Hey, can we talk?

I’ve been thinking a lot about communication lately. Being an expat it’s generally a topic that’s thrust to the forefront of my daily life – well pretty much all the time. It’s something people struggle with inside a singular culture, family unit, friendship – it’s not easy apparently. Throw in multiple languages, cultures, etc., woah baby.

I recently read an article by Debito Arudou about the daily grind of cross cultural conversation and how it boils down to about the same five things, no matter how long you’ve been in a country or how well you can speak the native language. If you look foreign, you’re foreign, end of story. I’m not fluent in Thai and I haven’t been here that long, but what I realized recently was that I don’t just feel this from Thais – I feel this same kind of pressure from ‘home.’ What really stood out to me was not so much the experience of being foreign in Asia, but how I’m dealing with the same thing from both continents.

What do I mean, exactly?

Well, here, I have daily passing conversations covering the usual topics posed to foreigners. What do you do here? When will you go back home? Can you speak Thai? Can you eat spicy food? Litany of questions about my reproductive life, doubts that I even like men, what’s my salary, how long is my contract, yada yada. It’s the same nod, smile and move on conversation most of the time. It’s a sea of seemingly harmless, but nosy questions – and a very poignant lack of dept in many interactions.

I truly cherish the moments when any kind of depth or understanding really crosses the language barrier – you can see it in each other’s eyes when a real meaningful connection and human understanding is made, and it can be had in under 3 words, sometimes without them.

That’s not there when someone goes through the motions of “what you should ask foreigners,” making a sale, etc. It’s about a depth of human communication, and it takes some mutual understanding and willingness to change worldviews (from both parties).

Now though, since I no longer inhabit the sphere of American existence in a physical, day-to-day sense – I get the same thing from back home. So, when are you coming home? Aren’t you going to do x, y and then z? Well you WILL move home eventually. When are you going to grad school/getting married/moving to another country blah blah blah. Again, these are not malicious questions or presumptions. These are not particularly harmful or uncaring questions.

But I rarely have a normal conversation anymore, like – this is what I did today or these are the things I talk about with my friends when I get to see them in person; on either side of the pond, in person or on the internet – because SO much of the communication I do manage to engage in boils down to “things to ask a foreigner” or “things to ask the American that no longer lives in America.”

It’s no particularly malicious, but it’s no different from the frequency with which my students use the word ‘teacher.’ When 200 people rush you in the course of one week and chant teacher teacher teacher and try to get your attention RIGHT NOW, anything else is drowned out in the background. (I’m working on breaking my students of this – at least the ridiculous frequency).

It’s the same thing. As an expat, local people, well-meaning people from back home, if they keep in touch with you, they all ask the same questions. Have the same assumptions. Where’s the common ground? People think the only common ground is now those questions they’re asking. But I still just want to talk about what I had for lunch, or the book I’m reading, or any of those things that people get to discuss in their native tongue on a daily basis when they’re living in their home culture. When’s your next flight home? Is not a meaningful conversation, especially when repeated ad naseum.

Where do I really belong if I so rarely engage in a conversation that doesn’t leave me feeling like I’m a nomad that belongs nowhere? I’m a Non-Immigrant in Thailand, an expat from my home country; a wayward traveler in legal documentation and social standing – right down to daily conversation. And you all know how much I like to talk.

Just like students, the people engaging in these behaviors cannot see the bigger picture of how that behavior, taken as a collective, affects the teacher. They mean no harm. The student has no life experience to compare to the teacher’s position. The citizen that has not lived abroad doesn’t see the position unique to the expatriate. And truly – there is a prevailing view that it is up to the expatriate to do all the adjusting. THEY chose to leave. THEY chose to go somewhere else. All responsibility lies with them. No one else need adjust their worldview based on another person’s experience.

I’ve heard lots of things when I’ve brought this subject up.
“Just ignore it.”

“Just cut those strings.”
“Go home then.”
“Find a different place.”
“Oh, you’ll get that everywhere.”*

“Relax.”

“Chill out.”

“Oh they just don’t know.”
“Try to be understanding.”
“That’s why you should keep things within your circle of trust.”
“You’re being racist.”
“You need to be more open minded.”
“Try to accept the culture.”
“They’re just trying to show they care.”

