friends; the Liu's, for Dim Sum in China Town. Emmy, Ella and Mia are JJ & Jezz's best friends. So we made their day to meet in the City! Of course we ate so many goodies, but the girls as usual, are more into playing, so after a few bites, they were sitting on the floor and playing and singing away. Atracting quite the audience ;-)


It was Central Park's Birthday, the Pope was in town and the weather was georgous, it was extremely busy in the Big Apple. However, today it was called the Green Apple, since Central Park was celebrating Earth Day, lot's of activities were planned at the park. Such a georgous day, we just enjoyed walking around. The girls getting a face painting and they planted some new plants in honor of Earth Day. So we did some good for the Earth today while having loads of fun!


Being a bit giddy, wild and funny JJ, Jezz, Mia, Emmy and Ella posed for us as the next Super Models. It was almost the end of our fun weekend! We went back to our hotel to pick up the car and the Liu's went back to Central station to get their train back to Ridgefield. While we were driving back we heard this cute song from Yael Naim, called: New Soul. I wanted to share that with you ;-) Perfect ending of our perfect weekend! (check out the bottom of my blog for the video)


And while we were in the Big Apple, we had our Open House and quite some people took an interest in our home. So who knows, maybe we have a deal in our hands ;-)

Let's see and wait!
Tomorrow, school again, spring break is over!