The Displaced Nation

A home for international creatives

Tag Archives: New Zealand

THE DISPLACED DO-GOODER: Still adjusting to the land of mean mossies, burning bodegas & fab fried foods

Leave a comment Posted by on October 28, 2017

Columnist Joanna Sun is back. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, she spent her college years studying public health in New Zealand. And now she’s displaced again—on a philanthropic mission in the Dominican Republic. This month we have the chance to catch up on her latest linguistic, medical, and foodie exploits. —ML Awanohara

Hello, Displaced Nationers.

Wow, time flies. I’ve already surpassed my six-month mark here in the Dominican Republic. It seems like just a few weeks ago that I arrived, but I’ve already completed half of my year here!

Spanish-level check: it’s still quite terrible but I’m occasionally managing to hold longer conversations. (YES!)

Project progress: I’m still working on improving the nutritional intake of the residents of this orphanage, as reported in my last post, but progress has been slow. There are so few of us volunteers here now. The program has two intakes of volunteers a year: one in January (when I came) and the other in July. Thus when July came around, many volunteers left, leaving the house emptier since the January volunteers have yet to arrive. It feels odd. Once we were 12 but are now down to six!

Dominican mosquitoes are not my friends

Many things have happened since my last post. For a start, I’ve had an agonizing time of it with Dominican mosquitoes. I am always that person who gets bitten the most wherever I may be. Here in the DR, however, oh dear lord, it is out of control! Even when I wear jeans they somehow manage to bite me. Even with repellent, which I swear is so bad for my skin, they bite me. No matter what I do, they bite me! It is not as huge a deal for the other volunteers. Something must be in my blood. I am covered in mosquito bites all over my arms and legs. Several of the bites have gotten inflamed and turned into blisters.

I am a deep, deep sleeper but my bites are so itchy that they actually wake me up. Even now as I work on this column, I have swollen bites all around my ankles that I am really trying hard not to scratch…

And you know what the worst part is—well, apart from the dangers of getting mosquito-borne diseases? Even after the itchiness and swelling goes down, it still leaves a brown mark. My skin discolours and it will stay that way for months until it fades away.

Now, this is not news to me since it happened prior to my DR days. But this time I have discoloration all over me! My legs especially look horrendous, as though I have a skin infection of some sort…

Some people told me that the marks will not go away! I sincerely hope not…fingers crossed for that one.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I recently tried using natural repellent without DEET and then coconut oil with lavender…to no avail.

But the other day I was talking to some of the tias here (which translates to aunty—they are the ones who will sleep at the house with the children and look after them), and they told me to use shampoo. At first I was reluctant: I mean, shampoo? But one day one of the tias saw me getting eaten alive, she gave me a dollop of shampoo to use. I was skeptical, but wow, it actually worked! I still get bites—it’s not a perfect repellent—but out of all the methods I’ve tried, shampoo has been the most effective, which I find amazing. The only down side is that it is sticky and you need to be careful about using it when it rains…as you can imagine the suds it would churn up should your skin come in contact with water.

But I would still like to find a non-chemical option. If someone has suggestions for how to repel mosquitoes without covering myself with DEET, please leave in the comments!

P.s. On a related note, the ants here bite and sting like crazy—I think they’re a type of red fire ants….

Nobody talks about the weather…but me!

The weather has been…interesting. In a previous post I wrote about living in New Zealand. That country is known for its erratic weather patterns: it will be sunny at one point and then all of a sudden start raining. You can never trust the weather forecast, we used to say.

Little did I know it could be worse than that! Here in the DR the weather changes so drastically—like right now it is really sunny. In five minutes I won’t be at all surprised if the weather start raining like there is no tomorrow. This pattern has been getting worse as we approach the rainy season; I am not looking forward. It is hard enough already to bear the heat in this place.

Heat coupled with rain means super humid conditions—and just imagine the amount of mosquitoes! I’m really not looking forward to it at all… Oh, and surprise surprise, my rain jacket/wind breaker ripped the other day…just my luck!

Peanut butter, chocolate & pica pollo: oh my!

Readers, as you know I cannot write a post without mentioning food. At this point I would like to report that I’ve acquired a rather odd taste for peanut butter during my six months here. Now I am not a huge fan of peanuts. I love all other types of nuts (which are expensive here); but peanuts have never really been my thing—let alone peanut butter. Nowadays, however, I have changed. I am eating peanut butter sandwiches with honey, peanut butter on crackers… I am going crazy over peanut butter. I am not sure why…

Speaking of which, in the town nearest here, San Pedro De Macorís, there was a grocery store named Iberia that had these nice chocolates. I loved going there and buying them. Then about two months ago? There was a fire and Iberia burned down… So now I am going to a different grocery store, Jumbo; and they do not carry my chocolate brand!

I have to say, as a person who prides herself on eating healthy on a regular basis, I do not always come across as such. Admittedly, I occasionally indulge in sugary and fried foods… One more delicious fried food I’ve discovered here is pica pollo. They call this desih omida de Chino (Chinese food), which is odd to me because I’m not sure why they would think fried chicken is Chinese food. But it is true that most of the pica pollo stores are owned by Chinese businessmen and they do serve Asian-style fried rice and vegetables. Pica pollo is the go-to food for Dominicans (and myself) because it is everywhere, cheap, and really delicious.

