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Old 11-17-2014, 09:51 PM
 
Location: An Island with a View
757 posts, read 1,021,350 times
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Any expats in the house? Which part of the world you're in? What brought you there in the first place? How long you'd been there? How's life treating you over there? Ever experience any cultural shock? Problem to communicate with the locals? What's their attitude toward foreigners or people who are different from them? Is discrimination a problem there? Did you have a hard time adjusting?

Please share your experience. It'd be interesting to learn how different the world is outside your own country. Not all places are created equal. Some are more interesting, while others not so much. Let's talk about it.
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Old 11-18-2014, 04:50 AM
 
Location: Finland
6,418 posts, read 7,218,790 times
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I'm an expat. From the UK and living in Finland but I have the advantage of knowing the country beforehand from numerous holidays and my mother is Finnish.

Came here for a year as an exchange student and never left. That was seven years ago. Its had its ups and downs but mostly been pretty ok. Being white European most locals don't have a problem with me immigrating here and are nice, with the exception of one elderly couple who were my neighbours at one point but they were grumpy old gits who probably didn't like anyone under the age of 40.

Culture shock wasn't really an issue but the language barrier was and still is to a certain extent. Once I made the decision to stay permanently I was given a place on a language course with other immigrants so that helped a lot but I'm still far from fluent in Finnish.

My friends in the immigrant school however, mostly from Africa and the Middle East experienced a fair bit of racism and discrimination. Hanging out with one African friend down the park and a woman came up to me and asked me where I found that n*****, people shouting at him to go back to his own country and things like that. Really quite unpleasant but it was mainly old alcoholics and skinheads who said these kinds of things, not the average Finn.
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Old 11-18-2014, 05:20 AM
Status: "Wishing all the best of health and peace!" (set 17 hours ago)
 
43,380 posts, read 44,098,420 times
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Although currently I am living in the USA, I was an expat for many years as a child and for a few years as an adult.

As a child, it was difficult changing friends and schools all the time but picking up foreign languages wasn't easier than as an adult. As a child it was easier to become part of the local society than as an adult where the language barriers were difficult therefore I tended to hang out more with other English speakers in general.
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Old 11-18-2014, 05:31 AM
 
Location: Monnem Germany/ from San Diego
2,296 posts, read 3,112,679 times
Reputation: 4796
I have been living in Germany for almost 15 years now. I was in England for sailing championships, after the last day of racing we put our boat in the container and I was planning on hitchhiking around England for a couple of weeks until I had to leave. I was quite low on money but my skipper bought me a train ticket to Salisbury and after visiting Stonehenge I decided to camp at the youth hostel, you could camp for like 5 pounds and use the showers and kitchen…

Sitting in my tent, I saw tall long legged blonde woman riding up on big motorcycle. A while later she had come out of the showers and was standing by a picnic table outside my tent, one thing led to another and then after a year of dating back and forth my friend asked me to sail the Euro Champs on Elba. I threw all my stuff into the container and have been living here in Germany since then.

I don´t know it did not seem like such a different world, after about a year I could speak the language ok and continue to improve. My GF (then Wife then ex) helped me find a job but I was not earning much. She earns plenty and we did ok. My daughter came along, we bought a house and I stayed home with her and renovated the house in the evenings.

What really struck me was the realization that I no longer felt like being in a strange country, it had become all normal and it is strange when you go home and your old home feels foreign.

MY ex wanted to move a few years later, we sold the house moved near Karlsruhe and I got a job in Software support. After two years things kind of fell apart the company went out of business, my wife and I had been fighting. We separated and a year later got divorced. Being jobless and alone, 42 years old, in a new area was a hard time, but the unemployment agency paid for about 15,000€ in IT training and Certs found work pretty quickly and although still not totally recovered I am getting by. I am thankful to Germany for the help I doubt I would have gotten so much help in the US.

I have a great relationship with my Daughter; she lives ½ the time with me and things are going ok. I work and follow my sports and hobbies on the weekends. I married my old sweetheart, we had been talking and half joking that we should get married and when I was on a visit we just did it, she was going to move here with me but unfortunately died 6 weeks after we married. I had been making plans for her to move here.

