Category: expat

Telling Our Cross-Cultural Stories Can Feel a Lot like Sharing Last Night’s Dreams [—at A Life Overseas]

2012 Chinese New Year parade

I’m on a subway in a crowded city . . . a group of orange-clad monks carrying bright-blue IKEA bags enters my car . . . now I’m not on the subway . . . I’m on a bus . . . some children next to me are nibbling on chicken feet . . . the bus stops for a dragon parade . . . with lions . . . a cat waves at me from inside a 7-11.

Sound like a bizarre dream to you, or just another day in a life abroad? Sometimes it can be hard to be sure.

We’ve all woken up from a toss-and-turn night with a vivid story in our minds that we can’t wait to tell to somebody, whether or not they are interested in hearing it. Sharing that dream can have a lot in common with telling stories about our mundane, or not-so-mundane, adventures overseas. How? Let me count the ways. . . .

  1. Someone from back home asks you what life is like where you live. You tell them, and their eyes glaze over as your details get further unmoored from your passport-country’s culture and happenings. As the common touchpoints diminish, the interest often decreases. You won’t believe what happened to me last week! can sound an awful lot like You won’t believe what I dreamed last night!

Finish reading my post at A Life Overseas. . . .

[photo: “2012 Chinese New Year Parade,” by Jason Pier, used under a Creative Commons license]

Waiting and Watching at the Airport [—at A Life Overseas]

If all the world’s a stage, then one of the best seats is at the arrivals gate at an international airport.

And if you’re like me, you’ve spent quite a bit of time waiting to pick up travelers, watching the cast of thousands walk by.

In 2009, British author Alain de Botton was selected to spend a week at London’s Heathrow Airport as its “writer-in-residence.” In the resulting book (appropriately titled A Week at the Airport), he says that “Entry into the vast space of the departures hall heralded the opportunity, characteristic in the transport nodes of the modern world, to observe people with discretion, to forget oneself in a sea of otherness and to let the imagination loose on the limitless supply of fragmentary stories provided by the eye and ear.”

The arrivals hall, I would contend, is no less filled with potential stories.

Your time at the airport may not produce a book, but you nonetheless can record in your mind the many vignettes playing out before you. As you witness the newly deplaned begin to pour into the arrival area, signaling that another flight has landed, as you catch glimpses backstage of pilgrims gathering their luggage, as you see the crowds readying themselves for whatever lies beyond the exit doors . . . as you watch and wait at the airport, do you recognize these travelers?

A businessman, head down, shouting into a Bluetooth earpiece, power walking past you to get to someplace very important before it’s too late to take care of a very important thing.

The foreign family with two small children, dazed and wide eyed, looking for someone who looks like them to reassure them that they’ve arrived at the right place. Is it you?

Finish reading my post at A Life Overseas. . . .

[photo: International Arrivals,” By HolidayExtras, used under a Creative Commons license]

For Those of Us Who Aren’t Fluent in a Second Language, Even in Our Dreams [—at A Life Overseas]

I’ve heard it’s the holy grail of fluency: dreaming in your target language—walking around in your dream world, saying whatever you want to say and understanding everything that’s said. Sounds pretty cool.

Has that ever happened to me? Nope. I do sometimes dream that I’m back in Taiwan, but the people around me tend to say a lot of nonsense words, and when I open my mouth, I can only say the most basic of sentences. Sometimes I’m lost in the city, late for a meeting. I can’t remember the address of where I’m headed, can’t find the subway station, and have no money for a cab. It’s the cross-cultural equivalent of dreaming that I’m standing in my high school’s hallway, finding out I have a test I haven’t studied for and not knowing my locker combination. Oh yeah, and when I look down I’m not wearing pants. I think my dreams have found me pantsless on the streets of Taiwan a few times, too.

Or what about daydreaming about complete fluency, gleefully imagining the moment you take your seat as a translator for the UN? That, too, is a nope for me.

If your dreams are filled with fluent encounters in a second (or third or fourth) language, if language learning is your forte, if it’s as easy as ah, bay, tsay, or if it’s simply a piece of gâteau, this post probably isn’t for you.

But if your language learning has been a struggle, if you’re disappointed in your progress, or if you’ve reached a wall with no door in sight, read on . . . at A Life Overseas.