Now to talk more about the better foods I am eating: I am in fruit heaven! Mostly I eat pineapples and mangoes. Wow, they are so sweet and juicy I could live off them! There are also papayas here—but I’m not a huge fan. They also have amazing melon and of course bananas: not even in question! Since they have such extraordinary fruits, the jugo (juice) they make is also top notch, and the smoothies are quite nice also, but I usually will drink jugo naturales since I do not like the milk here and also tell them to take it easy on the sugar, because they will immerse that smoothie with sugar even though the fruits are sweet like no other.

Next I may start talking about the places I have visited here so far, unless you have topics you’d like me to cover. Hope you are all well!

* * *

Thanks, Joanna. You’ve made it sound like it’s never a dull moment in the DR, with volunteers coming and going, rainstorms suddenly arriving, grocery stories burning down, and so much else. I think I can speak for all your fans in saying: we look forward to your next post!

Readers, any thoughts for Joanna, or questions you’d like her to address in future posts? Please let us know in the comments.

STAY TUNED for next week’s fab posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of biweekly posts from The Displaced Nation and much, much more. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

Photo credits:
Opening photo, mossie bite photo and food photo supplied. Caribbean beach via Pixabay.

The Displaced Do-Gooder , , , , , , , , , ,

THE DISPLACED DO-GOODER: Is the Dominican Republic ready for the Korean answer to Jamie Oliver?

5 Comments Posted by on August 20, 2017

Columnist Joanna Sun is back. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, she spent her college years studying public health in New Zealand. And now she’s displaced again—on a philanthropic mission in the Dominican Republic. This month we have the chance to catch up on her latest linguistic and culinary exploits. —ML Awanohara

Hello, Displaced Nationers.

In my last post, I talked about how I came to live in New Zealand, which in so many ways was nearly opposite to my home country of Korea.

Now let’s turn back to the present, to my vibrant life in the Dominican Republic. I’m five months in…and counting.

The good news is, I’ve been a bit busier of late, having kind of (?) adjusted to my new conditions. I mean, I still feel homesick and miss my family and friends, but because I’m keeping myself occupied, my mind doesn’t wander elsewhere so much. The old adage “Work hard, play hard” seems to be true: it keeps you from focusing on your problems.

Hm, what kind of Spanish am I learning?

As those who read my first post will know, I’m working as a clinical assistant in an orphanage called Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (which literally translates as “Our Little Brothers and Sisters”), in the southeastern part of DR. Sometimes I have a huge amount of work to do, but other times it is quiet and, honestly speaking, I get bored.

Whenever boredom comes creeping in, I take the opportunity to practice my Spanish with the doctor, who in turn tries to pick up some English words from me here and there.

But the thing is, the Spanish I’m learning is Dominican Spanish. They have their own distinct style of speaking, their accent differs and THEY DON’T PRONOUNCE THEIR S’s!

So, for example, they use the word fresca to describe children who are acting a bit cheeky and have an attitude. Recently I learned that in other Spanish-speaking nations, this word more often means “fresh” or “cool”.

Anyway, for the longest time I thought people were saying “freca,” just because they never pronounce the “s”. Hm, why bother having an “s” if you can’t be bothered pronouncing it? Actually, I only learnt yesterday that the word is actually fresca.

Even in the case of popular names, they do not pronounce ”s”; for instance, the name Crismeily, which is quite a common here, is pronounced “Crimeily”!

On top of this, there are also regional pronunciation differences. The doctor I’ve been conversing with has a regional accent, for instance. I cannot quite put my finger on how it is different from most of the Spanish around me, but it is definitely different. Like most people when learning a new language, I find listening much easier than speaking. I can understand a bit of Spanish now but still struggle to formulate my own sentences.

Not so glorious food!

Given that I studied the health sciences, it is perhaps not surprising that I’ve taken on an extracurricular project: I want to see if I can help change the dietary habits of the orphanage children and staff.

I became concerned upon realizing that the average height of kids is lower compared to other Caribbean nations and that the Dominicans have a significantly shorter life expectancy. Many suffer from hypertension and diabetes from an early age—problems that can be traced to diet.

I soon noticed that the proportions of the various food groups are completely off here. In the DR, they tend to limit vegetables and fruits in favor of carbohydrates: namely, rice and beans. No one seems to have heard that you should limit carbohydrates and eat lots of vegetables and fruits. Protein intake, too, isn’t what it should be.

(That said, the children living in this orphanage have it better than the kids who who are living off sugar canes or solely on rice and beans.)

And did I mention their love for fried foods? Don’t get me wrong, I love fried foods, too, and have been gorging at the empanadas, plátanos fritos (fried plantains) and even fried yuka (the edible root of the cassava plant). But really, these foods haven’t been good for my waist and neither are they good for anyone else in this place.

Before I got here, another volunteer, who is in his second year, started a project on improving nutrition. He has asked me to help him out. Hopefully I will get the ball rolling soon and can implement my ideas for new dietary programmes.

