The Global Mom Show: The Podcast for Moms with Global Worldviews

SHOW NOTES:

I first read Susan’s book On Rue Tatin a few years ago, when I was adjusting back to life in the States, while remembering fondly my travels around Europe and Asia. I was also getting into food. Susan’s stories of life in a provencial French town were the perfect antidote to my “homesickness” for Europe, and her descriptions of simple, yet elegant French dishes led me further down the path I was following into “real food” cooking. The book was just a joy to read, and Susan was a joy to speak with. I so enjoyed this opportunity to delve a little more into her life in France.

Here are some highlights of our talk:

-Why she moved to France

-Raising two bilingual children

-How moving abroad was really just a “change of address post card”

-How food helped her bridge cultural gaps within her community

-What she likes to do on Sunday afternoons–instead of cooking a big, elaborate meal

-The secret to a French Kitchen

-How the French love food differently than Americans

-Why she would travel to Turkey if given the chance

Susan offers cooking classes at her home in France, as well as at various locations throughout the U.S. For more information, visit her website. On Rue Tatin. 

She encourages you to visit your local bookstore to find copies of her books, or you can find them on her website, or at these links.

Here are few links to her books. *

In A French Kitchen

On Rue Tatin

Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin

Tarte Tatin: More of la Belle Vie on Rue Tatin

Nuts in the Kitchen: More Than 100 Recipes for Every Taste and Occasion

What’s your favorite travel book or memoir about life abroad that helps you live vicariously or reminds you of your own experiences?

*Links found on the website may be affiliate links, which means I get a commission for referring products I love, and you pay the same price you always would. Its an easy way to support this podcast.

The post TGMS#005: Susan Herrmann Loomis, Living abroad for the love of France and food appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

SHOW NOTES: Lisa Webb is a mom of two little girls who currently lives in Indonesia. She’s been an expat since 2010, when she and her husband moved from Canada to France. She’s a blogger at www.CanadianExpatMom.com, and she’s also the author of a children’s book and a forthcoming anthology about expat life.

We talk about her experience raising bilingual children, making the decision to move overseas for the first time, and what it means to raise her children in a way that’s different from her own upbringing.

Here are some highlights: 

-Lisa’s visit with her family to The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (one of her girls did NOT like the organutans)

-Her children’s book: The Kids Who Travel the World: Paris 

-Her forthcoming anthology Once Upon an Expat

-What the word “expat” means to her

-Learning to be a “citizen of the world”

Quotes from Lisa: 

On learning another language: “It also stretches you in a way that…makes you feel so good. And you think, wow, I can actually do this!”

“I’m not as outgoing in French as I am in English.”

On being an expat: “When you immerse yourself in a different culture, you have to leave your pride at the door. Its a humbling experience…you can’t help but feel a little bit dumb because you can’t express yourself.”

“Living in another country besides the country I was born in allows me to be a citizen of the world.”

“You can visit other countries, but its different than when you live somewhere. You kind of chameleon yourself…even though you are not from that country, you get an experience as if you were.”

“You have to recreate your life and it might not be the same life that you created the first time.”

What do you think it means to be a citizen of the world? Do you have to live abroad, or can you create that life wherever you are? How has learning another language changed your own perspective?

The post TGMS #004: Lisa Webb, Being a Canadian Expat Mom in France and Indonesia appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Katie Chandler talks about raising her daughter in Bolivia, choosing travel and international development work even when it’s hard, working to help people with kidney disease, trying to find a tamale in Guatemala, and wishing she could speak Creole. 

Katie Chandler works at Bridge of Life in Denver, Colorado. She takes teams of doctors and volunteers around the world to hold medical camps in underserved communities. We talk about her work and about the challenges of raising a child to be bilingual, the challenge of doing international work with a young child, the joys of travel and learning about other cultures.

Here are some highlights:

-Katie and I reminisce about meeting for the first time in our shared apartment in graduate school at the SIT Graduate Institute

 What an eye opening experience to recognize that the world danced to a different beat. I don’t think I ever felt more passionate and curious and alive than I did for those eight weeks.

-Katie shares about what she calls “the most fun time of her life,” when she lived in Ecaudor as teacher with World Teach

-Katie talks about her work in Bolivia with Etta Projects, the simplicity of raising a child there, feeling pressure about what stroller to get in the U.S. and the anxiety and judgement of raising kids in the U.S.

-She also shares about why she loves Haiti and what she did on her recent trip to Guatemala.

Katie’s definitions of a global mom: “A global mom shows that there are ripples of action that we can take within our own community and beyond that make change possible.”

“A global mom promotes curiosity of people and places and a recognition and, more importantly, a value to what’s important beyond our little world.”

Thanks for listening!

What is your definition of a global mom? What choices have you made to stay connected to travel or international work? What have you done to keep your kids connected to a global view of life?

The post TMGS #003: Katie Chandler, Going to Bolivia is like going home appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

SHOW NOTES:

Martina Hahn

In this episode, I talk with Martina Hahn, artist, mother of three German-American kids, has lived in the U.S. for, well, longer than she lived in Germany. She came to the U.S. at 19, and has stayed here to raise her children and develop her own “home” here. Martina is an artist, a speed painter, and she now speaks to women about how to embrace their true value as women.