I just turned 49 I have had a number of relationships since, dunno where it all ends but I keep on keeping on. Sometimes I wonder if I have become a bit German, some say I now speak English with a German accent.
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Old 11-18-2014, 06:19 AM
 
13,498 posts, read 18,119,444 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by R. Crusoe View Post
Any expats in the house?
I never use that term as it seems to imply people who ready to pull out and "go home" sometime in the future. I am an emigrant, where I moved to is my home, though I am not a citizen.

Quote:
Which part of the world you're in? What brought you there in the first place?
Western Europe - presently and most of the time in Portugal, three years in southern Cyprus. When it came time to retire I was not enthused about investigating any of the places I had looked into in the U.S. And I was uneasy with the direction of U.S. society in the previous twenty years, and saw only worse coming with the possible advent of Geo. W. Bush in the White House...so I looked up and faced the fact that there was a whole world out there.
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How long you'd been there?
Since January 2000.
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How's life treating you over there?
I am totally satisfied with my decision and have not once regretted it.
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Ever experience any cultural shock?
Discombobulating situations, yes. Nothing remotely like culture shock.
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Problem to communicate with the locals?
In both countries where I have lived for an extended period many people understand some English. However, if you are living in Portugal (and have not hidden yourself away in a Brit English-speaking enclave), people do expect you, quite understandably, to have at least a modest degree of fluency in Portuguese. I can read a newspaper with about 95% comprehension, can read bills and official notices...I do not understand TV well at all. In spoken speech I can get what I want or need in most situations, and with patient people with a fair level of education I can carry on a halting conversation about more complex subjects. In Cyprus most people can speak English, but I moved to a more remote area and found it useful to have a beginner's knowledge of Greek. Being able to read the Greek alphabet was a necessity if you wanted to avoid constantly getting lost or having to ask where this or that kind of shop was.
Quote:
What's their attitude toward foreigners or people who are different from them?
Quote:
Is discrimination a problem there?
I have never heard the foaming-at-the-mouth kind of fury that seems commonplace in so many threads on C-D forums. However, I know local people who have various prejudices, but they are not a major part of local life and conversation. Our town has a noticeable population of emigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and Brazil and they are fixtures in the local workforce, though a minority. Some have their own businesses. There is some dislike of Africans on the part of returned settlers from the former African colonies, and a vague look-down-your-nose attitude toward Brazilians on the part of some people. There is a community of settled (non-Roma) gypsies, who are very clannish and have their own customs but are a part of the local economic life; whereas the Roma gypsies who descend in the summer to beg and entertain are quite disliked by both the Portuguese and the local gypsies. The hole-in-the-wall café I go to is owned by a Ukrainian woman (her husband is an electrician). The largest number of steady repeat patrons are Portuguese, but there is a fairly large number of Africans, Brazilians and German residents, plus a very small number of tourists.

There are many Brit retirees in the area, but most tend to cluster together and to never learn the language. They are treated respectfully, but their tendency to look down on the local culture and to not be able to speak the language even a little bit creates a streak of low level ill-will toward them. The resident Germans get higher marks as they often learn to speak Portuguese and, thus, are more integrated into the local community.

As an American I benefit from not having any of the stigma of "superiority complex" that adheres to the Brits, and as most American visitors are early-twenties college with their own bad (and well-deserved stereotype), and I am far from their age or generation....I simply don't seem to have a place on the scale they-who-are-not-us. I have yet to meet another local resident American in my town. I have always lived in predominantly Portuguese neighborhoods and in buildings where most of the residents are working class or middle class locals. Thus, my addresses have always located me out of any neighborhoods known to be mainly ex-pat enclaves. This helps, I'm sure.
Quote:
Did you have a hard time adjusting?
No, but then I didn't have the expectation that it would be anything but an unfamiliar, bumpy road. But, I had done plenty of homework and preparation to ensure that I had a fairly accurate idea of what to anticipate. And I had done a good job as it turned out.
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Old 11-18-2014, 06:33 AM
 
13,498 posts, read 18,119,444 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GER308 View Post
...What really struck me was the realization that I no longer felt like being in a strange country, it had become all normal and it is strange when you go home and your old home feels foreign...
Ditto. I feel only a legal connection with the U.S., but no gut feeling. I have only returned twice. Once for 2 weeks (supposedly) in my first year....I paid a penalty and turned in my ticket for one to return in ten days. I was that anxious to get back here.