Tell me, have I bitten off more than I can chew?

Adding protein and a smoothie to a traditional DR meal

Bring on the cake!

But before I go, allow me a moment to brag about a food-related accomplishment I baked my very first cake! Yes, you heard that right. It took reaching the ripe old age of 22 and coming all the way to the Dominican Republic for me to bake a cake.

Now listen, I love cooking, but baking has never been my thing! I tried baking brownies and cookies in the past—and they were not something you would want to eat.

The problem is, I don’t like following exact measurements. With cooking you can estimate, you can add more things, and be creative with spices and ingredients. But baking requires an appreciation for science and a willingness to be exact. No wonder I screw up every time I attempt to bake something.

But as a volunteer, I am obliged to celebrate birthdays with the kids in my house—and the birthday of one of my kids was coming up at the end of last month. So it’s good I gave it a go and didn’t fail miserably.

Okay, doesn’t look like the most amazing cake on the earth, but it was quite nice…

* * *

Thanks, Joanna! That cake looks yummy! And having written about Jamie Oliver in the early days of the Displaced Nation, I recognize the syndrome. Since repatriating from Tokyo to New York, I keep wanting to rewrite the diets of people here in the United States to be more Japanese: smaller portions, more variety. Good luck with your project!

Readers, any thoughts for Joanna, or questions you’d like her to address in future posts? Please let us know in the comments.

STAY TUNED for next week’s fab posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of biweekly posts from The Displaced Nation and much, much more. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

Photo credits:
Opening photo and two food photos were supplied.
Español, by Daniel Lobo via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

The Displaced Do-Gooder , , , , , , , , ,

THE DISPLACED DO-GOODER: My third-culture-kid years in the land of kiwis, hobbits & jandals

2 Comments Posted by on June 30, 2017

New columnist Joanna Sun is back. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, she spent her college years studying public health in New Zealand. And now she’s displaced again—on a philanthropic mission in the Dominican Republic. This month she shares with us what it was like to live as a Third Culture Kid in Auckland. —ML Awanohara

Hello, Displaced Nationers.

As I explained in my last post, the Dominican Republic is not my first experience of living abroad. The first time I ventured overseas was to New Zealand, for education.

As I’m sure you know, most Asian countries put a strong emphasis on education and academic excellence. When I was growing up there was a boom in teaching children English to children in Korea. (It’s an even bigger trend now.)

I think that was why, when my aunty emigrated to Auckland, New Zealand, my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to join her for a few months. Initially, it was a short-term plan: I would stay with my aunty for around a year or so to pick up English. But then I ended up falling in love with the country and decided to stay for much longer. I attended, and then graduated from, the University of Auckland, with a degree in public health.

When my parents first approached me about going to NZ, I was 10 and didn’t have a clear picture of what I was really getting into. Mainly I was intrigued by the idea of going on a plane. As explained in my last post, I always get nauseous on planes, but this first time I was too excited to care.

Knowing what I know now, I wonder why I wasn’t more terrified of going into a country with another language and culture. I guess that is just a part of my personality because I was excited above all—and didn’t even care that I wouldn’t see my parents for a few months (sorry, mum and dad, love you!).

Looking back, I also don’t recall what it was about NZ that impressed my youthful mind so much. It might have been the amazing beaches everywhere you turn or just the tranquil and peaceful vibe that Kiwis give off. Whatever it was, I fell madly in love with NZ and still feel passionate about that part of the world. If I was given another opportunity to choose between NZ and Korea, I would choose NZ all over again.

What I missed about Korea: The food!

This is not to say I don’t love my native Korea. I do! Like any other person on earth, I am not happy with every single aspect of home. For instance, Koreans put too much focus on academic excellence, leaving little room for creativity.

But I love lots of things about Korean culture—especially the food. If you’re not familiar with Korean cuisine, can I urge you to go and try:
● Korean fried chicken;
● Bulgogi (marinated beef; 불고기); and
● Soondae (순대), which is similar to a blood sausage, with tteok-bokki (떡볶기), or fried Korean rice cake, in a spicy sauce.

If anyone visits Korea any time soon, eat for me so I can live vicariously, because it has been five months since I ate decent Korean food. As you can imagine in a place like the Dominican Republic, where all Asians are referred to as Chinos (see my last post), you don’t see very many Korean restaurants. (That said, I have found two Korean restaurants in the DR, but I’ll save for a later account.)

Ah, also, should you ever get a chance to visit Korea, there is no need for a car—because the public transport system, especially in Seoul, is amazing. You get on the subway and it connects to everywhere you might want to go. The system never ceases to amaze me. Subways are punctual, cheap and easy to use. Even if you get lost there is an identical loop that will take you back to where you got on, so there is no need to panic. (Though I would not recommend using it in rush hour…)

Novelties and culture shocks aplenty

Getting back to NZ: it was my first time to be surrounded by mostly Caucasian, English-speaking people. Sure, I had seen foreign people on TV and all, but there were very few living in Korea, even in Seoul, where I grew up.

(Nowadays it is different. I am surprised to see more and more foreigners in Korea every time I visit. If you go to Korea now, you will find a place in Seoul called Itaewon (이태원), which is basically a foreigner’s town. They have lots of restaurants, entertainment and shops that are targeted at tourists.)

It was also my first experience of diversity. Compared to NZ, Korea is much more homogeneous, with a single race and culture. I understood the concept of a melting pot, where all the cultures are expected to blend with each other, but I noticed there were people who seemed opposed to that idea. I never quite understood how it works. Like everything else, diversity has its positives and its negatives, I guess.

Similar to other first-timers in NZ, my most memorable experiences include:
● Watching the haka, the traditional war dance of the Māori.
● Tasting pavlova—let’s not even get into the argument of whether it is from Aussies or Kiwis; nonetheless it was my first time trying this marvelous dessert.
● Gorging on kiwi fruit.
● Seeing a kiwi bird for the first time (the national symbol of NZ, from which the nickname comes).
● Picking up Kiwi slang that I use to this day in the DR (English speakers from other parts of the world haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about): e.g., togs (swimsuits) and jandals (flip flops/thongs).

Back when I first arrived in NZ, the Korean community was relatively small, which probably helped me learn English quickly, because in around a year I was reasonably fluent. Of course, it took much longer to become fully proficient.

I am seeing the same pattern here in the DR. Not many people speak English, and even when they do it is very basic. So I am hoping this will help me to pick up Spanish faster.

Impressions of the South Island

Moving on, I am assuming you have heard that NZ is the place that brought J.R.R. Tolkien’s landscapes to life. That was thanks to New Zealand-born filmmaker Peter Jackson, who opted to film The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy entirely in his native land, taking advantage of the astonishing terrains on both North and South Islands.

NZ’s South Island is, of course, very different, from the North Island, starting with the climate. It snows in the South Island in winters but not in the North, where the lakes keep temperatures warmer.

I visited the South Island only once during my stay: venturing to Queenstown, a resort town in the southwestern part of the island. I did all the things a tourist would do, including skiing, visiting Ferg Burger (which, by the way, is amazing: they make burgers the size of your face; I really think they should bring it up to the North, too) and going on the luge ride.

I did not, however, try out bungee jumping… I am terrified of heights. As even going up there gives me the creeps, I feared I might have a heart attack once I started free falling.

Ah, and one last thing: there’s a cookie bar in Queenstown! It serves hot cookies and there’s warm milk on tap at the “bar”. Since I do not enjoy drinking all that much, I was in my element here: lots of chocolate, sugar and warm milk.

Writing this post about my first displacement makes me realize how grateful I am to my parents for allowing me to see the world from a different lens and experience another culture, at such a young age. I also want to thank my lovely aunty, who sacrificed so much to look after me, and put up with my rebellious teenage years.

At some point in the future, I might write about how being displaced in NZ affected my feelings about Korea (and even the Dominican Republic): it’s really been an interesting dynamic.

* * *

Thanks, Joanna! I love the way you’ve managed to recapture your first impressions of New Zealand as a Korean youth. Those burgers and that cookie bar sound amazing! And I don’t blame you for giving bungee jumping a miss: it shows me you are sensible!

Readers, any thoughts for Joanna, or questions you’d like her to address in future posts? Please let us know in the comments.

STAY TUNED for next week’s fab posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of biweekly posts from The Displaced Nation and much, much more. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

Photo credits:
Opening photo, Korean food photo, and photos of NZ and DR beaches were supplied.
North Island collage: All photos from Pixabay except for: [Street scene in Auckland], by Naoki Sato via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0); and [jandals], by jase via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
South Island collage: Photos from Pixabay except for the two food ones: Ferg Loves You, by Nogwater via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0); and FB photo by Cookie Tie Cookie Bar Queenstown.

The Displaced Do-Gooder , , , , , , , , ,

THE DISPLACED DO-GOODER: Introducing myself and my new home in the Dominican Republic

6 Comments Posted by on May 12, 2017

Today we welcome new columnist Joanna Sun. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, she spent her college years studying public health in New Zealand. And now she’s displaced again—on a philanthropic mission in the Dominican Republic. Every month she will be sharing a few of the highlights of this new, and even more daring, faraway adventure. —ML Awanohara

Hello, Displaced Nationers. Let me start by saying that my first entry into the Dominican Republic (DR), in January of this year, was not all that great—not because someone treated me rudely or something horrendous happened. It was simply because I am a terrible flyer.

I love to tell people I plan to travel the world one day if it weren’t for the fact that flying makes me sick. I cannot eat, sleep or do anything on planes. There’s no such thing as the “friendly skies” for me. Being in a plane just makes me feel groggy and ill.

On this occasion, I had a 13-hour flight from Seoul to JFK and then another four hours to the DR. By the time I reached New York, I was feeling so nauseous I had to ask for a paper bag. By the end of the journey, I could not give a rat’s ass about being in the DR. Plus, it was late at night and I could hardly see anything.

How did this happen?

By now you may be wondering: how did I choose to come here in the first place, a Korean woman who did her education in New Zealand? I graduated university with a degree in public health and returned to Korea, Seoul, where my family resides only to find myself unemployed and leading a somewhat lackluster life.

Despite my problem with flying, I’d always seen myself as going on some kind of overseas adventure, most likely as a public health volunteer. Back in my home country, I did some research and came across an interesting opportunity right in my field: working with children in an orphanage called Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (which literally translates as “Our Little Brothers and Sisters”), in San Pedro de Macorís, in the southeastern part of the Dominican Republic. (The umbrella organization is NPH USA, which supports homes for orphaned, abandoned or otherwise disadvantaged children not only in the DR but also in Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru.)

A few weeks later I received a letter of acceptance, and my DR adventure began.

A rough landing…but I love it here (I think)

Of course, the fantasy of helping people in a foreign land is one thing; the reality can be rather more challenging. Once I reached the house where I would be living for a year or more, I felt suddenly alone. I woke up the next morning thinking, here I am on the other side of the globe, in a foreign place to which I have no connection and don’t even speak the language: what was I thinking? For the first week or so, I kept to myself. I didn’t even eat properly and just sat in my room sulking or sleeping.

I should also mention that I had a horrible time getting over my jet lag. With a 13-hour time difference, it was literally the difference of day and night. My first few days in the DR was the first time I realised, wow, I really can sleep for more than 12 hours a day. I was constantly napping and sleeping, and even when I was awake I wasn’t really all that conscious.

Fortunately, time helps. Two months have now passed, and I can honestly say I love being in the DR. Yes, language and cultural barriers are still getting to me. I have a hard time communicating in Spanish, and that gets in the way of my job sometimes. I can’t really formulate sentences yet; most of the time I talk in broken Spanish: I just throw vocabulary out there and hope the other person will understand what I mean.

But I love it here, I think, and am so thankful for the opportunity.

Getting called out for being an Asian woman

Yes, I do get called out on the streets for being a woman—and in my case, also for being Asian. No matter what part of Asia you are from, people here will collectively call you China/Chino. This I am relatively used to by now. I have come to accept it as it is and just ignore it mostly. (Even if I didn’t want to ignore it, my Spanish is so minimal that I couldn’t possibly hold my own in a verbal argument.)

I have mentioned this reception to some Dominicans, but the response I always get is: it’s not a big deal, people don’t mean to offend you. This response surprises me, because whenever I tell non-Dominicans about it, they invariably take offense on my behalf, along the lines of, “How can they collectively call all Asians just Chinese?” or “Do they not know that Asia does not consist just of China?”

Maybe Dominicans are not used to seeing many Asian people who are not from China? Occasionally, someone will ask if I’m Chinese and, when I say no, some of them will ask: Japan? I say no again, and they go, “Then where?” When I tell them Korea, many of them just nod—and I wonder if they have ever heard of my country.

Occasionally, though, I’ll meet someone who has heard of Korea, and the next thing they will ask is: Corea del Norte o Del Sur? When I say South, they often say: “I really want to visit North Korea.” And then we have this whole new conversation about why they should not try to go to North Korea.

Gradually I am also picking up some special Dominican words. The most interesting one I’ve encountered so far is guapa. In other Spanish-speaking countries, guapa means pretty and cute, but here it means “angry”. Hm, I wonder how the word cute turned into angry? Curiouser and curiouser.

Santo Domingo, the DR’s capital city, has a small Chinatown but no Koreatown.

Allow me to introduce my little angels

Moving on to my job: as I mentioned, it involves looking after children. I am working in a clinic as a clinical assistant/public health coordinator, which has been set up inside an orphanage. I have been given the additional duty of hanging out with the kids and basically acting as their friend or sister. I am assigned to what I call the “baby house”: the youngest child is two years old and the oldest, seven. Every day in that house is spectacular; so much energy—and yes, they fight and scream from time to time, but they are also my little angels. As much as they have become attached to me, I have become attached to them.

I play with them and spend most of my evenings with them before putting them to bed. The first words I learnt that I continue to use frequently are: cuidado (watch out!), tranquillo (quiet!), and mi amor (my love). These words expanded my Spanish but also taught me that, sometimes, a few words are all you really need. Who needs verbs (and verb tenses)?

My plan is to stay and work here for about a year, maybe a bit more depending on how I get on. It is after all volunteer work; as much as I love the concept of being able to help people, I also know that life won’t wait for me and volunteering cannot be something permanent.

This is the first of many posts to come, and I hope that as time goes on, I will learn more and be able to share with all of you how amazing the DR is. But the next time I write, I plan to talk about my first displaced adventure, as a Korean woman going to New Zealand for an education. Korean and Kiwi: quite a combo, I think you’ll agree!

* * *

Thanks, Joanna! I have to say, your first post reminds me of the early days of the Displaced Nation, when we devoted a whole month to posting on the theme of “global philanthropy.” One of my own posts from that era, 7 extraordinary women travelers with a passion to save souls, is still one of our most popular. It seems that women have long traveled the world for philanthropic reasons. Of course in days of old, they went by ship. But is going by plane actually better? Perhaps not in your case… 😦 In any event, thank you for providing such an honest first-hand account of your attempt to do good in the DR.

Readers, any thoughts for Joanna, or questions you’d like her to address in future posts? Please let us know in the comments.

