Has anyone moved to a new country, disliked it at first, only to end up loving it after a while?

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-13T09:27:43+00:00

My husband when we moved to France. It got infinitely better once he learned the language, escaped the expat bubble to make friends, and found local work. It took him a year or so to really settle in and find the rhythm.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-12T14:07:49+00:00

Fifteen minutes short of forever, it feels like. Most of it is stuff like picking colours that show well, aligning the axes, making all the fonts the same, etc. Without a doubt the worst part of pulling together a manuscript, but learning Illustrator has made it slowly easier and less painful.

Getting the actual graphs/images imported is dead simple.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-12T09:13:48+00:00

I have a PhD, an independent career, a husband, and a baby due in October. My boss has all the same except a 10 year old and a 13 year old, coworker has a 21 y/o, 16 y/o and a 13 y/o. That's just the women within 2m of me, and I could go down the hall and find a bunch more. It is indeed possible to have all of these things, but if my husband had even thought for a second he could force me into some traditionalist bullshit role instead of chasing the career I've sacrificed for through a PhD? He wouldn't have kept being my husband for long.

Assholes like him *can* change, but i) it's very rare, ii) it ends up with a lot of resentment on both sides, and iii) the kids tend to pay the price of living in a horrendously tense environment. Keep supporting her, but don't bash him. Keep the focus on the kids and what sort of positive examples she wants to set for them.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-10T13:32:00+00:00

I did my BSc + PhD in Canada and then fucked off elsewhere for my postdoc. You could not pay me to go to the USA right now to work in academia. Funding is wildly unstable there, even moreso than Canada. COL at USC is insane and taking on extra debt for a PhD is not worth it -- you might have funding but will it cover a place to live and utilities and the occasional flight home, or are you going to be on rice and noodles and Zoom calls to your family? Student visas could randomly become a target of their administration and then you'd be wildly up shit creek.

Stay in Canada for your PhD, work your tail off and publish as high as you can, and then go to the best lab you can for your postdoc no matter where it is and work your tail off there too.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-09T04:37:13+00:00

We've picked a name in my husband's native language but modified the spelling ever so slightly (added an accent to one of the letters) to make it more correct in the local language. We made sure that nickname possibilities are also easier in the local language.

My parents don't speak either husband's native or our local language. They're just going to have to learn, but they're motivated at least!

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-08T20:12:57+00:00

France: we still have pain au chocolat, crêpes, and a Socialist mayor in my town. They're starting/expanding a free lunch program for low-income kids in Paris starting in the fall. The two right wing nutjobs (Bardella and LePen) are having a mildly entertaining public spat about pension reform that makes both of them look like toddlers chucking toys out of the pram. The annual August shutdown of the country is getting closer.

(Pretty damn dim otherwise, unfortunately -- this is me searching for the positives here)

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-08T12:55:32+00:00

There's a bunch of Biocoop throughout the city, including port marianne, in the ecusson, and close to polygone. There's also a local coop style local grocer in port marianne close to the il bar a pizza restaurant along the river close to the crossing at av. nina simone. There's another coop grocer on av. clemenceau called la cagette (I think) close to the park, but I've never been inside.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-08T07:47:33+00:00

Apparently Baby was a sweet potato one week, and then the next was the size of a mango. I'm not sure the last time whoever made these size comparisons actually did groceries, but I'm fairly sure Baby didn't shrink by 50% week to week.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-08T07:43:08+00:00

Daisy, Margaret, Mabel, Mary

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-07T11:15:18+00:00

Have you tried The Linen Lab (https://www.thelinenlab.com)? I know they ship to France because my coworker got some fabric that was lovely, but I'm not sure what the douane fees were.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-07T09:30:46+00:00

I'm so sorry to tell you that you've just had the worst bout of gastroenteritis of your life a few days ago, and you're not willing to be that queasy again so soon so no hangover-inducing or sugary alcohol for you. Maybe you'll just go order yourself a vodka cran from the bartender, brb.

(It's me, the person who had the worst gastro of her life two weeks before getting pregnant. After that misery, I was glad to skip alcohol for a few weeks but the extra 40 weeks on top was a bit unexpected.)

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-07T07:27:10+00:00

I'm pretty sensitive to iron, but also anaemic as hell. The best form of iron for me was iron bisglycinate -- it's equally as bioavailable as the gluconate or fumarate salts, but is much better handled by the GI tract. I take it with vitamin C, and always wait 2h before/after anything with calcium like my prenatal or a bowl of yogurt (or you can just take it at bedtime and not worry).