In 2009 I went for five weeks, after almost ten years living here. Big mistake. I felt really uncomfortable with life in the U.S., and I missed here so much. When the plane came in over Lisbon on the return trip my eyes just well up with tears I was so happy to be back where I feel I belong.
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Old 11-18-2014, 07:29 AM
 
Location: Monnem Germany/ from San Diego
2,296 posts, read 3,112,679 times
Reputation: 4796
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevxu View Post
Ditto. I feel only a legal connection with the U.S., but no gut feeling. I have only returned twice. Once for 2 weeks (supposedly) in my first year....I paid a penalty and turned in my ticket for one to return in ten days. I was that anxious to get back here.

In 2009 I went for five weeks, after almost ten years living here. Big mistake. I felt really uncomfortable with life in the U.S., and I missed here so much. When the plane came in over Lisbon on the return trip my eyes just well up with tears I was so happy to be back where I feel I belong.
I guess I could not say I feel totaly disconnected and some things I miss but my life is here now and here is now as much home as anywhere. Where I come from is a part of me but it is my history and not my future.
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Old 11-18-2014, 07:34 AM
 
671 posts, read 886,130 times
Reputation: 1250
Home is where the heart is...Australia,Philippines,Japan,Mexico and now the USA....Note my screen name,,,USAGeorge......tells it all.
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Old 11-19-2014, 10:01 AM
 
Location: Europe
1,652 posts, read 3,475,126 times
Reputation: 1163
Which part of the world you're in?

I came to Munich (Germany) three months ago.

What brought you there in the first place?

A job in my area, I need to get some good experience.

How long you'd been there? How's life treating you over there?
Three months, life is threating me well although this is not the place of my dreams, but I don't plan to stay for too long. I find everything too slow and people seem hate responsabilities here.

Ever experience any cultural shock? Problem to communicate with the locals?
Yeah I find difficult to have conversations with locals or talk about daily life, family, etc. Even more difficult to make friends, it seems that anybody speaks to anybody, only the necessary things (for example at work)

What's their attitude toward foreigners or people who are different from them?
I've heard this is a racist area, no idea... some of my friends who are also expats tell me that they have problems to get an apartment for example, some locals only hire to Germans, my Landlord is not luckily like that.

Is discrimination a problem there? Did you have a hard time adjusting?

I don't think so, I do not feel discriminate.
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Old 12-29-2014, 08:39 PM
 
5,052 posts, read 13,881,164 times
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I observe stories of extreme adventure, and people having the time of their lives when they have a privilege in opportunity in foreign expatriate existence outside of their own native country. They seem lucky to try out such a dramatic worthwhile experience.

I dream about eventual foreign expatriate living in another country, and I hope to live somewhere in Europe, or Asia for a while after I graduate from college. I am finishing my double major in Architecture, and Computer Information Technology Web Developing Information Administration.

There is usually a higher amount of bright optimism compared to any cynical pessimism coming from elite foreign expatriates living outside of their own native country, and they know there is a version of ultimate entertainment in their real life endeavor.


I went on a travel vacation in 11 various countries up to 23 years old: France, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, USA, and UK/England.

When I am in Romania, I actually stayed in a traditional Romanian villa house in a beach village because of family connections. When visiting Dobrogea Constanta area I never stayed in a hotel there. There is 3 separate summers when I visited more than 1 month each time in July-August. Relevant experience in travel in such an extended amount of time in a residential house of another country almost feels like a foreign, expatriate main event of experience.
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