STAY TUNED for next week’s fab posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of biweekly posts from The Displaced Nation and much, much more. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

Photo credits: All photos supplied.

The Displaced Do-Gooder , , , , , ,

CULTURE SHOCK TOOLBOX: Expats & TCKs, when the culture shocks pile up, pull out the manual or consult an expert

5 Comments Posted by on February 4, 2017


Transitions enthusiast H.E. Rybol is back with her first guest of 2017.

Happy February, Displaced Nationers!

Meet my fellow ATCK Diahann Reyes-Lane. You might know her already from Elizabeth Liang’s lovely interview for TCK Talent. If you don’t, Diahann is a former CNN journalist and Hollywood actress who now works as a coach for writers and artists.

In her own creative life, Diahann is a blogger, writer, and performer. In Stories From The Belly, her blog about “the female body and its appetites,” Diahann addresses feminism, body image, identity culture, food and travel. Her poems and essays have been published in WriteGirl anthologies Emotional Map of Los Angeles, You Are Here and No Character Limit. She has written a number of chapbooks: Howl Naked Raccoon the Moon; Moon Goddess; and Basketball Dome of Tears. And she has performed at the Hollywood FringeFestival and read her stories at Beyond Baroque in Venice. Currently, she is working on a memoir as well as a solo show.

Diahann lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their five cats. She kindly took the time to share some of her cultural transition stories with us. Join us as we talk about TCK burnout, courting customs in Manila (just in time for Valentine’s Day!), and various forms of therapy.

* * *

Hi Diahann, welcome to Culture Shock Toolbox! So where on our beautiful blue planet did you grow up?

I was born in the Philippines. I learned to speak my first language, English, with a Kiwi accent at age one when my dad’s company moved us to New Zealand. We lived there for almost two years before moving back to Manila. When I was eight, we moved to Argentina for two years. Buenos Aires is still, to this day, my favorite city where I’ve lived. Two years later, we landed in Pakistan, where I spent the fifth grade. We stayed for a little over a year before migrating to the US. This was supposed to be our final move, but when the Marcos regime was overthrown, my father moved us back “home” to Manila in 1987.

How well did you settle down once you found yourself back in your passport country?

Our repatriation to the Philippines was brief. It was less than a year before my dad’s company moved him to Indonesia. I spent my senior year in Jakarta before moving back to the United States for college. I’ve been here ever since—going on 27 years now. I consider my long stay in this country a far more exotic adventure than moving countries all the time, which had been my norm for so long.

That’s very interesting. You mean you found staying in one place more exotic than travel?

Yes, learning to live in the same place has been a bigger adventure because moving, I knew how to do. Going to a new school, I knew how to do. Moving out/into a new apartment/house/neighborhood, I knew how to do. It was what my family did the whole time I was growing up. Until I turned 18, I moved to a new school, if not country, almost every year. I had no idea what it was like to have friendships that lasted beyond a school year. My sophomore year at UC Berkeley was a challenge because I didn’t know how to have ongoing relationships and I had to learn how to do that as a young woman. I used to think “what if”, mourning the losses of friendships and budding romances that surely would have blossomed if only I didn’t have to move again. I now know that sometimes, even when you live in the same zip code with people, friends drift apart and romances die for reasons beyond geography.
moving-i-knew-how-to-do

I hear you. And that’s a lot of moves. I’m guessing that, for you, like many of us Third Culture Kids, your most difficult re-entry shock occurred when you returned to your birthplace?

Yes, since Manila was “home”, I assumed there would be no transition. I thought I’d be like everyone else, for once, since I was no longer a foreigner. To my dismay, I still was an outsider. I didn’t know the customs or social rules any more than I did when I’d moved to the other countries. I was hard on myself about this because I assumed that I should know because I was a Filipina citizen.

Did you ever put your foot in your mouth when you were back “home”?

One example that springs to mind occurred during junior high school in Manila. A boy from another school was “courting” me. This was the eighties, so I’m not sure if courting is still what kids do nowadays. Basically, he was wooing me to be his girlfriend. But I wasn’t interested in him and I didn’t want to lead him on. I told the guy straight out—nicely, in my opinion—that I just wanted to be his friend. That’s what I would have done had I still been in living in the United States or studying at an international school. When I told my classmates about what happened, they made clear that this was a breach of etiquette. They said I should have allowed him to keep courting me until he finally asked me to be his girlfriend. Only then should I have let him down. Instead, I’d embarrassed him.
courting-in-philippines

Would you handle that kind of situation differently today?

The woman I am today would have handled the situation exactly the way I did then. But at 16, and after so many moves from country-to-country and school-to-school, I just wanted to fit in—especially because the Philippines was my country of origin. After that incident with the boy, I made more of an effort to abide by Filipino etiquette, including never calling guys and not taking the initiative when it came to expressing interest in a boy. Adapt, assimilate, and conform became my way of coping. I wish I could have told my younger self back then: “Just be yourself and honor your values. Who you are is enough. Your perceptions and choices aren’t wrong.”

Any “tools” you can recommend for the rest of us who are feeling some of these emotions?

