TGMS #004: Lisa Webb, Being a Canadian Expat Mom in France and Indonesia

SHOW NOTES: Lisa Webb is a mom of two little girls who currently lives in Indonesia. She’s been an expat since 2010, when she and her husband moved from Canada to France. She’s a blogger at www.CanadianExpatMom.com, and she’s also the author of a children’s book and a forthcoming anthology about expat life.

We talk about her experience raising bilingual children, making the decision to move overseas for the first time, and what it means to raise her children in a way that’s different from her own upbringing.

Here are some highlights: 

-Lisa’s visit with her family to The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (one of her girls did NOT like the organutans)
-Looking like a foreigner in France and Indonesia and what that means
-How the initial uprooting is the most challenging, but after that other moves are not as scary.
-How speaking another language affects your personality

-Her children’s book: The Kids Who Travel the World: Paris 

-Her forthcoming anthology Once Upon an Expat

-What the word “expat” means to her

-Learning to be a “citizen of the world”

Quotes from Lisa: 

On learning another language: “It also stretches you in a way that…makes you feel so good. And you think, wow, I can actually do this!”

“I’m not as outgoing in French as I am in English.”

On being an expat: “When you immerse yourself in a different culture, you have to leave your pride at the door. Its a humbling experience…you can’t help but feel a little bit dumb because you can’t express yourself.”

“Living in another country besides the country I was born in allows me to be a citizen of the world.”

“You can visit other countries, but its different than when you live somewhere. You kind of chameleon yourself…even though you are not from that country, you get an experience as if you were.”

“You have to recreate your life and it might not be the same life that you created the first time.”

What do you think it means to be a citizen of the world? Do you have to live abroad, or can you create that life wherever you are? How has learning another language changed your own perspective?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | More