Life as an expatriate // Becoming a Cheap Bastard

We had to live the last week of March as ‘Cheap Bastards’. We spent carelessly our money by going out: restaurants, bars and so on… In fact, I don’t really know how or why, but we were broke. So we had to live cheaply, but trying to stay ‘chic’. We are still adapting to this new life abroad, and some things are way more expensive than in France. And maybe the true reason is that we are not very thrifty…

I bought a water bottle. I know that for American people it is very normal : I see here that people are always carrying either a water bottle or a thermos coffee cup. Survival set. I agree: this is a very handy way to drink when you need it and you don’t have to buy all the time plastic water bottle. But I don’t want to look as if I were a girl scout with my water bottle and a back bag. I think I do now.

In another hand, we had to stop buying organic groceries. This is way too expensive. So this week, our food was full of antibiotics and pesticides. Manu took his own food to work (instead of buying sandwiches). Once we made an asparagus risotto (‘chic’ way of life) and Manu took the left over. A coworker of mine invited me for a couscous. Eventually, at the end of this week, we were fine.

Couscous

To hang out, Manu spotted some possibilities offered by his university. We went out to a concert of contemporary Hispanic music. What the hell. I know, we may have made a mistake. I thought we were going to listen to guitars, and Manu was prepared for flamenco.  It may sound like ignorant, but it was way too experimental for us. We had the feeling that they tuned up their violins for 1 hour and a half. And when they were really tuning up backstage, I was wondering to myself : is this still part of the concert?

Violon - Tsai Performance Center

Don’t go to the first row…

*I had to read carefully the book a friend lent me about living cheap in Boston…

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Mathilde

Mathilde

Rédactrice, grande organisatrice et réseau socialite du Blog de Mathilde. Quand je ne suis pas devant un écran, j'organise des visites guidées de Boston, là où j'ai fondé ma petite entreprise Boston le nez en l'air. Je suis aussi auteure de nombreux guides de voyages, de livres de yoga et de jeux chez des éditeurs français. Suivez-moi sur Instagram, Facebook ou Pinterest.

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