Via We Heart It

Sharon of the Expats Moving and Relocation Guide sent me a link to a giveaway she is hosting at the moment for a copy of Danielle Barkhouse's book - The Expat Arc: An Expat's Journey Over Culture Shock.

To win a copy of the book click here, and submit your expat story. 

I've been quite lucky and only really experienced culture shock in one of the countries I've lived in.  However, I know it can effect people quite deeply and isn't widely talked about which can make identifying it even harder.

Isabella over at Touch of Dutch has covered culture shock in great depth and if you want to know more about it and how she coped with it I would strongly recommend reading through her archives, in particular this post, which serves as a good diagnostic guide.

Just a little reminder that as a winner of Sandra's giveaway I need to "pay it forward". It seems that I do have more than a couple of visitors (thank you Google Analytics!) and some of them even come back more than once. However, not many people comment and that is my favourite part of the blogosphere, reading comments and responding to other people's posts on their blogs.

So, if you are lurking out there, please take the time to say hello and if you have a blog I will return the favour by hopping on over to visit you.

If you would like to help me pay it forward you can leave a comment on this post. Winners (if there are any) will be notified in mid-May, otherwise pictures of the clothing going to the Salvation Army will be posted instead. If you want to join in but don't want to pay it forward yourself, that's fine, I promise I won't tell. You will still be helping me out by forcing me to produce gifts for others.

The weather may have reverted to type in Amsterdam after all those weeks of gorgeous sunshine but I have a huge bunch of sunny yellow tulips on my desk, I am about to leave and go and see No. 75 for the first time since we signed the paperwork (eep!) and I won my first blog prize.

The lovely Sandra from Pepperberry & Co picked my name for a Pay it Forward giveaway. I would love to play along but I don't actually know if I have three readers of this little blog of mine to send gifts to. So, if there are three readers out there who would like a little handmade something so I can fulfil my part of paying it forward then please leave me a comment.

I am going to be time crunched with our holiday in the US coming up so I am going to leave this open until I return in the middle of May and send out gifts in early June. I would hate to rush handmade gifts out that weren't up to my usually high standards. If I don't have enough readers to pay it forward then I will commit to completeing by mid June, the great wardrobe clear out I have been putting off for months and donate clothing to the Salvation Army here in Amsterdam.