Know of any blogs or books about families who move away from the US?

March 4, 2020 4:16 PM

Sometimes, I daydream about packing up our family and moving abroad for awhile. Would love to have our kids exposed to more of the world and learn a second language in the process. Maybe for a year, maybe permanently. But I’d love to read about what that experience is really like (outside of the daydream world in my head). Do you know if any great blogs written by a family who have moved out of the US for an extended period of time?!

Specifically, I think I’d love to read about families who moved to Canada, the EU, UK or South America, for 6 months or more (including permanently) but am open to any interesting stories.

posted by summerteeth to Travel & Transportation (19 answers total)

Best answer: Not a blog and from a long ways back, but Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon is a fantastic version of this.
posted by Mchelly at 4:38 PM on March 4, 2020 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Design Mom, her family of 8 lived in France about 5-7 years ago, moved back to the US, and recently moved back to France last summer. The kids go to a local school and she covers a lot of detail about daily life in a small French town. Designmom.com
posted by jschu at 4:53 PM on March 4, 2020

Best answer: The Gifford family: sailing around the world since 2008. ("At that time, the children were aged 4, 6, and 9.") Blog link.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:18 PM on March 4, 2020

Best answer: Dan Kois (one of the hosts of Slate's parenting podcast) just wrote a book about this.
posted by cpatterson at 5:25 PM on March 4, 2020

Best answer: Mama Congo isn't being updated anymore, but is still up and is a great read about living as expats in the Congo.

You could probably also find a lot of blogs (and would enjoy perusing) Cup of Jo's Parenting Around the World series.
posted by jrobin276 at 5:40 PM on March 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh! Swiss Lark lived with her spouse and kids in Zurich for a number of years (now have moved back to WA).
posted by jrobin276 at 5:48 PM on March 4, 2020

Response by poster: So many great answers! Thanks and please keep them coming!
posted by summerteeth at 6:12 PM on March 4, 2020

Best answer: I moved from the US to Germany for a year as a single parent with two kids, who were ten and twelve at the time. This was a very long time ago, but you can MeMail me with questions if you’d like.
posted by FencingGal at 6:13 PM on March 4, 2020

Best answer: Modacity, though it's to the Netherlands from Canada rather than from the US.
posted by asperity at 6:43 PM on March 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Reel Paradise is a documentary about an Amercain family that moves to Fiji for one year, to run a small movie theater. It's pretty great. Here's the trailer.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:00 PM on March 4, 2020

Best answer: Back in the early aughts Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair moved to Rarotonga with their two young daughters to "slow down" and lasted ... about a few weeks.
posted by slightlybewildered at 8:28 PM on March 4, 2020

Best answer: I don’t have a blog, but if you have any questions re: the kid’s perspective, growing up third culture/schooling in a 2nd language, and influences carried into adulthood, feel free to memail me. My parents did this twice (US > Japan, then US > Switzerland, second one permanent).
posted by bettafish at 10:17 PM on March 4, 2020

Best answer: You might like Motherhood Around the World which often features people who have moved from the US to another country.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 1:15 AM on March 5, 2020

Best answer: Tesseract World School is a blog about a family that spent a year doing world schooling, living several months in Spain, Thailand, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Columbia and numerous other places for shorter times.
posted by orchidee at 2:28 AM on March 5, 2020

Best answer: https://www.soultravelers3.com Family of three with a five year old child travelled globally from 2006, mainly in a camper, until a few years ago. It's one of the earliest family travel blogs and offers many tips on how to do this.
posted by Elsie at 2:58 AM on March 5, 2020

Best answer: Some friends of mine moved from California to Germany with two kids and kept a blog of the experience.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:06 AM on March 5, 2020

Best answer: Janelle Hanchett, author of the memoir I'm Just Happy to Be Here and the blog Renegade Mothering, recently moved to the Netherlands with her husband and 3 of their 4 kids. (The oldest stayed in California to finish her senior year of high school.) She writes a bit about it on her blog but mostly shares on her public FB page. She talks a lot about the differences in life there, especially schooling for her kids and healthcare. I'm quite envious, TBH.
posted by apricot at 6:50 AM on March 5, 2020

Best answer: Tsh Oxenreider and her family spent 9 months traveling around the world, homeschooling the whole time: book
posted by Ms Vegetable at 7:04 AM on March 5, 2020

Canadian family 5 Lost Together. A family of 5 that loves travelling and blogs about their travels and living overseas as expats.
posted by Juniper Toast at 3:09 PM on March 5, 2020