Two months since our family moved to Barbados and two months before our second daughter's due date...Does this make it a sound reason to start a blog today? Well, not necessarily, but I will use these two reasons to finally give this project a start;)
My dearly missed friends abandoned in England on Monday the 4th of January 2010 under -5 degrees, I would like to dedicate this blog especially to you.
Although, it has not been unusual since I was born that I move around various homes, various towns, various countries, I realise today, miles away from England, that I had grown particularly attached to my latest 'nest' in Hampshire...
How can I explain that?
Many explanations come to my mind...
One of them must be the fact that I had rarely been living such a long time in the same area. I mean, in the same very tiny area! Indeed, 8 years have passed without me moving further than about 1 km away from the epicentre of the vivid international academic life of the University of Southampton! Can you believe that?!
However, living in the same tiny perimeter, did not mean that I spent 8 years doing the same activity nor getting involved with the same people...No, on the contrary! For some reason, these 8 years seem to have been the most fulfilled ones with encounters of people from all kind of backgrounds!
Over these 8 years, I have been working with the Chambers of Commerce of Southampton and Romsey, helping companies to build tighter links together. I have also been involved in several part time activities such as: teaching French, translating holiday brochures, selling clothes in the city centre, helping to reorganise the files of the university halls of residence, working with the City Council or the European Information Centre, and coordinating the communications of an "inter-universities" project with the Ministry of Defence. Finally, at the university, I studied and worked within the Maths, Ship Science, Psychology, Foreign Languages and Management departments...
It all resulted with the lucky encounter of a lot of extraordinary people around all those activities...Friends with whom we've been sharing wonderful walks, runs, recipes, travels, explorations, friends who hold this common "internationality" in their hearts, friends with whom we shared a common understanding without having to talk to each other, friends who cared for me in good and in difficult times too...
I start this new blog for you hoping that it will help you to learn more about the atmosphere we live in here; hoping that it will give you a different insight on what it means to move with a family to a country very far away; hoping that you will enjoy a different view on what it means to live in the Caribbean:-)
To all our friends and family scattered around the world, this blog will sort of follow up my msn blog http://planetesophie.spaces.live.com started in 2006. I am hoping to make it a bit different though - I mean to write more about our daily life, my emotions, the changes we are going through following our recent long distance move and the changes that are soon to come with the arrival of a 4th member in the family. Regarding photos, I'll carry on posting on Jos picasa album http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/sofnoajos/