Here’s what we talk about: 

-Teaching language to young kids

-Meeting friends in the US from countries that were enemies. Sharing cultural traditions and food.

Martina shares about how going through cancer affected the way she lives her life and led her to make choices and take risks she wouldn’t have taken before. She says “I decided from that moment on that it was time to live my life on the day that I was living. Not tomorrow, not three years from now. What’s important is right now.” She applied that idea to speed painting and began her career of painting around the world.

Great quotes from the episode: 

On Patriotism: “I love it actually, it just sweeps you away, to be proud of the things that you are proud of…that was really fascinating to me.”

On feeling like a stranger wherever you go: “I used to think that it was because I was not a native born american. obviously I felt somewhat like a stranger in Germany–that’s why i left. But I also end up feeling like a stranger here because of who I am and what I am. I’m different. It doesn’t matter where I live. I’ll still be different. When I realized that and learned to love that about myself, then I was okay. It didn’t matter America or Germany.”

On fitting in: “What you do in order to fit anywhere is you find like minded people, and you build your own tribe around you.”

On open mindedness:  “When it comes to this ‘America is the greatest country in the world’ attitude, that is an immediate indicator that people have never lived in another country or been interested in another culture. Because it is a great country–I wouldn’t live here if it weren’t, but other countries and other cultures have amazing things also. Just being open to them makes you a lot more tolerant of any other people period.”

Martina speaks and paints at events around the country and overseas. For booking info, check out her website!

Find Martina at:

http://m-art-ina.com/

Facebook /

Here’s a video of one of her performances! Search for more on YouTube.

What’s your global story? What resonates with you from this episode? How do you stay connected with family while living apart? What challenges have you had to overcome that have made you stronger?

The post TGMS #002: Martina Hahn, Creating an Artistic Life in America appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO RAISE MULTICULTURAL KIDS?

Raising globally-minded kids, multicultural kids, multiracial kids, or multi-ethnic kids is a privilege and a joy! Today, I chat with Becky Morales, an ESL and Spanish teacher, and mother of five bilingual and multicultural kids. Her blog Kid World Citizen is a wonderful resource for anyone looking to bring multicultural ideas into the home or school. She shares a multitude of ways to teach kids about world cultures and our planet through travel, food, music, celebrations, service, maps, art, and projects.Becky first got a vision for how big the world is when she went on a trip with her parents to adopt her younger sibling. She vowed then that she would adopt one day, and she has. Becky and her husband now have a family full of multicultural kids–she has two biological children, one child from Ethiopia, one from China, and one adopted from the U.S.

In this episode we chat about how a study abroad trip set the stage for her future of adoption, travel, and teaching English as a Second Language.

Becky loves books and includes plentiful multicultural children’s book lists on her blog. She says, “Anytime parents can go to the library and pick up books with characters that are somehow just a little bit different than your own kids, then I think that that’s going to be the learning experience.”

We talk about finding good books for Black History Month, which are good for all multicultural kids, and she lists some of her new favorites.

Books mentioned

We also talked about how Becky started an international day at her childrens’ school, and how they made it a “Bread Day” where students exchanged types of bread from different countries.

Language Learning

Next, we talked about using summers to travel and focus on language learning. Becky and her multicultural family try to go to a Spanish speaking country in the summer so her kids can focus on their language skills. She also took a mega European road trip last year with her whole family!

Becky and I talk about both the wonderful parts and the challenges of raising multicultural kids. She explains how she is scared and overprotective of her black son, and that she had to give the “police talk” to him this year—much sooner than she had hoped, and she had to deal with a little bit of discrimination at school from another student.

Take a look at Becky’s book (that she co-wrote with Homa Sabet Tavengar) The Global Education Toolkit for Elementary Learners. It is full of ideas for how to raise multicultural kids using the internet to do collaborative science projects, how to start international days at schools, how to do Skype dates with classes around the world, and much, much more.

Connect with Becky:

Tell us how you first got excited about living a global life. Where did you travel, who did you meet, or what did you learn that changed your life?

Connect with Mary Grace: 

The post Raising Kid World Citizens with Becky Morales (TGMS01) appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

SHOW NOTES:

There’s of course a lot that I DIDN’T get to say in this little intro, like the fact that I hope this show will be a catalyst for further discussion about global issues, and that I think as we listen to one another and seek to understand each other, we can indeed make the world a better place (as cliche as that sounds!).

Take a minute to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, Blackberry, or Google Play. Also, leave a 5-star review in Amazon, and that will help the podcast be seen by more and more people.

I’m depending on you guys to give ideas for interviews and to share this podcast with your friends. My hope is that we will grow to be a network of interconnected moms around the world who are eager to live life with a global perspective.

Thanks for listening!

What types of interviews and information would you like to hear in the future?

The post TGMS #000: What is The Global Mom Show? An Intro. appeared first on The Global Mom Show.