On and on the suggestions go. Humans are designed to be social creatures. And right down to the people I care about most deeply and trust most – I get this sense of communication that scratches the surface and leaves me in a box between two cultures – I fit in neither. I lack depth in either. I don’t need advice. I don’t need suggestions. I just want a real, truthful conversation. It doesn’t have to have deep meaning – just a true connection. But I don’t know many people I can have those with any more.

When frankly, I’d really just like to hear about how you had to work 1.5 hours of overtime, got a flat tire and then played Angry Birds when you got home. You think that’s boring, talking to the expat off on that crazy world adventure of theirs that you’re not having. It’d be better to just let her be, her stories are so much more interesting. As I’m shouting them into a vacuum here on the podium of internet cyberspace. That’s not a conversation. Maybe lots of people read what I write – and that’s wonderful. When’s the last time we spoke? Emailed? Anything?

Perhaps it’s odd to argue that a conversation of the day-to-day banality of general living is more fulfilling than asking ‘bigger’ questions about life abroad. But if you’ve never experienced the vacuum that occurs without it – you wouldn’t have the frame of reference to realize that asking the ‘big’ questions while ignoring the small ones leaves a huge gap. And really, have we yet learned how to communicate in this hyper connected world? *Oh, you’ll get that everywhere. Perhaps we’re simply losing the art of deep, connected conversations in this age of status updates, blog posts and the like. Maybe it’s just starting with the populations that are already experiencing more isolation than others, but are simultaneously globally connected because of our social media explosion; because it doesn’t matter what culture I’m in – almost all our conversations are lacking depth. I could move ‘home’ today – and I’d still be in this pickle. And that’s not something I know how to get back regardless of which culture I’m immersed in, including my own.

All The Single Ladies

Justifying Life as a Single Female Expat

I really just have to write this post. It’s something all expats deal with to some extent, and it’s an issue that doesn’t stop bothering me. If you dislike sarcasm or reading posts with any cynicism or negativity, skip this one. I can only be who I am. But I feel my message is important.

1: If I were an American deployed in the military, I would have full support for being away. Regardless of your position on American foreign policy, it’s just too taboo to say otherwise about our men and women in uniform. Well, unless they are women that have been raped by their peers, then they were asking for it and we shouldn’t have to pay for them to receive counseling. *shakes head at the state of things* But really, my point stands: If I were deployed I bet not ONE person would have the guts to call me selfish or guilt trip me about not coming home more often. Because I’m making sacrifices for my country, so I must not be selfish.

2: If I were abroad following my husband. If I were married and my husband was transferred abroad, or if I moved abroad in order to marry someone, people might try and talk HIM out of it or talk him into moving to the US, but I would have full support. Oh, the poor expat wife, it must be sooo hard for you to be off in a foreign land where not all of the toilets are Western and the taxis don’t have seatbelts! The horror! And if you have kids: have you found a suitable International school? Will the kid’s education suffer? Newsflash: the idea that women can’t pee standing up is a lie. And guess what else? Urine does not carry diseases (95% of the time or so). As for education – don’t get me started on the state education being systematically dismantled.

3: If you’re just taking a ‘gap year’ to ‘find yourself.’ Oh kids today, they’ve just gotta get the travel bug out of their systems before they come home and ‘get their real job.’ It’s just a phase, they’ll grow out of it.

Tell me again, what’s a real job? How about a fake job? My personal take on the semantics of this is that no job is ‘real,’ because we all aspire to attain a perfect job that doesn’t really exist. Other views include the idea that all jobs are real – because, truly, when is valid employment NOT real? I added the qualifier of ‘valid,’ there are certainly scams out there.

4. And then there’s the rest of us. The Misfits. The true traitors of our country who dare to stay abroad for more than one year. There must be something pathologically wrong with us to stay away from the great First World Pillars of the planet, the land of milk and honey. The Patriot Act says so. Oh it doesn’t say that? Well do you know what it does say? That’s what I thought. Also, I’m lactose intolerant and it’s more like the land of subsidized high fructose corn syrup and cheap laundered Chinese honey. I know I know, there she goes again with her cynicism… Really though, the expat crowd, we’re all off our rockers. Every last one. Maybe we have neurosyphilis. Yes, yes we must test expats for that annually! Sluts, the lot of them! With dollar signs on their foreheads!

