What does an expat look like? For a long time, I had a cemented idea in my mind of what someone living abroad looked like: adventurous, young, single and – for some reason – wearing cargo pants. It didn’t look like me at 31 and just married although I did have an affinity for cargo pants. It certainly didn’t look like me 8 months pregnant… and with two dogs in tow. Turns out expats look like all kinds of people: young people, middle-aged people, first timers, returning expats, singles, couples with children, couples with no children, single moms with newborns, families with teenaged children, grandparents, recent college graduates, ladies with dogs, bachelors with nothing tying them down. Think someone like you couldn’t possibly live abroad… why not? Meet the Expats Series is an opportunity to discover that people just like you have made the move. Just buy some cargo pants.
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Meet the Expat: Amanda
Well on our way to finishing our first bottle of wine, Amanda tells me about her first week in Lichterfelde West, a town in their new country of Germany. Now a mom and wife and in her second experience overseas, Amanda was excited about living in a place where “it was raining history,” a place where history could be found in your own backyard… literally. “It was the first day that we didn’t have Patricia guiding us around. We were excited to explore town but as soon as we left our apartment we saw all of this commotion. People everywhere and police. It was crazy. It was a Sunday and we thought maybe this is always what Sundays look like here. But you know what it was,” she asks peaking my interest. “It was a World War II bomb. They had been excavating and found an old World War II bomb!”
“That’s marvelous,” I say, “I mean, it’s scary obviously but kind of cool that you are living in a place with ridiculous amounts of history.”
“Yeah, it was pretty cool but it was funny,” she remembers tilting her head to the side, “because we just had no idea what was going on. And we couldn’t ask. I mean we could but we didn’t want to seem… cowardice.” She taps into a vein that I think most expats try not to expose. One I know I’ve certainly tried to keep under the surface.
There is this myth that comes with being a person who packs up their life and moves abroad. The myth is that expats must be courageous and adventurous. While there is probably some truth to this (there has to be a degree of these qualities in the kind of person that chooses this life) the myth evolves and spreads into a blanket statement covering all expats in all facets of their life. We talk about this myth and how people in our lives have assumed that because we had the gonads to pick up and move across an ocean we must be valiant in everything we do. Amanda agreeing with this statement shares, “Yeah. You fall into roles. I go home and sometimes feel like I have to play out that role of the adventurous person abroad, super outgoing and ballsy that doesn’t have fear.”
What I like about Amanda is that she’s open to it all. She doesn’t assume to know everything and is thirsty to learn. She doesn’t take life too seriously and it doesn’t hurt that she has heart – big heart – which I would argue is why she’s a force to to be reckoned with on the golf course, in a Euchre Tournament, and at Foosball. I’ll add that she’s not the first person I’d choose to go up against in a battle of Tug O’ War. Perhaps her willingess to learn and her ability to put heart into everything she does is also what makes these abroad experiences so fulfilling for her. Some people come into these experiences with preconceived notions of what life should be. They leave with nice memories and pretty pictures but I get the sense that Amanda is looking for more, taking away more. “I’ve learned you have to have an acceptance not an expectation.”
But she wasn’t always so wise. She’d be the first to admit that she wasn’t so accepting at 15 and living in Tokyo, her first taste of life abroad.
Without asking, I pour her another glass of wine because Amanda is one of the few women people I know that can keep up with me – maybe even drink me under the table but the verdict is still out on that one. We’re on our second bottle of wine when she begins to tell me about her Japanese host family’s idea of a traditional experience for their American guest. “They set me up with a mattress on a tatami floor – your traditional japanese flooring – with a bean pillow, the most uncomfortable thing ever. Once a week I had to haul my mattress up to the roof , hang it over the roof, bat it with a tennis racket and bring it down. It wasn’t labor intensive per say but no one else had to do it. They were trying to give me an original experience. God that pillow was hard as a rock.”
I laugh imagining this rebellious blond pounding away at a mattress and joke that when her two daughters are teenagers this will be her go-to “when I was your age” story that she will tell to get them to do chores. “When I was your age I had to sleep with a bean pillow on a tatami floor and beat my own mattress. Don’t complain about doing the dishes.”
Midway through our second bottle of wine we’ve hopped over to her third stint abroad, the sandy lifestyle she’s set up for herself in Dominican Republic. I ask her if she’d want her two girls to follow in her wanderlusting footsteps. “Yes!” Zero hesitation. I ask her what advice she would give them. “I would tell them to take everything with a grain of salt. To wait,” she says offering me her flat palm to credit me for that advice, “Like you wrote in that advice post. You have to wait and know that tomorrow will be different. There’s not always consistency except for the fact that people are going to late.” She giggles.
She’s right. You learn from where you are. Waiting is essential to settling in. Consistency can’t be expected. In Japan, being on time is respectful. In Dominican Republic on time means you’re 5 minutes late. And when you live here long enough (like anywhere), you too will run late. You’ll see that you don’t need to rush ever.
“Hmm.. we need more wine,” I discover.
“Yep we’re empty.”
We rush upstairs.
For somethings there’s always a rush.
More about Amanda:
HER FIRST WEEK in Tokyo, 15-year-old Amanda learned to publicly shower. I find this nugget of information interesting that a place like Japan that seems so reserved could be so not reserved with things like public showers.
SHE JOKES that her transition to Dominican Republic after Germany was a hard one. “We went from the capital of paperwork and rules to the capital of disorder and chaos.” Insert affirming laugh.
ONE THING SHE WISHES SHE DID DIFFERENTLY was the “ease and motivation to make a home… YOU HAVE TO EMBRACE IT RIGHT AWAY.” She compliments, “Being in your home tonight, I realize that’s one thing I’m missing. Don’t wait because you think you’re not going to be there. Make it comfortable for the time you are there. Make it your home immediately. ”
WE DIFFER in our hopes for future wanderlusters. She hopes her kids will have the travel bug and see the world. I hope my kids never live abroad, unless it’s with me.
WE ARRIVED at the conclusion that where moving abroad is concerned it doesn’t matter what you do as a parent. She didn’t travel a lot as a kid and believes that is why she wanted to come abroad. I traveled a lot as a kid and think that could be why I came abroad. No matter what road we take as parents, kids will decide for themselves.
A PROFOUND EXPERIENCE was the traditional Japanese funeral she attended in honor of her host father’s uncle who had passed away. As part of the process, two family members worked together using chopsticks to pick up one of the cremated bones and place it into a box.
THEY’VE LIVED ABROAD as a family for 7 years and are still magnetized to go back home to NY every summer. “We want the kids to know their extended family back home so they (her daughters) definitely anchor us to go back in a way that wouldn’t exist if we didn’t have kids.”
Thank you to Amanda for the talk and for the wine…s
~ Pack lightly. Live well. Move often. Repeat. ~
Photo Credits:Tug o’ War – Stacy Flemming All other photos property of Amanda