Fol­low­ing Thursday’s post, Scar Tis­sue, I real­ized through your com­ments that many of you were also lost between two coun­tries, two cul­tures, or even were con­sid­er­ing mak­ing the big jump and mov­ing abroad. As Beaver­boosh, a Cana­dian now liv­ing in Nor­way, said: “Wel­come to the ulti­mate expat club! You are a cit­i­zen of the world, do not take your respon­si­bil­i­ties lightly, there are not that many of us!”.

I went through my feed and looked at how many of us were liv­ing abroad, immi­grants or just trav­el­ers, and how many of us were pro­mot­ing cul­tural under­stand­ing between peo­ple. And I sud­denly felt among friends.

So, for you guys, I cre­ated the “Cit­i­zen Of The World” button/ award:

So I’d like to award this but­ton to some of my read­ers, whom I think are true “cit­i­zens of the world”. Each one should award it to other “cit­i­zens of the world”!

• A Cana­dian In Nor­way, by Beaver­boosh: this is a new addi­tion to my feed! I started read­ing Beaverboosh’s adven­tures after he com­mented on my blog. From what I under­stood, he grew up in Ottawa and then looked for a warmer place. That’s why he ended up in Nor­way… no, wait a minute: must be another rea­son. Any­way, I enjoy read­ing about Nordic coun­tries, I don’t know much about them!

• A New Life In Canada, by Aiglee: Aiglee is a brave brave woman! From Venezuela, she has just moved to Toronto last week. I started read­ing her when she was prepar­ing for the big jump (and boy, she was much more orga­nized than I was!) and I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing her first months in Canada.

• Ammaro.com: I dis­cov­ered this blog after Ammar, the owner, left a com­ment on my blog (see, com­ment­ing gets you some­where!). He is a young guy who work in Dubai, and seem to know the Middle-East pretty well. This is a part of the world I’m inter­ested in, and his com­ments and obser­va­tion, as well as his open-mindedness is a bliss.

• Through JoAnn Digital’s Eyes: JoAnn is Dutch, and she is an excel­lent pho­tog­ra­pher. I add her here because I truly enjoy see­ing the world through her eye, and she trav­els quite a bit in Europe!

• Curi­ous Vil­lager, by Tracy: I first met Tracy when she was on Blogspot, and she now has moved to her own domain. Tracy, who mar­ried a very nice guy from El Sal­vador, is curi­ous about the world and traditions.

• Johnada: this blog is still pretty new to me, but I had to add it on my list because I laugh some much read­ing his posts! An Amer­i­can in Canada, he com­pares both coun­tries using a Tim Hor­tons rat­ing sys­tem. Seri­ously, gotta read that!

• Kung Fu Chewy, by Gary: Gary is Amer­i­can and lives in Hong Kong with his tai tai. He tries to learn Chi­nese, won­der about Hong Kong’s cus­toms and man, I can under­stand him! I’ve been there…

• La Belle Sai­son, by Princesse Écos­saise: I’ve been read­ing this blog for a good nine months now! Princesse stud­ied French in Scot­land, and the rest is his­tory… a French prince and many trips across the chan­nel, this is Princesse’s daily life!

• Max: Max is Por­tuguese and write each post in both Eng­lish and Por­tuguese (and don’t stare at the Por­tuguese ones for five min­utes try­ing to under­stand like I do every time!). Truly pas­sion­ate about the world, Max observes, writes, makes us laugh and think.

• My Spy­der­web: Spy­der grew up in Québec and moved to the USA later in life. A bit of both cul­ture like me, she is proud of her French heritage!

• One Man’s Travel Blog, by Gra­ham: Although a true Eng­lish­man (no French irony here…) Gra­ham is a trav­eler, open to cul­tures and dif­fer­ences. From sim­ple stroll in his neigh­bor­hood to far far away des­ti­na­tion, Gra­ham takes us to beau­ti­ful places.

• RennyBA’s Terella: I started read­ing Renny’s blog a cou­ple of month ago, and got addicted almost right away. Renny is from Nor­way, and mar­ried an Amer­i­can woman. Pas­sion­ate about his coun­try, which I’m not that famil­iar with, he takes us to mar­kets, travel in Europe and edu­cate us about all kind of Nordic tra­di­tions. This guy is so sweet too… After I won a con­test he orga­nized, he actu­ally sent me a troll all the way from Nor­way! (NB: the troll is adapt­ing well and gets along just fine with my Win­nie the Pooh)

• The Rain In Spain, by Theresa: Theresa is Dutch, grew up in the USA and now lives in Spain. Her blog tells of her life and her kids, but always with a funny twist. Oh, and she has this nice tem­plate too!

• Viva For­ever, by Keshi: a young woman from Sri Lanka, Keshi now lives in Aus­tralia. Witty posts and funny obser­va­tions about the world and peo­ple, Keshi always under­stands me when I talk about immigrant’s life.

• Wapen­take, by John: and finally, this is John, an Eng­lish­man not in NY but in Toronto. After liv­ing in a few places, he set­tled here with his fam­ily and talks about cur­rent issues, life in Canada and the world in general.

On a side note, I recently updated my illus­trated blogroll (see “The World”). If I for­got you, if I butchered your blog’s name (spelling cor­rectly after mid­night is a chal­lenge), please let me know.

Oh, and after over a year being ad-free, I decided to allow some cap­i­tal­ism on this blog… I’m still exper­i­ment­ing with Ad-sense and signed up with Project Won­der­ful, which is pretty cool. I try to keep the ads small and rel­e­vant, hope you guys under­stand (I’m a poor French in Canada blahblahblah).

I also wanted to take the oppor­tu­nity to thank you all: this blog is now a lit­tle bit over a year old and this is the 103^th post (yeah, I know, I don’t do blog­ging anniver­sary…). The num­ber of read­ers has gone up quite a bit lately and I’m flat­tered. French are vain, ya know. When I started blog­ging, I was still strug­gling with my Eng­lish and I really didn’t think I could ever enjoy it that much. Blogspot was a first step, than self-hosted Word­Press… I loved design­ing my tem­plate and each post is a true plea­sure to write now. So thanks for read­ing, thanks for being here and… nope, that’s it!

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