Americans, You’ve Been Warned!

by Expat Focus columnist, Toni Hargis

If you’ve read my book, you’ll know that I go to great pains to keep Americans apprised of British customs, sayings and manners. Not that we all take tea at precisely 4pm every day, or consort with the Queen on a regular basis, but there are some things that while minor, make all the difference.

If you’ve yet to read Rules, Britannia, let me recap a few of my tips:

Please – While the meaning of “please” is usually implied in the tone of an American request, the word itself is not always used. In the UK, its absence will draw audible intakes of breath and small children may well find the cookie, or toy they are requesting withheld until they “ask properly”. The word “please” is used by everyone regardless of background; it is said to everyone regardless of station, so that includes waiters and other people paid to serve you.

He/She – Again, while no harm is meant in the US by referring to a person as “he” or “she” while they are standing right in front of you, it’s considered very rude in the UK, and often elicits the rhetorical and shocked question “Who’s she? The cat’s mother”. Seriously. If you can’t remember, or don’t know, the name of the person you’re talking about, simply say “We were just discussing…..”.


Read more about language problems:
http://www.expatfocus.com/toni-hargis-281011

Knowing Where You’re Going

by Toni Hargis


I was educated in England and have found the American education system to be one of the most difficult “assimilation” areas so far. One thing I have never really done is make comparisons; the two systems are so different it’s not really apples and apples. However I have recently discovered my one exception to this rule – the college applications process.

My daughter is currently applying to American colleges for attendance in September. It’s quite a different system from its English counterpart, and I have to say, kinder. In England, you apply to most colleges through UCAS, (Universities and Colleges Admissions Services) with a single application that UCAS manages. You can apply for up to five courses (at the same or different universities or colleges), it’s all confidential, and you’re not required to give a preference order. In my day you had to put them in order of preference, meaning that the colleges further down the list often rejected you just for daring to list them so low. Students then receive offers either conditional on end of year grades, or unconditional which means that you’re in. The tricky part comes in knowing which ones to decline, as you can only hold one firm acceptance and one insurance place. Do you accept the offer from the fab university and hope you get the grades, or plump for the college asking for slightly lower grades? Nowadays, there is” adjustment” whereby if you meet or exceed your expected grades, you have five days to reapply for a better place than the one you’re holding...

Read more about education in the USA: www.expatfocus.com/toni-hargis-140311

It’s All in the Delivery

by Toni Hargis

“I shouldn't be saying this - high treason, really - but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren't fooled by our accent into detecting brilliance that may not really be there.” - Stephen Fry

When it comes to accents it's great being a Brit in the States. OK, let me qualify that. Sometimes I would like to be able to sneak in and out of a shop without attracting the covert attention of everyone around me simply by asking for a gallon of milk. Oh yes, and it would be rather nice not to have the occasional sales assistant start imitating me, to my astonishment! I’m sure they mean well, but a) they usually have terrible “Briddish” accents, and b) would they do that if my accent was Bolivian or Bangladeshi? I think perhaps not.

Anyway, as I was about to say, although many of us have different British accents, they are usually all very popular with the natives here. Having grown up with British-sounding people I never really thought about us coming across as particularly intelligent or sophisticated, apart from the real boffins* that is. Indeed, there are some UK accents that sound positively brainless, even when the individual has a triple digit IQ (not naming any of course.) Americans however, don’t seem to make the same distinction, or at least I’ve never heard a British accent being denigrated.

From my own experience in the States, I have to agree with Fry’s statement. I’m quite often asked to read something out at school parent meetings for example, and when I ask why, I’m told it “will sound better with a British accent”. Personally, I think your average American has such a smooth, confident delivery on anything from the cafeteria menu to international diplomacy, I’d never dream of questioning them, but apparently I’m in the minority...

Read more: www.expatfocus.com/toni-hargis-170211

Something Else to Consider Before Making the Big Move

by Expat Focus Columnist, Toni Hargis

In addition to the list of things I wrote about last year, there’s another thing to consider before making the big move abroad. Family. (If you’re reading this having just had a tiff with the mother-in-law or a sibling, come back when you’ve calmed down.) But seriously, despite the well-worn adage “You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family”, raising children abroad often means raising them thousands of miles from family members.

My teenage daughter recently wrote a paper about being a “dual citizen” (US and UK) and her familiarity with both countries. She has cousins her age in England, and indeed second and third cousins that she knows quite well, but no cousins in the US. Although she loves life in the US, and considers herself more American then British since she was born here, she stated that she felt “at home” and “safe” in England because of her family. As someone who is very close both to siblings and cousins, that made me question whether my move abroad has been the right thing to do for my children.

Although many people move abroad for a “better life”, you should consider how great that life is will be if there are no family members within hundreds, even thousands, of miles? Might it affect how children relate to their own children in later life? Will the lack of close family members contribute to any feelings of homesickness or isolation? ...