[photo: “Sunny Spot of Greenery,” by Timothy Krause, used under a Creative Commons license]

Ba Da Ba Ba Ba—I’m Learnin’ It: Lessons from McDonald’s Abroad [—at A Life Overseas]

Not long after we landed in Taipei in 2001, the head of our church’s missions-ministry team asked about our first impressions. Here’s what we sent to him:

people-people-people, stinky tofu, cell phones, smog, construction, dogs, Hello Kitty, noise, taxis, temples, night markets, McDonald’s, squatty potties, ATMs, squid on a stick, scooters, 7-11s, people-people-people

McDonald’s, an icon of American culture, played a big part in our time overseas, whether a familiar place for meeting with friends, a safe(ish) place to practice our Mandarin, or a dependable place for getting a meal. It was also a place for learning—or reinforcing—some valuable lessons. Here are some of them:

Language Acquisition Is as Easy as 1, 2, 3

Before moving abroad, as a family of six we’d become adept at saving money at McDonald’s using our savvy ordering skills: building our own meals out of single hamburgers or fish sandwiches, small fries, and waters. All that went out the window in our new home. Since we didn’t have the vocabulary for separate items, we just ordered by number, which meant each of us got a full meal, even our four year old (I guess we couldn’t say “Happy Meal” either). Ease of ordering trumped frugality. Bring on the giant cups of Coke.

Pride Goeth before the Spill

Most of the McDonald’s in Taiwan are multilevel, so after getting your food, you can then walk upstairs to eat. One day we were on a trip and stopped at McDonald’s and ordered our regular six number ones (or twos, or whatevers). That meant six burgers, six orders of fries, and six sodas. I was nervously carrying all the sodas on a tray up two (or was it 10?) flights of stairs, with extreme care. Then as I got to my family, I mimicked being out of breath and struggling to make it to the table. And of course, my theatrics made all the cups tip . . . and fall over . . . and hit the floor. I’m pretty sure it was all in slow motion. So I had to trudge back downstairs and try to explain what happened, using my book-one, chapter-five-or-so language skills, along with some extremely clever hand signals.

It’s the Little Things

I guess Coke at McDonald’s has given me a lot of memories, but not all of them were bad. . . .

For the rest of my post, go to A Life Overseas.

[photo: “Taiwan Mcdonald’s 台湾マクドナルド,” by yahiramatu, used under a Creative Commons license]

A Life Overseas: Send Us Your Photos . . . Yes, for Real

This post appears at A Life Overseas.

I got several responses to my post last month, “Photographers, Can You Do Us Cross-Cultural Bloggers a Favor?” One of my favorites is “We are debating whether your plea for more photos is an actual plea for more photos or if it was written with sarcasm in mind.”

I replied, “I’ll admit I wrote the post tongue in cheek. I was wanting to point out my own tendencies in photo selection as much as anyone else’s. But on the other hand, I meant it when I said we need more and better photos, so I’m happy that people are asking how they can contribute to the cause. I think it’s great that people with photographic skills are looking for ways to use their talents and creativity for A Life Overseas, and we’re brainstorming ways to help make that happen.”

Well, our brainstorming has led to a solution—a place for storing your pics (in Flickr) where they’ll be available to authors at A Life Overseas but not accessible by others.

So consider this an unambiguous plea: If you’d like to share your photos with us, please send them to alifeoverseasblog@gmail.com. (A maximum width/height of 1000 pixels should do.) By submitting your pics, you’re giving ALO writers permission to use them, but you’ll retain your copyright, and we’ll credit you when your photos appear. If you’d like, label your pics with any important information, and make sure you’re not sending us any images that shouldn’t be posted in public spaces.

Thanks to those who’ve already sent pics our way, to those who’ve asked about next steps, to those who’ve already taken photographs inspired by my suggestions, and to those who will continue to add to the collection. Thinking about all that makes me happy.

When I wrote my post, I wanted to think I could bring smiles to some faces. Your response is bringing a much bigger smile to mine.

[photo: “The Photographer,” by Nathan Rupert, used under a Creative Commons license]

Photographers, Can You Do Us Cross-Cultural Bloggers a Favor? [—at A Life Overseas]

From a recent edition of the weekly web journal Brigada Today, I found out that there’s a photography conference, “Depth of Field,” coming up, February 7 and 8. It’s designed for pro photographers, but I’m thinking that means amateurs could learn even more from it. And it’s in New York, but the “Main Stage” and “Exposure Stage” presentations will be live streamed. (By the way, if you’re not familiar with Brigada, you might want to check it out. It’s a great place for receiving and sharing all things related to cross-cultural work.)

Why is a conference for photographers relevant to you, dear readers? Because I know some of you like to take photos, and some of you are rather good at it, too. And for those of you, I have a favor to ask. Could you help out us cross-cultural bloggers? It’s not easy finding good photos for the kind of topics that show up in our writing, and, frankly, it can end up adding a last level of stress before we hit the publish button. (Is it really what I’m looking for? Is it appropriate? Has it been used here before?!!)

