Tag: adaptation
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #8: Heather of 2Summers
Welcome to the 8th instalment in my expat interview series. Today you will meet the lovely and interesting Heather, who is in Jo’burg, South Africa. It has been an interesting ride so far, both for myself and for the interviewees and casual bystanders, it seems. I’ve received a lot of feedback for this little impromptu…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #6: Fiona Reilly of Life on Nanchang Lu
Welcome to the sixth interview in my infinite series of one sided conversations with expats (and ex-expats) all over the world. I started this series partly out of curiosity and partly out of a need for me to know I wasn’t alone in having mixed feelings about the path I had chosen. Now, with half…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #5: Pam Mandel of Nerds Eye View
Welcome to the fifth interview in my infinite series of indirect conversations with expats, repats, half pats and other as yet unnamed pats. This time I bring you one of my personal small-h heroes, the ukelele-toting, penguin-friending, apt-word-writing Pam Mandel of Nerds Eye View. I started this interview series during a week when Shanghai was…
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Blue Skies, Fake Britain and Imaginary Friends: It Gets Better (For Now)
Four days ago, I was quite dissatisfied with Shanghai and with living abroad in general. I wanted to go home to Canada, to go live in the forest and bake bread and raise goats and make really awesome goat cheese and to say, quite pleasantly, fuck it to this whole expat/travel lifestyle. I was fried.…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #4: Michelle Lara of I Heart Mondegreens
Welcome to part 4 in my as yet infinite series on the varied and multi faceted expat experience. Today I bring you Michelle Lara of I Heart Mondegreens. Michelle is in Spain for now, working and studying for a Masters degree in translation. She’s married to a Spaniard. She grew up speaking Spanish and continues…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #3: Andrew Couch of Grounded Traveler
Welcome to the third in my series of interviews with, ostensibly, expats. And by expats, I mean people who have been broadly defined as such by the fact that they are living somewhere else. It’s not as simple as that though. A bazillion people over time have ended up living far from their homelands for…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #2: Connie Hum of Connvoyage
Welcome to the second in my series of interviews with expats, re-pats, un-pats, quarter-pats and half-pats. For this one, I bring you Connie Hum of Connvoyage. Once upon a time, not too long ago in a parallel universe, Connie had an awesome apartment in New York and a job at an international consulting firm. She…
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Notes on Genocidal Tourism in Cambodia
One of the emotionally complicating factors of constantly living in and travelling through countries with troubled pasts is that you will inevitably end up having many conversations with and interacting with people who had lived through that troubled past. And given that troubled pasts often involved death, betrayal, torture, imprisonment and whatnot, it’s a disconcerting…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Fast Food for Sino Taste Buds
One of the things I’ve noticed in my years of living elsewhere, is that multinational fast food places seem to try really hard to court their local markets by attempting to mould their products into something vaguely resembling the local tastes. I remember seeing a Mc Turco in Turkey, which was some sort of…
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Best Little Whorehouse in Cairo
In Tahrir Midan, the Picadilly of central Cairo’s circuses, after a long, hot, dusty day spent being shadowed by touts and hissing men, we searched for dinner, for a beer, for a rest. But trouble in Arabic was brewing above a teahouse on the corner and robocops were filling the side alleys. We hadn’t…
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Berfumery and Hosbitality in Cairo
We will start with Mohammed Ali and the perfumists of Cairo. We wandered down the mad and busy streets between the meydans, searching for a cafe, a restaurant, anything for a hint of food. Do Caireans eat? There are bags and watches and travel agencies and tea houses but we could find no food…
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(101 Things about Shanghai) Batting for Both Sides
I’ve been living abroad for most of my adult life, give or take a few semesters back home trying to finish my never-ending degree. Most of my time has been spent with very little money and/or very little access to outside comforts. In Ghana, I ate foufou and kenke and jollof rice until I…