Read more www.expatfocus.com/toni-hargis-250111

A Very Foreign Christmas

by Expat Focus columnist Toni Hargis

Whether you relocated two years ago or twenty, Christmas can always be counted on to remind you of “home”.
Holiday attire in the States does that for me.. Oh yes, it’s not just the people standing in for Santa who dress up around here. For the subtle look we have ear-rings that look like they belong on a Christmas tree, some take it a little further with red scarves, perhaps a little sparkle here and there, and then there are others who feel the need to remind everyone about Christmas – on their chests.

American author Mike Harling postcardsfromacrossthepond.blogspot.com, now resident in England, just can’t get used to fireworks at Christmas time. “I have willingly absorbed most of the Christmas traditions of my adopted country, and the holiday season is richer because of it. But the one thing I continue to find jarring is all the fireworks. The towns set them off when they light the Christmas lights (or they used to before the money ran out) and they are a feature of many holiday parties. Watching fireworks in the damp and cold, however, without a barbecued hotdog in one hand and a plastic cup half-filled with warm beer in the other just isn't the same. Fireworks mean...

Read more http://www.expatfocus.com/toni-hargis-201210

Halloween, American Style

by Expat Focus Columnist, Toni Hargis


Despite having lived in the States for twenty years, you’d be surprised at how many bits of American culture I still haven’t embraced. Top of that list is marching bands, which are ever-present at college football games and positively set my teeth on edge. They’re loud, and not particularly pleasing to the ear – especially when they attempt the ubiquitous “Rock n’ Roll”, by Gary Glitter. Fortunately I only ever come across college football on TV where there is an “Off” button.

Parades are another pet hate – perhaps because they include marching bands? For many important days in the US calendar (Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day) there’s a parade. The big ones in New York City are televised, but many cities and towns across the land have their own parades. Unfortunately, many of them are during our winter months, so not only would I be required to stand on the side of the road with crowds of other people, but we’d usually be in sub zero temperatures. I think not.

One piece of American culture I have wholeheartedly embraced however, is Halloween. Yes, I’ve stepped over to the dark side. I know many people (usually not in the USA) think Halloween is just one big commercial hijack, and indeed, Hallmark makes more money from this “holiday” than all the others combined, but it’s not like that. Really.

Since my seventeen year old was a baby, I have immersed myself in coming up with Halloween costumes for my kids (did I mention that these costumes don’t have to be scary? The world’s your oyster.) I’ve sewn Red Riding Hood, Bo Peep and Marie Antoinette for her, glued robots and monsters for the boys, and painted a new toilet brush black for a chimney sweep outfit. The school has a Halloween parade for the younger kids, and everyone else in the building comes out to see them walking around, grinning from ear to ear. We decorate our house (tastefully, of course), put polystyrene gravestones in the front yard/garden and make black paper bats to hang from the light fixtures (we will not be...

Read more at http://www.expatfocus.com/toni-hargis-241010

Expat Experiences: USA - Rebecca Shine

Who are you?

Rebecca Shine - I live in Manhattan with my husband and 2 year old daughter.We are expecting our second child in October.

Where, when and why did you move abroad?

We took the plunge and moved to Manhattan, from London, when my husband was offered a transfer with his work. He had been employed by the London office for a few years and then received a call about the opportunity to transfer to NY.

We jumped at the chance since we had spent numerous long weekends in the city and had always said it would be an amazing place to live. Luckily it has turned out that way! We have been here 3 years now and have literally settled where we first landed; in Soho. We recently bought an apartment in the building where we were renting and our daughter was born here in the city, so it's feeling pretty much like home at the moment.

What challenges did you face during the move?

This is an interesting question! At the time it was like a big adventure. We had no children so we were literally flying by the seat of our pants and feeling our way in the dark. My husband's company arranged for the shipping of all our goods and provided us with temporary accommodation. The rest was left up to us. We had to find a broker who would find us a long term apartment, work out the health care insurance system once I was pregnant (I hardly knew what an OGB was since we don't get to see them in the UK on the NHS unless via a GP referral.) We had to try and understand and make sense of everything from cell phone deals to broker fees to NY State ID and driving licenses. In hindsight it was a steep learning curve and a valuable one.

How did you find somewhere to live?

We were lucky in that we knew the city well and had already decided to live downtown, preferably in Soho or The Village. We were given temporary accommodation in Nolita for a month which gave us a chance to sample the neighborhood.

We luckily found a good broker (on Craig's List!) who listened to our requirements and found us an apartment in an old (in NY terms!) converted grammar school in Soho to rent long term. It worked out well as we are still in the building now and love it. The whole process was a trial in terms of providing all the paperwork needed within the time frame to secure the apartment so they would take it off the market. Especially in terms of the 3 months down payment and the 15% broker fee. Quite a shock! Not having a credit score in the US makes thing very hard although they did manage to do some kind of international credit check on us and secure the information they needed.

