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Does it bother you when nobody from your "home" knows what the hell you're talking about? How do you weather your problems adjusting to your original country, after spending a big part of your life elsewhere?
Does it bother you when nobody from your "home" knows what the hell you're talking about? How do you weather your problems adjusting to your original country, after spending a big part of your life elsewhere?
What do you mean no one knows what I'm talking about? Learn the language where you're moving or don't go at all.
It's stupid when people come to the US without knowing English, it's stupid when Americans (or other foreigners) go to other countries without speaking the language.
I had no problems adjusting, I found it quite easy to be honest.. minus the part of food. The food in Latin America is good, but cannot compare to the United States in terms of variety.
Poor choice of words on my part-- the frustration is starting to get to me. What I mean is, when someone returns to their home country after a long time elsewhere, nobody from back home seems to understand their perspective on things. Even though you're a native speaker interacting with another native speaker... YOU, the former expat, have become as foreign as the immigrant with poor language skills and no experience in their new country.
I talk to my parents, friends, strangers, hiring managers. It's like they're having a different conversation with me, than the one I'm having with them. Living in another country seems to take its toll on your communication skills, at least in my experience.
Nah, not really. It's par for the course. No one can really know what life is like in another place till they've been there, and beyond that, China and the West have a discrepancy in terms of how media is disseminated to the masses, what stories they run, etc.
Most people over here are about as informed about the US as people in the US are informed of China.
I haven't been back yet, but I imagine what will take the most getting used again to is the personal space people require, even when you're slipping by them in an aisle or something like that... The dynamics of queuing... Not riding my bike in the opposite lane of traffic... Stuff like that. The social part otherwise I think I'll click back into easily.
Very much so. I've just stopped ever even mentioning that I've ever been anywhere else. I can see people thinking, but too embarrassed to ask, "Just where the hell is Africa, anyway?" Once in a while, a 12-year-old will ask an insightful question. When I lived and worked in Jordan, my dad wrote once and asked "Do you get paid by cash, or a check?"
My dad died when I was in South America, and when putting my name in the death notice as a survivor, my mother, my sister, the mortician and the newspaper editor, between them, couldn't come up with the correct spelling of Bolivia.
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