Reading books about culture shock and re-entry culture shock helped. I discovered I wasn’t the only one having these experiences and my behavior, reactions, and mental and emotional state because of all the moving was normal. Until that point, I thought I was losing my mind. I couldn’t stay grounded in my body or any place or culture. Also, I wrote a college paper about re-entry culture shock, and the research I did for it was eye opening and healing. It also helps to have friends who have also lived the expat life and know what that’s like. Oh—and therapy. I recommend getting a good therapist.

youre-not-going-crazy

I like your recommendation of consulting the experts, whether it’s through books—we might call them operations manuals—or conversations with therapists who understand the TCK and expat mindset. Can you think of any transitions you made that were particularly smooth?

I’m inclined to say my move back to the United States to study at Berkeley was the easiest. I made friends right away and jumped right into college life. I didn’t miss Indonesia at all—probably because I’d lived there only for a year and hadn’t wanted to move there to begin with. (This had nothing to do with Indonesia—more that I was tired of moving.) But what I didn’t realize was that I’d not yet dealt with the accumulation of culture shocks and re-entry culture shocks I’d amassed in my psyche over the years. Inevitably, all of that would catch up with me eventually.

Yes, the compound effects of all those transitions is such an interesting subject! What advice do you have for expats or TCKs who are experiencing expat burnout or change fatigue?

I’d advise expats and TCKs to understand that the psychological and emotional fallout of multiple moves around the world are real. Recognize what is happening to you, proactively rather than reactively. Read and write about it. For me, writing that college paper about re-entry shock was a formative experience. I finally understood the effects that moving so many times while growing up had had on my development.

Lastly, do you have any advice for parents of kids like us?

For parent expats, I’d recommend letting your kids know that they, too, will be subject to culture shock. I’d suggest making space for your children to process their feelings and deal with the losses that can come from moving countries and cultures. Yes, there are plenty of gifts and benefits from being a global nomad, but there are also drawbacks. Ignoring the negative effects can be harmful. Granted, kids generally adapt more easily than adults, but this can also make it harder for them to stay grounded and cultivate a solid sense of self.

Thank you so much for sharing your stories, Diahann. I agree, some of the best advice for those who feel culture shocks piling up is to try to stay grounded: actively engage in activities that make you feel grounded in the place you are right now.

* * *

How about you, Displaced Nationers? What makes you feel grounded? And do you have any “manuals” or “experts” you’d recommend for getting through the difficult cultural transitions and/or their cumulative effect? Let us know!

And if you like Diahann’s prescriptions, be sure to check out her Website and blog. You can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Well, hopefully this has you “fixed” until next month/year.

Until then. Prost! Santé!

H.E. Rybol is a TCK and the author of Culture Shock: A Practical Guide and Culture Shock Toolbox and the newly published Reverse Culture Shock. She loves animals, piano, yoga and being outdoors. You can find her on Twitter, Linkedin, Goodreads, and, of course, her author site.  

STAY TUNED for next week/year’s fab posts.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a biweekly round up of posts from The Displaced Nation—and so much more! Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

Photo credits: First visual (collage): Culture shock toolbox branding; photo of Sine & family, her book cover and her blog banner (supplied); View over Stuttgart-South and Stuttgart-Heslach and the “Karlshöhe”, Germany, by MSeses via Wikimedia Commons; and A rainbow over Joburg about two hours ago, by Derek Keats via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
Second visual: Hamburger via Pixabay (moustache vector art from iPiccy).
Third visual: Embarrassed boy, happy faces and wrench via Pixabay; Australia v England Netabll [sic] Test, by Naparazzi via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0); and Traditional protective cup, by Scoty6776 via Wikimedia Commons.
Fourth visual: Great white shark, by Michiel Van Balen via Flickr (CC BY 2.0); and tennis player via Pixabay.

Cool Columns, Culture Shock Toolbox , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Alice in Expatland: Paying tribute as her 150th anniversary year winds to a close

2 Comments Posted by on December 29, 2015

Alice in Expatland

Curiouser and curiouser.

Once upon a time, I found myself chasing a white rabbit with a gloriously old-fashioned pocket watch and falling
d
o
w
n
a hOle into Aliceland, where people stood about in anoraks and talked about the weather.

I was an expat in the United Kingdom.

Next I stepped through a looking glass into a topsy-turvy wonder-world where commuters in suits sporting high-tech timepieces were dashing about, afraid to be late for apparently important dates.

I was an expat in Japan.

In 2015 the world celebrated the 150th birthday of Lewis Carroll’s first Alice story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and, although I’m no longer an expat—I repatriated back to East Coast USA some time ago—I have spent the year paying tribute to this Victorian heroine for being my role model, or muse, during the period when I lived abroad.

What drew me so powerfully to the Alice stories? Skeptics may surmise that this Alice obsession of mine comes from some childish need to exoticize the adventures that took place during my time overseas. By comparing myself to Alice, I’m implying that my expat life was even more extraordinary than it actually was.

These critics may also think I’m being condescending in implicitly likening the natives of the UK and Japan to talkative animals or mad people.

For anyone who’s not feeling the thing I have for Alice: My point is, being an expat made me feel like a child again, especially when I found myself struggling to communicate basic points or failing to understand what was happening around me.