Take, for instance, the picture at the top of this page. You may have noticed that it’s the same photo as the one I used for my post in July. Or you may just be thinking, “Ugh, another generic plane-wing-out-the-window shot.” Either way, it’s not ideal.

But that’s what we need, some “ideal” photos of, by, and for cross-cultural workers. You may already have your own ideas. If not, let me plant some seeds in the fertile field of your creativity. You’ll no doubt recognize some of these tried-and-true images, but I’m asking for an increase in quantity and quality: quantity, so that we don’t have to reuse the same photos again and again (see above), and quality, so that it doesn’t seem as if we’re using photos again and again (ditto). So when you read “more” below, think “more and better.”

Oh yeah, and free. Free, as in creative commons or public domain.

So more and better . . . and free.

For instance, there aren’t enough photos of world maps and globes. We need more photos of unique maps and globes, antique maps and globes, and maps and globes labeled in non-English languages.

We need more photos taken of . . .

You can read the rest of my post at A Life Overseas.

[photo: “Fight over Slovenia,” by (Mick Baker)rooster, used under a Creative Commons license]

What’s Your “Fancy Like . . .”? [—at A Life Overseas]

If I were to say that I was “fancy like Applebee’s” you might make some assumptions about me. For instance, I might be an American, not the richest guy in the world, and someone who listens to country music in his pickup truck.

And if you don’t fit into all those categories, you might wonder what “fancy like Applebee’s” even means. If that’s the case, two step over to YouTube to hear Walker Hayes’ top-ten country-western song from last year. In “Fancy Like,” Hayes sings that his “low maintenance” lady is usually content with eating at Wendy’s, 

But every now and then when I get paid
I gotta spoil my baby with an upgrade

Yeah, we fancy like Applebee’s on a date night
Got that Bourbon Street steak with the Oreo shake
Get some whipped cream on the top too
Two straws, one check, girl, I got you

Similes (those “like” and “as” phrases) show what we know. They reveal what we identify with and how we use that to describe the things around us, things that are new, or old things that we want to help others see in a new way. Sometimes they get it. Sometimes they don’t. That’s the way it is for country-music stars, and for cross-cultural workers, too.

So if you’re fancy like Applebee’s, it might be because that’s where you go for a a Bourbon Street Steak during your once-a-year trip to the city to get your documents approved or to make a supply run. Or you could be fancy like Swedish meatballs in the IKEA cafeteria. Or fancy like a hotdog combo, with extra sauerkraut, at the Costco snack bar. Or fancy like a Caffè Mocha at the window table in Starburks, (yes, I do mean Starburks).

That’s how we do, how we do, fancy like . . .

In that spirit, here are a few similes I’ve come up with. Some are based on my own experiences overseas, and some I just imagine might be true for others. I hope they make sense to you, but more than that, I hope they inspire you to come up with your own. Give it a try. . . .

See the rest of my post at A Life Overseas. . . .

[photo: “Applebee’s,” by Mike Mozart, used under a Creative Commons license]

Can You Talk the Talk? Swimming in the Alphabet Soup of CCW-ese [—at A Life Overseas]

How are your language skills as a cross-cultural worker? No, I’m not talking about the language(s) you’ve learned for living and working in your new home. I’m referring to your fluency in CCW-ese, or the jargon that cross-cultural workers often find themselves swimming in. Immersion is the best way to learn, right?

I’ve put together a collection of vocabulary below to help you see just how fluent you are. Does it all make sense to you?

The next time you’re on home service and someone asks you to say something in your new language, call this up and start reading. (By the way, some of this may not apply to you, as it’s slanted toward the experience of someone with a US passport. In other words, your dialect may vary.)

Hello, I’m a CCW living overseas. I’m part of a larger group of expats that includes such people as EAWs working with NGOs to help IDPs in low GDP countries and FSOs serving with the DoS. My journey abroad started with PFO, where the MBTI showed me I’m an ENTP, and my spouse and I, along with several others, were briefed on CPM, DMM, M2M/M2DMM, T4T, BAM, and DBS strategies and were shown how to write an MOU. Then it wasn’t long before all of us were following directions from the TSA and walking through the AIT scanner at places like ORD, LAX, and ATL, headed for other places such as BKK, NBO, and PTY and parts beyond. It was hard for my MKs to leave our POMs behind, but they were looking forward to their new lives as TCKs, growing up with other GNs and CCKs, on their way to becoming ATCKs. . . .

Finish reading at A Life Overseas

[photo: “Alphabets,” by Tomohiro Tokunaga, used under a Creative Commons license]