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Mid October and it was already down to -2 degrees centigrade this morning. Daytime highs at the moment are struggling to reach 5C.

Not in my balmy corner of Spain, I hasten to add. In Norway.

I was conducting a phone interview with a banking executive in Oslo this morning, and this is the weather report she gave me.

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It’s been a while since I’ve done any blogging for Expat Living 101. In truth, like so many other expatriates I’ve been hit hard by the financial crisis over the last year – a double whammy of soaring interest payments on our mortgage, and plummeting currency rates when converting my foreign earnings into euros. As a result I’ve had to work twice as hard just to standstill. Not what you want at the best of times, but especially when the sun is beckoning outside!

But now I’m starting up again with a new zeal … for I have just signed a contract with Lean Marketing Press to publish a print version of my book on the pros and cons of living overseas: “Should I Stay Or Should I Go? The Truth About Moving Abroad And Whether It’s Right For You.”

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For many people Spain epitomizes the moving abroad dream: a country that offers the prospect of year-round sunshine, lower living costs and a more relaxed pace of life.

Not surprising then that year after year Spain has proven to be one of the most popular destinations for expatriates from around the world, with 10% of its 45 million population now made up of foreign nationals.

Yet the beneath the alluring sheen of the Mediterranean sun all is not well.

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It’s a fiesta today here in Spain, the feast of the Immaculate Conception (Día de la Inmaculada Concepción). It’s a Roman Catholic holy day, which marks the conception of the Virgin Mary, a point from which she started and remained throughout her life free of the Original Sin that stains the rest of us. Or so the Catholic doctrine says.

 

Having been brought up in England in a Protestant household – albeit with a Roman Catholic father (although that is another topic in itself) – it’s not a holiday I was familiar with until moving to Spain. But then so much of Roman Catholic theology and practice remains something of a mystery to me, despite it’s communality with the UK’s ‘national’ religion. Which I suppose is what makes living in Spain – or for that matter any other country – so interesting.

 

And I have to say, I quite like the idea of squeezing another public holiday in before Christmas too …

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