Friday, January 18, 2008

Life as an expat

Perceptive travel has always been one of my favorite travel websites, and I religiously read the blog. A recent post by Antonia Malckik discussing life as an expat could not have been more accurate.

" ...living as an ex-pat is not just an experience to write about or to pack away with your photos in the face of uninterested friends in your home country, it’s something that becomes part of who you are and how you view the world."

So true. I know that I've been forever changed.

" ...the friends you make as an ex-pat are like no others in your life. They’re the ones who can show up on your doorstep after five or ten or twenty years, and you can chatter away as if nothing has changed. They’re the ones who can call out of the blue and make you laugh. Because what you share is not an early childhood or drunken university days, but a deep-seated interest in the world and thirst to know it."

2 comments:

sooner8448@gmail.com said...

After a year or two on the road its hard to come back home, because you've changed so much, and you discover that you don't have a lot in common with the people back home anymore. Your whole mindset has evolved and become broader. Surround yourself with other travelers - they can understand where you're coming from in a way non-travelers will never be able to.

Travel Sheila said...

Thanks for the new links - always like to find good expat/travel sites! Your excerpts rang true for me too. We're starting year 3 in the Netherlands and not sure when the company will be moving us again, country TBD... some time between a couple months and over a year from now. I'm finding this uncertainty to be one of the hardest parts of being an expat. It's strange not knowing what country I'm going to be living in next year. (This is our first assignment so I'm still encountering "firsts".)

Like Sooner8448 said, I hear being a Repat is harder than being an Expat because you've changed but you go home and no one else has. I think this will be the hardest part for me....

How long is your assignment?