I don't usually follow adult expat blogs (blogs about people living overseas as adults) on principle, but I found a post today from one of them that just really "spoke" to me. I actually reblogged it on Tumblr, and added my own two cents (which technically became more like a dollar, because if you know me, you know I like to ramble), since my experiences living overseas were different from the person who wrote the original post, but yet the attitudes are the same.
The thing is, so many people think that living abroad is like a massive extended vacation. That you're "living the life" because you're not living in "boring ol' Amerr'ca" (or wherever). To be perfectly honest though, that's not what it's like at all. You still have to go work, or school, or whatever. You still have things to do that you may not want to do. Just because you're living in another country doesn't mean you stop being frustrated at people and things that you don't like. Things don't become more tolerable abroad than they are at home.
When I moved to Europe, I was 12 years old. I had zero say in the matter, though my parents did ask about how I felt about moving to Spain before we left. Even though I was completely aware of the fact that regardless of what I said, I'd still be moving to Spain with my parents. The first month I really missed home, and cried myself to sleep the first week. Then I started school, started learning the language, and gradually started integrating myself into the culture. I didn't want to be there at first; I was 12 years old and had been whisked away from everything I'd known and was put into a situation where I didn't know a single thing. I didn't know the language. I knew absolutely nothing about Spanish culture (I wasn't even all that familiar with the whole "flamenco" and "typical Spanish" thing, though I'd certainly heard about flamenco beforehand), and had zero expectations. I went from the known to the unknown in the course of a seven hour flight.
Later on I found out that this lack of knowledge and expectations was a blessing. I learned Castilian Spanish that was untainted by Latin American Spanish, which helped as I began to make friends. Spaniards appreciate it so much more when someone from another country speaks and knows their Spanish rather than the Latin American Spanish. It's not necessarily racism, just plain old "you know me!" Not being at all familiar with the "flamenco culture" and the "sun, sand and paella" culture helped when moving to the Basque Country, where all that is practically anathema. So instead of my pre-conceived notions of Spain that would have to have been gradually erased as I became more and more familiar with the Basque Country, I was a "blank slate" that the Basque culture could etch itself onto. Today, I feel a much stronger affinity towards the "non-Spain" than Spain itself, which I do not share with any of my family members. It also helps that I didn't spend as much time in Andalusia as the rest of my family did, as I moved to Germany for boarding school right before my parents moved to Málaga and was just starting my Junior year of high school when they moved to Sevilla. It helps explain my affinity for Catalunya as "not Spain", I think, as my formative years were spent in another region that is culturally, historically and even linguistically sees itself as different from the rest of Spain. Even though Basque and Catalan cultures are vastly different, the whole mentality of "not being Spanish" is far more relatable to me than that of "being Spanish".
Not only that, but because I was "forced into" the situation, I don't have any recollections of thoughts like "WOW, I'M LIVING IN SPAIN! :D" when waking up in the morning. Instead, it was more along the lines of "Ughhhhhh is it Saturday yet?" just like every other kid in every other country who has to attend school. Also, as a child, it got to the point where I didn't have any contacts back in the US anymore other than my grandparents and some of my aunts and uncles. I didn't have friends who missed me after about a year, I didn't miss any friends. I made some of my own, and those are people I still have contact with, including my best friend, who I met when I was 13 in my first year of Spanish public school. As a kid, you may have that "I want to go home noooooow!" moment when you first leave your home country (that is, if you left when you were old enough to remember it), and you rarely get the "I miss this-or-that from back home!" feeling. Your new culture is your new home, and you begin to forget about your life "back home" in what becomes your parents' home and not yours.
As an adult, when you move abroad, you never really lose your home culture. I just have to look at my parents to see that. What you do is appreciate other cultures more, learn to understand their differences, and realize that you're not the only person in the world. But your culture itself doesn't tend to change. My mom still has issues with cultural appreciation, and still tries to get all of us kids to be "good little Americans". It's like languages. When you learn a language as an adult, you may become completely fluent in it, but there's always something still there from your mother tongue, usually an accent. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad thing. I really wish the stigma against accents would disappear because it is incredibly unfair and not a proper judge of how well a person knows a language or even a culture. And there are exceptions to the rule. But the truth is, it's so much easier to change realities as an adult than as a child. As an adult, you can learn to accept different realities. But as a kid, your reality shifts. What used to be your reality is no longer your reality, and you don't even realize your reality has changed.
Living abroad, especially growing up abroad, is not all fun and games. Your life isn't magically that much better because you live in another country. It's life. However you decide to look on those experiences later on is up to you, but while you're living them, they're not that special. It took me about eight years to figure out that what I'd been given as a child was a blessing. Not that I ever thought of it as a curse, but it just took me that long to realize who I was as a result of having lived abroad. From the time I was 12 till I was around 21 I'd always seen myself as simply American. When I was in Spain I knew I wasn't Spanish, and when I was at boarding school in Germany I was "more American" than most of my classmates because I actually remembered living in the US. It wasn't until I started university in Wisconsin that I realized just how "not American" I was and how much Spain was more a part of me than I had ever known.
So to go back to the post I linked to above, no, living abroad is not an extended vacation. It is not living the life. It is real life. And if you grew up in another country, it becomes even moreso. I applaud the author for bringing that point up because it's something so few people who have lived or are living abroad fail to mention (I can't count study abroad experiences, sorry; I think they're worthwhile and should be taken advantage of, but it doesn't qualify people as having "lived abroad", though it also depends on the experience and how the university back home sets up its programs.). It's something more people need to realize. And my goal is to also bring to light the thoughts and experiences of those of us who had no choice in moving abroad, those who followed our parents and have completely different experiences because of this. TCKs have our own voices that need to be heard as well.
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