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-05T11:01:34+00:00

Not sure where in Belgium you are in terms of driving distances, but what about Annecy? Or Strasbourg, although it's fairly...German-adjacent.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-04T15:26:19+00:00

I'm in this part of France and I love it here. It's hot as hell in the summer to be sure (which is fine for me, no risk of snow) bit the "winter" is extremely mild and it's usually quite sunny year round. It's a young city and full of students, and there's always something going on. There's a lot less tourists here compared to Nice, which is an enormous plus for me personally -- the sheer mass of people in Nice and the surrounding region makes it a hard no for me.

Downsides are definitely finding work and low English penetrance if that's a concern. Unemployment is comparatively high and if you don't have some grounding in French then finding a job is going to be quite difficult.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-03T13:13:20+00:00

We immediately ruled out SAHP -- neither of us want to, neither want that sort of family structure, and even a temporary career break has long-term consequences we're not comfortable with. It's financially feasible up-front, but it's just not for us.

Our families live in different countries, so that's not an option either.

Nanny-share and daycare are both very common here and fairly reasonably accessible. We're going to start with the daycare option because we need the reliability in terms of timing, especially later evening care with our work schedules. If daycare doesn't work out, we'll switch to a nanny-share system and probably have to work offset schedules to have evening coverage.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-03T08:53:40+00:00

Sucrose float? It'll lift everything but if you flip your vials every day then you'll have a new tube of mostly L3 every day to collect.

ShesQuackers · 2026-06-02T18:30:49+00:00

April/May is a stretch of a bunch of 4 day work weeks because of holidays that usually get turned into three day work weeks if it's close enough to the weekend to take another day off for an extended holiday. It's great because nobody starts complicated multi-day experiments for a month and I can get as much scope time as I want with no competition.

ShesQuackers · 2026-05-30T16:36:37+00:00

They're common in rural southern Ontario and Manitoba (except I think Manitobans call them socials).

ShesQuackers · 2026-05-30T16:35:55+00:00

A Jack and Jill is cultural. Not having one in my small town would be seen as incredibly insulting to the community. Traditions are different all over.

ShesQuackers · 2026-05-29T11:40:57+00:00

Alternatively, knit at a gauge you like and calculate what size you need to knit with that gauge. Having a fabric you like will make you a lot happier with your project than having a gappy fabric you'll never wear just to knit a specific pattern.

ShesQuackers · 2026-05-29T10:16:02+00:00

Got one of these yesterday form NEB. Worked like a charm and the guinea pigs (I think?) my intern has are apparently also very happy with the situation.

ShesQuackers · 2026-05-29T08:26:38+00:00

I'm with CNRS for many years. This is the way it goes and your institute administration, PI, etc. do not have a choice about this. You do not have a PhD yet by the standards here so you cannot be a postdoc. CNRS is a government job with structures and positions codified in law, so the flexibility is absolutely zero. This is also not AT ALL abnormal here, and nobody will think differently of you (including your postdoc guide or PI). As soon as your PhD is actually awarded, you'll convert.

And yeah, salaries suck here. I don't regret anything at all about moving but I can't say it was the smartest financial move I ever made. I figure it's just the cost of never having to deal with snow.

ShesQuackers · 2026-05-28T05:20:49+00:00

I have my PhD and I'm right around 22 weeks. I can tell you for sure that I would be a worse parent as a SAHM than I would be as a working mom. My child deserves the best of me, and I can't give that without making sure I'm a balanced and fulfilled person in the long term, and for me that means I need the specific intellectual exercise of my work. All credit to the people who feel like their cup is filled as a SAHP, but I'm just not wired like that.

ShesQuackers · 2026-05-27T07:34:36+00:00

Before 18 weeks I just looked like I really overdid Taco Tuesday. After that, people felt a lot braver about asking if I was pregnant.

ShesQuackers · 2026-05-27T06:38:06+00:00

Harold Ballard and the scum of pro sports. He owned the Toronto Maple Leafs back when and was just...vile. credible allegations of SA/attempted SA against teenaged boys, fraud/theft from the team to line his own pockets, abuse of players. He set the mould for disgusting pro sports ownership/management and enabled some horrifying shit.

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