Are there many expats in the area?

Our neighborhood is full of expats and so many of them are from the UK! I belong to a mother's group downtown and I would hazard a guess at 20% - 30% of the 1500 members being expats. New York is such a transient city which makes it easy to meet people as so many people, if they are not expats, are new to the city at some point or another and make an effort to be sociable and to network in order to meet like minded friends...

Read more at http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-usa-experiences-rebecca-shine

Toni Hargis: Learning the Lingo

About the Author Toni Hargis is the author of the popular expat book "Rules, Britannia; An Insider’s Guide to Life in the United Kingdom" and blogs as Expat Mum

How long do you have to live in a country to feel like you know what on earth everyone’s talking about? In my case, there’s not even a second language involved as we’re all supposed to be speaking English. I’ve written at length about the vocabulary differences between British and American English, but in my experience, the real confusion comes from day to day expressions which bear no relation to their actual meaning.

For example, even though I’ve been in the USA almost twenty years, I apparently have had no idea what “being behind the eight ball” means. It’s a very common phrase here and I always assumed it was a good thing (don’t ask me why but I had really good pool/snooker players in mind), but no, in fact it means quite the opposite. If you’re behind the eight ball, you’re in serious trouble, or in a tricky situation.

OK, what about a getting the “bum’s rush”? No – get your minds out of the gutter, it means to be forcibly ejected from somewhere or told to leave in a hurry. Remember, the American word “bum” means a tramp rather than a posterior, so the bum’s rush derives from wanting to rid a place of undesirable characters.

And what if someone requests your John Hancock? It hardly bears thinking about really does it? John Hancock was one of the founders of the United States and the first man to sign the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Apparently from the late nineteenth century onwards, John Hancock has been slang for one’s signature. A bit like Cockney rhyming slang without the rhyming...

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Some Things to Consider Before Making the Big Move

by Expat Focus columnist, Toni Hargis

About the Author Toni Hargis is the author of the popular expat book "Rules, Britannia; An Insider’s Guide to Life in the United Kingdom" and blogs as Expat Mum

According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, approximately 172,000 Brits left their homeland in 2008, with only half leaving for work reasons. The rest were accompanying someone, looking for work or just travelling around, presumably in search of a better life. It’s more difficult to get US figures, as the government measures immigration but curiously, not emigration; a recent UN report* however, states that in 2009 three per cent of the world’s population (200 million) lived in a country other than the one in which they were born. In short, there are a lot of people relocating around the globe.

If you’re a migrant moving by choice, the grass may well be greener where you’re headed, but it won’t always be plain sailing. Here are a few things you should think about before taking the plunge:

Be prepared – From the practical to the cerebral, there are lots of things you can anticipate to make your relocation smoother. Expat American Michele Oyen recalls “The biggest hassle of moving for me had to do with banking and credit cards; there are plenty of things I could have done that would have improved my life if I had set up international banking services before I left the US.”

(A note to Americans from the IRS, “If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside.”)

It helps to read about the culture into which you are heading, even when you think it’s not going to be too different from where you are. Adds Oyen, “The irony is that it never occurred to me to look into advice for expats before I moved--no books, blogs, or any of the other resources available. I'd certainly advise someone to look.” Indeed, with the amount of information readily available on the Web, there’s no excuse these days...

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Bi-Lingual, kinda

by guest blogger Toni Summers Hargis, author of "Rules, Britannia; An Insider’s Guide to Life in the United Kingdom"

Having lived in the States for nineteen years, I like to boast that I’m “bi-lingual”. What? You think there’s no new language to learn? “How different could it be?” you ask. Let’s just say the learning never ceases. Only last week, as we were heading off to an outdoor concert with some friends, one asked if I had the “church key”. I thought he was referring to the front door key, which I proudly produced, to gales of laughter from everyone. Come on – how was I supposed to infer that he was talking about a bottle opener?

For the most part, American English and British English are similar enough for us to be able to communicate; British goose pimples become goose bumps across the Pond, the phrase six and two threes translates to six of one and half a dozen of the other” (or six and one half when pressed for time), and fanny simply means one’s bottom instead of, well, a female front bottom. Some of the differences are hilarious either to Americans or Brits, depending on the situation. For some reason behoove, (which is the American version of “behove”) cracks me up every time I hear it. If you’re trying to warn me that it would “behoove” me to do something, you’ll need to choose a different word to be taken seriously. Similarly, every time I pronounce the word herb with an audible “h”, all the Americans in the room will smile indulgently at each me and then repeat my pronunciation exactly. The most hilarious of all is when Brits come across Americans named Randy. There’s much elbowing, winking and general Monty Python-esque behavior, which falls on utterly deaf ears as Americans don’t use the word “randy” to mean “horny”.

