Moving

    My father's work forces us to move every year or two and it's always to some far away place where I have no friends and I haven't even visited before. Therefore, I've moved quite a lot of times in my life and almost always to a different country. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have lived in 7 different countries: Canada, The United States, England, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and now France. Fortunately all the countries we moved to spoke mostly English so there wasn't much of a language barrier until we moved to France. My father's Russian and my mother's Swede but I don't know how to speak either of their native languages! All I know is English and a bit of French, haha. 

    

    I was born in Monaco (I kind of counted Monaco as France so I said 7 countries but Monaco is its own principality so I guess I've actually lived in 8 countries, not 7) and the first time we moved from there was when I was 3 to London, England. We moved from London to Cape Town, South Africa when I was 5 then from South Africa to Cottesloe near Perth, Australia when I was still 5 (a few months later). We moved away to New York when I was 8 and then to Anchorage, Alaska when I was 10. We moved to Tauranga, New Zealand when I was 13 and then to Toronto, Canada when I was 14. Finally, we moved to France about a month ago at 15.  

  

    Here's a simpler version:

1. 1996 - Monte-Carlo, Monaco    
2. 1999 - London, England
3. 2001 - Cape Town, South Africa
4. 2001 - Perth, Australia
5. 2004 - New York, USA
6. 2006 - Anchorage, USA
7. 2009 - Tauranga, New Zealand 
8. 2010- Toronto, Canada
9. 2011 - France

    I know reading all this you must be like "Oh my gosh doesn't she ever get to rest!?" well it's not as bad as it sounds; I mean 2 years is enough time to settle in. The worst part of having to move so often is that you never get to make any close friends. I've been the "new girl" my entire life which isn't always a bad thing but I never get to talk about things we've done in the past together with my friends. It's always a clean new slate each and every time. There's always someone asking about your weird North American-British-South African-Australian-New Zealand accent, hahaha. Moving isn't completely awful though. It's fun to move into different houses with a new atmosphere, and by the time you're starting to get bored of it... We move again!     


~ Aurelia Maude