| Expat wives?
My husband and I have been in Honkers for over 12 months and have not as yet connected in any way at all to the expat community. Mind you, we are both 40 =old and decrepit!
I have just found this site and am interested in learning more about how expats form communities / friendships...Looks like from what I have read that most are only here for a defined amount of time and feel displaced / disconnected, especially the sub-species...'expat wives' as is my case.
We lived in Beijing for 2 years and that was like living on another planet...not even the same galaxy. Living in HK is quite civilized and almost normal by comparison. At least they speak "En-grish" if not English...works just as well and is actually more fun.
My husband works for a Chinese company so I don't even know if that makes us 'expats'...I guess what I'm getting to is...what is an expat by definition? and hence an "expat wife"? I just want to know if I qualify!
I assumed that 'expat' means someone on assignment from a foreign company...paid by the foreign company and not necessarily assigned overseas for an indefinite period. Would love to know the actual definition.
Most of our friends are locals....they are great people but like my husband (working for a Chinese company) there is no such thing as a weekend or getting home before 9 or 10pm. Also, interestingly, they never invite you to their home as they have their parents, grand parents, kids and sundries living there....also they don't drink ..i.e go out to LKF or similar areas...we don't even have a maid in our house as it would give us the creeps...if we had young kids we would defiantly get one immediately!
I am also interested to know if 'expat wives' usually means those who have kids? and hence thats the main linkage?. Unfortunately we were not blessed with kids so maybe thats why we did not link with the expat community at first.
Sadly, the other issue is that we are both 40 and we have always assumed 'expats' are generally a bit younger...say 30 ish...from what I have read this is the case.
Anyway, just to stop rambling, just wanted to say that this is a very interesting site indeed and I am absorbing all the text and background meanings from all the forums to get the flavor of a wife-life in HK...would love to meet expat wives but not sure if we match..age,,,,kids,,,overseas company vs Chinese Co...etc....not the same flavour from what I see.
Interesting:::Today I read on this site about Dependant visas and the right to work and even visa restrictions into China mainland....as hubbie works for a large Chinese company I have been converted to a work visa in a blink of an eye and he has got a multi-year business visa..all with a single phone call...just in case you were wondering if Beijing is actually running Hong Kong in the background..
Good luck to all of you in here...love this site (must be missing so called normal existence)
Kylie  | 
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