My Reverse Expat Bucket List

I’m taking part in a reverse expat bucket list blog link up started by Amanda van Mulligen. Here is my list of the things that I’ve achieved as an expat, the top experiences that I have gained since moving overseas. More often, we talk about the things we’d like to achieve; our goals and what we’d like to do or we talk about the challenges and how we might fail. It’s not often we talk about our achievements so here goes….. And thank you Amanda for doing this! You can see Amanda’s reverse expat bucket list here.

• 1994 – Moved to Prague all by myself to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) at the University of Prague. Here, for the first time in my life, I completely immersed myself in a brand new and VERY foreign culture, learned the language, met some crazy people some who were probably clinically insane, taught some wonderful students, traveled around central Europe, gained experience as a professional teacher, and met my future husband.
• 1995 – Took a bus journey from Prague to Athens to backpack around Greece for two months on my own. Did some crazy stuff, met some strange but intoxicating people, learned a lot about myself and fell in love with the Greek islands.
• 1996 – Moved to Tokyo with my British boyfriend on an adventure as young ESL teachers with one way tickets and only $500 between us. Fell in love with the Japanese people and discovered clothes shopping is fun when the clothes actually fit you! Settled in to Japanese life and taught at three different ESL schools and gained experience teaching young children and adults of all ages. Traveled to Korea, my birthplace, for the very first time and traveled around Japan discovering what a beautiful and enchanting country it is. Made some lifelong friends and had some ‘once in a lifetime’ experiences. An incredible two and a half years – an experience I’m very proud of.
• 1998 – Moved to England with my British boyfriend and embarked on a Masters degree course in Design Studies. This was my first year in the UK and after I got my Masters, I married my British boyfriend in South Carolina and then returned to England to begin my new life as an American expat in Britain.
• 2000 – Bought and renovated my first house in a foreign country
• 2001 – Gave birth to my first child.
• 2003 – Started up my own design company at five months pregnant, the day after being made redundant from my job as a senior Internet designer. This was the start of my career as a business woman (although I didn’t know it at the time!), one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and one of my greatest achievements.
• 2003 – Gave birth to my second child – Over the next few years, I developed my company, grew my client base and worked around my two children. This was also a difficult time for me personally trying to fit in to life in England as a non British mother. But I’ve done it and I’ve adapted and I’ve successfully made a life for myself and my children in a foreign country while instilling in them my own culture, traditions and heritage.
• 2009 – Featured in Easy Living magazine as an Internet designer turned entrepreneur. This was a three page spread in a national magazine about turning redundancy into something positive. It featured four women who after being made redundant went on to start up their own companies, one of them was me! This was an exciting day in London at a photo shoot where I was pampered, given a makeover and interviewed for the article. So much fun and I was proud that they chose me to be one of the featured stories. It was my ‘Ugly Betty’ moment (pictured below).
• 2009 – Had my third child. After re-locating from the Midlands to the Sussex coast in 2006, I started again to establish my company and settle into a new place. With the birth of our third child, life and work presented many challenges that we had to overcome and push through.
• 2011 – published my first book Bringing Up Brits: Expat Parents Raising Cross-Cultural kids in Britain. (pictured below)
  
• 2012 – Appeared on The Chrissy B Television chat show as a guest to talk about writing Bringing Up Brits. Also went on the The Love Talk Show on Sky TV as an ‘expert’ guest on cross cultural relationships. As an introvert, these two experiences were terrifying so for me, they are important achievements and help to establish myself as an author and an expert in my field (pictured below).
• 2012 – Wrote two sets of 100 words on parenthood that are published in Charlie Plunkett’s book 100 Little Words on Parenthood. Charlie is a well known Brighton author who has written five books on parenting.
• 2013 – published my second book Inspiring Global Entrepreneurs: discover how to successfully set up and run your dream business in a foreign country. I wrote this book with my co-author and dear friend Heidi Mulligan Walker. We spent 14 months writing this together while living on two different continents, both of us working full time and parenting our three children each.
• 2013 – presented Inspiring Global Entrepreneurs to a group of international business people in Amsterdam at the Amsterdam Small Business Network. Again, as an introvert and rubbish public speaker, this was the ultimate achievement and one that I’m incredibly proud of. I flew to a new and foreign country on my own to meet people I’ve never met before and gave a presentation to a room full of strangers. Some people may do this on a weekly basis, but this was and still is way out of my comfort zone and not only did I do this, I had an incredible time and met some of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. If I were to move again to another foreign country, I would love it to be the Netherlands. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had as an expat (pictured below).
• 2001 – 2014 – and beyond: Raised three gorgeous children in a foreign culture and adapted to the British way of life while retaining my own ‘American-ness’ to a certain degree (I think the positives of being American) and created a life for them that includes the best of both cultures. They are growing up British with first hand experience of their American heritage and with American influences.

I have not included all of my achievements so as not to bore people to death. I’ve highlighted the ones I’m most proud of. The different areas of my professional life and personal life each have their own achievements, such as becoming the chair of a baby and toddler group I joined when my first child was born, becoming an author, making my company a success, the birth of my children, making a life here in the UK for myself and my family and also creating a legacy for my children through Bringing Up Brits and also this blog (which I didn’t include in my achievements but I suppose is an achievement in itself!).

Here are a few photos from my achievements listed above:
Photo by Dave Pelham Photography

Photo by Mi Elfverson

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Meghan Peterson Fenn is the author of Bringing Up Brits and co-author of Inspiring Global Entrepreneurs with Heidi Mulligan Walker. Meghan is also the Director and Chief Designer at her own design company, White Ochre Design Ltd.  And, she is an award winning expat blogger.