Going Full-Expat

via twitter @digitalgumshoe

Never go full expat.

Except it's unavoidable! If you truly love living abroad. (fuck)

There comes a point where the novelty of being in a foreign land sponging up the culture, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to all experiences, even the negative, wears off completely. Every expat comes to a time in their expatriate life where the most minor infractions in day to day life make them reminisce about the simplicity of living the way they've knowingly given up; being able to understand every word on every sign, and not having to think about the words coming out of their mouth, or think about which item they need to weigh themselves at the grocery store. It's a point where we go from being: An expat! A world traveler! A nomad!
To: a foreigner. A long term, tax-paying, metro-commuting deer-in-headlights-lookin' foreigner. AKA Going Full-Expat.

It's been about 2 and a half years since I moved to Poland, and almost 4 since I left Canada. And a whole year since I last posted, since I was swept up in my no-money-having apathetic full-expat-going life. While I remain excited about travelling and seeing new places and meeting new people, the majority of my time is spent, get this, being a normal person in a city that has to work and grocery shop and do normal person things, which after a while becomes mundane and predictable. And in a place where you are a foreigner, rather than An Expat! it's not as exciting. So my excitement for every new experience has turned to more or less dread that I have to go outside and attempt to be a functioning human. Do I still like Warsaw? Of course! Do I hate being a foreigner? Of COURSE. Do I accept my fate as being a weirdo because I chose to live in an Eastern European country? Yes. Oh wait no, sorry, I mean Central Europe. Don't tell anyone I said east. (I love you.)


I love that I live in Europe, and I still want to continue living in Europe. But wouldn't it be cool if I didn't have to edit down the sentences I want to say in my head to strangers to as little characters as possible like I'm posting to Twitter? Wouldn't it be swell if after I apologized for not understanding their language, the person I am speaking to did not simply speak louder and slower? Oh thank you, the decibel level has triggered a secret learning cortex in my brain that lay dormant until exactly this moment, THANK YOU.  When we go full expat we earn the right to vent a little, to complain a little, and in our darkest hours, embrace tiny flicks of racism that flare up and then immediately go dark after being overcome with shame. (You asshole, why would you even travel if you're going to be such a racist dick? You don't DESERVE to travel. You make me sick.) You'd be absolutely right to think, well, if people don't want to feel this way then why travel at all? The answer to that is, it's unavoidable to feel these things sometimes when you've been an expat for so long, so you just have to learn to accept the good with the bad and not let it make you a permanent bitter asshole (just a temporary one).  We accept that we will never live somewhere long enough to completely learn the language and assimilate and therefore spend our whole duration of residence being that awkward foreigner. We accept that we will always cause confusion for locals, "why do they live here if they aren't trying to live here permanently and learn the language?" (You don't have to understand sir, but you do have to move your bag off the seat so I can sit down.) Because the great things about working and living abroad grossly outweigh the negative side effects of going full-expat.

When long-term expats get together we all find common ground in our various gripes about the very thing we all specifically chose to get ourselves into, and only have ourselves to blame for. But it still feels great to do it, and we need to, because day to day expat life in a country that is hard to assimilate to can become taxing, and we need to bitch about it in order to keep ourselves from exploding. We tend to go back and forth with complaining about the country and complimenting it to not sound like complete xenophobia assholes, making sure that every time we say anything negative to anyone we back it up with a compliment, which are really just thinly-veiled complaints because we are all terrible people on the inside.

In Warsaw it depends on where you go, whether you are a weirdo or not. University campuses you can be praised for simply existing. Polish students seem eager to share their history and super excited that you've chosen their city to live in, and want to smash all the cool shit about their culture and what their country has done in your face like a first-time mom on facebook. But it's also not totally uncommon for some people to be downright rude to you because you're not Polish. Disregard your opinions because you're not from here, and be unwilling to accept criticism from or treat you fairly as a foreigner. Those people suck, we try very hard to stay away from them but sometimes they are the police, and sometimes you've stepped on some grass you apparently weren't supposed to step on.

The effects of going full-expat can be experienced by a brief trip back to wherever you are from or similar country where your language is spoken. I spent a couple days in Toronto a few months ago for a business trip, and it didn't quite compute until the second day. First of all, holy SHIT are Canadians unnecessarily friendly. Like wow, we are friendly. We are the weird ones in the world okay? There are lots of friendly nations in Europe, Italy comes to mind, but wow Canada, the stereotype is 100% real. Small talk at the register? I just can't do it anymore. I have no idea how to have small talk, I don't even know how to respond to "how are you?". The poor cashier at Canadian Tire where I went to buy my power converter must have thought I was such a dick, I didn't even make eye contact with her, because my ingrained response to people I don't know is to not look or speak or respond to them in any way and be away from them as soon as humanly possible so I don't have to stumble through the "Sorry don't speak ___" tango.

You don't truly understand the luxury of being able to speak without thinking about it until you've been gone for so long. When you are used to speaking with people in English who don't speak it very well, or the flipside, you are used to speaking like a caveman in another language, you sort of forget how to speak your own language fluently. Suddenly you can't remember words, you catch yourself over-simplifying to English native speakers, or the best one, when you can only think of non-English words for the words you want to say. (What is the word for Wäscheständer again?)
Walking around Toronto for 48 hours was the best Vacation I'd ever had. I heard all the subway service announcements, asked strangers for directions and help with the ticket vendor, the vendor gladly explained the service policies to me and which ticket I needed, people told me to have a great day after I bought a coffee, and not one single person brushed against me or touched me physically. The mental weight of thinking hard about what I had to say next was lifted. Then I got on a plane back to Warsaw and the people next to me literally leaned over me  to take pictures out the window at NOTHING on the red-eye flight the entire time. I could tell them to stop, but I couldn't explain why... the dream was over.

Being a foreigner means you get to live the life of someone that makes all your friends back home jealous. The people who think Europe is a fantasy land that only exists for people to backpack through on their year off after high school. The people who say, "oh my god, you moved to Europe? how?" (Uh, on an airplane?) It makes you look like the kind of person who's some high-powered jet-setting celebrity despite actually being the kind of person who carries notes with sentences on them to practice over and over all the way to post office, only to give up when they have to say them in person and then just end up showing the paper to the teller. Or the kind of person that flips out when they hear someone in public speaking your language like when a dog sees another dog.

We all truly love living abroad, if we didn't, we wouldn't, and the best thing about going full-expat is that you truly appreciate where you came from, and the struggles of all people trying to make it work in another country.
So I'll gladly accept looking like an idiot for not being able to explain myself in awkward situations, and literally turning around and running away from people who don't understand my profuse apologies that I do not want to sign up for their store credit card, in exchange for being able to see the world and grow my appreciation for my home country. If anything, being away from Canada has made me love it more, just...not more than not living there.