WHAT?!?! You’re not coming home?!?!? WHY?!?!
Uh, can I even get a job at Starbucks at ‘home?’ NO!
Do you realize it takes me exactly one month’s salary for that round trip ticket?
Do you have any concept of how a Thai Government school calendar operates? Yes I no longer work at a Thai government school. See point one, add relocation, visa reapplication and haven’t gotten my next paycheck yet costs. Consider this along with plane ticket.

But, is it safe for you to be abroad as a single female?
Seriously? Really seriously? Would you like me to pull up the crime statistics for YOUR city? That’s what I thought.

But you’re living in a third world country!
I have better access to health care here than I do anywhere in the United States. And if push really comes to shove, they can see me for cash. This has served me many times, where in the states I would have had to rush back to my mother to beg for grocery money when the medical bills came due (on her health insurance at the time, to boot).
I have greater access to public transport than I’ve had in any other place I’ve lived. I get on just fine with no car.

But, you could make more money in the US!
Again, working where, exactly, that would hire me in my field and that I would be happy doing, and that would provide health care and an actual living wage? There are millions of Americans that would like to know. McDonald’s is not a valid response to someone with a Bachelor’s degree. Your mom will give you money or you can save money by living at home is also not a valid concept for a 20 something when there are clear alternatives available. Not sorry they are abroad. If you’re a 20 something at your parents, I’m sorry – and I understand your pain, fellow graduate of the Great Recession. We’ll make it through.

But, how are you going to find a boyfriend? Why can’t you find a boyfriend there?
Again, this is your concern why? And that worked out so well in every case in the states, didn’t it? You know, it’s kind of nice to just book a flight to Chiang Mai and just go. I require permission from no man. If I were to get married, I would simply forfeit my rights to sign for many things on my own without my husband’s permission in many countries. I want to do that why? Last time I checked possession of a vagina is not considered a mental disorder (well, unless you were born with a penis in Thailand, then the Thai military DOES classify this as a mental disorder). Though I wouldn’t put it past the Republicans.

But, you keep getting sick!
And this is different from my life in America how? Right, in that I can afford to go to the doctor here, they speak English and the quality of care is just fine.

But, America has the best sandwiches!
Life is about sacrifices.

I realize that most American citizens will probably never understand my expat life. I will still be asked when I plan to come home, when I’m finding a boyfriend/getting married/getting pregnant (a global curse), when I’m going to grad school and I will still constantly be asked why I left the US in the first place.

I will be told to be more positive about my travel adventures; to tone it down, calm down, there will always be unsolicited advice. But you know what? I’m living a life that I am proud of. Can you say that? Or are you living vicariously through people that are following dreams you turned down or gave up? Well-behaved women rarely make history. And living your dreams does not play out in the utopian way that non-lived dreams are authored.

I’d like you to consider the fact that you would not question someone in the military, a married woman or a single male going abroad (at least not as much as us ladies), so effectively, you’re sabotaging the support network of us single ladies abroad when you ask these things and nothing else – and frankly, we would like the same support everyone else gets. We know things like the glass ceiling, sexual harassment, and unequal rights aren’t going away. But do we have to get the unintended, brain washed comments from those who care for us, whom we care for? I bet you’ve never thought of those questions that way. But think about how you’d feel if these queries comprised 90% of your communication from back ‘home.’ Does that compose 90% of your daily conversations? No, it doesn’t.

I’m sorry you made other choices in life, I’m sorry you wished you could travel, wished you were young, wished you hadn’t had kids, whatever. But that is your choice. And this is mine. I am not selfish. I am not unsafe. And I’ve done alright even as I’ve learned that people in my home country may never understand, and as my support network has retreated inwards and I’ve had to move on. I admit it bothers me now, to think that so many people I care about simply do not have the frame of reference or common experience to connect on the new levels I have found. I don’t mean to attack anyone’s lack of experience. And I realize to some, this will just be seen as more whining.

But I hope that perhaps you will start to understand the fact that, perhaps there is great misunderstanding even when you mean well. And the fact that I’ve chosen to lead a life quite different is simply that – different.

And I will never have to say, I wish I had traveled instead. Will you?