Generally, the differences cause mirth instead of confusion, but when your husband tells you he’s been shagging flies, it’s important to jump for the dictionary rather than jump to conclusions. (The term means to throw and catch baseballs in the outfield when the baseball game isn’t in progress.) Similarly, when your teenagers tell you they’re boning up on something, you should know that they’re studying (or claiming to) rather than getting up to anything more illicit...

Read more at http://www.expatfocus.com/bi-lingual-kinda

Home and Away – USA, Property and Visas

I don’t normally comment on those “let’s help you find a home overseas” type TV programmes but I’m going to make an exception here. Some of these programmes are well made and some are not at all to my taste. Many people, though, find them great entertainment and a motivation to do something about their overseas living dream.

I have recently watched some of the new series relating to the USA as an expat destination and two things have consistently annoyed me.

For a start, the potential expats are consistently shown a property in the UK and another in the USA and asked which one they like best. Due to differences in house prices and the impact of the recession, this often involves them looking at (e.g.) a one bedroom tiny flat somewhere directly outside a waste disposal tip in the UK, then asking the participants to compare this to a 10 bedroom mansion with swimming pool and private lake in somewhere like Florida.

“Do you know yet which house you prefer?” is usually the inane question.

OK, that’s subjective and moderately (but only moderately) exaggerated I know. The point is that nobody doubts that in many parts of the USA at the moment your money will buy you a lot more in bricks and mortar than it would in many parts of the UK. It may or may not be a good time to invest in US property - that’s a subject for specialist advice - but the key thing is that this programme is meant to be about changing one’s life, not just finding investment opportunities and/or holiday homes.

That leads onto the second point. This programme and others like it rarely discuss in detail the participants’ visa or citizenship status. There are sometimes some passing references and at times one can deduce from the fact that one of the people involved has a US accent that possibly they have residency rights.

The trouble is that programmes like this can mislead people. Buying property in the USA is not at all difficult and it is about 1% of the issue if contemplating lifestyle relocation there. What IS difficult, in some cases insurmountably difficult, for many potential expats is obtaining residency and work permissions. In the USA owning property in itself does NOT guarantee that you will get the right to live in your dream home permanently and there is no such thing as a retirement visa.

You can use various Expat Focus resources to read up more on this, sometimes complicated subject and there are specialist organisations that will help people relocate to the USA, usually for a fee. You can find their details on the Internet – there are many of them.

All in all, you need to do your homework before starting to fly over to the USA to check out properties with or without a TV presenter’s help! Maybe I’m just being grumpy, but I wish this issue were covered a little more realistically in these sorts of TV programmes!

The USA as an Expat Destination

Many expatriates do not consider the USA as a destination due to the fact they perceive it to be both expensive and often with similar features to their home nation. What these people fail to realise is that the United States of America is huge, with some states as large as or larger than many countries.

Life in the USA also varies extremely depending upon where you live. Similarly, so does the cost of living. If you are seeking good quality housing, a great lifestyle and easy assimilation into a developed western culture the USA deserves a second look.

Certainly for people who are considering leaving Europe, a move to the USA can make a lot of sense. Buying power for people with European based incomes will double on average when moving to the USA and you will not have some of the problems associated with moving to a more exotic location.

Many parts of the USA have a character all of their own, the Southern States are very different (compare New Orleans to Washington DC for example!) so instead of considering the USA overall as an area to live, do a little homework into specific areas - you may well find something to your taste.

US Immigration - same questions over and over

by guest blogger Kirstie, USA forum moderator

Hey there! I'm Kirstie, and I'm currently sat in Tampa Bay, FL on a wet windy day as Tropical Storm Fay finally makes her way across the state (for the second time).

I'm a "newbie" to Expat Focus, and to blogging. I have spent a very interesting afternoon going through the Forums (fora?) and am amazed to see that the same questions about US immigration get asked - over and over again.

It's been over 6 years since I moved to the US from the UK, and I'm amazed that information and fact gathering is apparently still so difficult. The internet was in its infancy when I was doing it - and I was doing it on dial-up from good old BT, with a free ISP account from "Bun"! (Do they even still exist?)

There are a few comments in the forums about information being "for sale". Hmmm. I think I'll come back to that one on another day.

The problem with all this is that information about immigration is valuable. There is a lot out there, and forums like on Expat Focus are a great resource. There are a lot of very knowledgeable people who use them. There are a lot of people with a wealth of experience to share.

BUT - and this is a big but - not everyone is right. Not everyone has up-to-date information. Not everyone had a typical story.

Be aware of this, and do your research. Find reliable resources. Ask around.

Kirstie Wilson
CEO
British Business Connection