At moments like those, if someone had told me lobsters could dance, cats could have grins that fade in and out, and men could be shaped like eggs—I would have believed them. (In fact, I did see a lobster dance. That was at a fish restaurant in Tokyo. It hadn’t mastered the quadrille, though.)

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle…”

Alice is a child on the verge of adolescence—and the expat me could relate to that portion of her story as well. Her statement “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then” echoed in my head throughout my expat life—especially towards the end, when I was an American who spoke with a British accent and, similar to Through the Looking Glass Alice, had lost my first name. (As the only foreigner in a Japanese office, I was always referred to by my last name, with the suffix “-san”.)

Psychologist Eve Hemming addresses what it feels like to lose one’s cultural bearings in her recently published Scatterlings: A Tapestry of Afri-expat Tales. As she tells it, her decision to emigrate from her native South Africa to New Zealand was traumatic. Her arrival in “the land of the long white cloud” of Māori legend was akin to “falling through Alice in Wonderland’s looking glass and waking up an extra-terrestrial in an alien landscape.” Not long after, she had the chance to return to her homeland for a brief visit, and felt as though she has “plummeted down the rabbit hole back into Africa.”

These descriptions make me think of the Cheshire Cat’s advice to poor disorientated Alice:

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

If you stay in the expat world long enough, you feel, and are treated like, an alien wherever you go. I can still recall going home to America and having people refuse to believe I was American because of my credible British accent. They also found it strange I was so apologetic, a trait that had come from working in a Japanese office.

I had become one of those people who are at home everywhere—and nowhere; an adult yet a Third Culture Kid.

“How do you know I’m mad?”

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Lewis Carroll’s wonderland story could be a textbook illustration of the four stages of expat acculturation, as outlined by psychologist Dr. Cathy Tsang-Feign in her manual, Living Abroad.

As soon as she lands at the bottom of the rabbit hole, Alice enters Stage One: Elation. She glimpses a “most fabulous” garden and samples a delightful drink that has “a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast.”

It is not long, however, before she enters Stage Two: Resistance. “It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits.”

At the same time, though, she shows potential for entering Stage Three: Transformation, when, after saying she almost wishes she hadn’t gone down the rabbit hole, she reflects: ”…and yet—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!”

And, although Alice never quite reaches Stage Four: Integration (when cultural barriers are bridged)—she leaves Wonderland still feeling a bit displaced—the memories of her adventures clearly have an impact. In the next Alice story, Carroll shows her as being keen for another adventure, why she steps through the looking-glass…

“And yet—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!”

The quality that Alice develops in spades (and hearts, clubs, diamonds) is resilience—which by many expert accounts is the key on a glass plate that opens the door to a successful expat life.

As Linda Janssen puts it in her book The Emotionally Resilient Expat, to have a successful transition into living in another part of the world, we need to know how to adapt, adjust or simply accept what cannot be changed.

Janssen, an American, called the blog she kept while living in the Hague “Adventures in Expatland.” She said the title perfectly expressed her feelings about an experience that was “incredibly exhilarating, challenging, and occasionally maddening.”

I know what she means. There were several instances during my times in the UK and Japan when I needed to believe six impossible things before breakfast… By the same token, though, I knew that after a fall into expatland, I should think nothing of tumbling down stairs—a thought that kept me going through a second expat assignment, and now repatriation, possibly the curious-est wonderland of them all.

Thank you, Alice, for being my heroine, and I hope you enjoyed your big birthday. Now that you’re 150, you shouldn’t be taking any stuff and nonsense from the March Hare. Tell him to pour you that glass of wine! Cheers, kanpai, bottoms up—from one of your top expat fans xoxoxo

* * *

ML Awanohara, one of the Displaced Nation’s founders and its current editor, has been conducting a series of “wonderlanded” interviews with expat authors whose lives, and works, in some way echo Alice’s adventures. If you find her Alice comparisons amusing or even a bit nonsensical, be sure to subscribe to the weekly Displaced Dispatch, which has an “Alice Obsession” feature.

STAY TUNED for more fab posts.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of weekly posts from The Displaced Nation, and much, much more. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

Photo credits: Top row: Ann Smith – Sleepy Summers Day – Lobster Quadrille, by sea +; Final Tea Party, by Joe Rice via Flickr; and Float in the Tres Reyes parade (Seville, Spain), by Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble. Bottom row: Night cat, by Raffaele Esposito; The Pool of Tears, by sea +; and Have I gone mad (Berlin), by onnola. All photos via Flickr (CC BY 2.0), except last one, which is via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Alice in Wonderland, Alice theme posts , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

LOCATION, LOCUTION: Trish Nicholson, a writer whose talents have blossomed in unusual places

4 Comments Posted by on November 5, 2015

Location Locution
Columnist Lorraine Mace, aka Frances di Plino, is back with her latest interview guest.

My guest this month, Trish Nicholson, is something of an exotic plant—the kind one discovers flowering profusely in a far-flung part of the world.

Trish’s birthplace, the Isle of Man, sounds remote to many of us—but not so for Trish, who, despite being half Manx (a mix of Celtic and Nordic), wasn’t able to bloom where she was planted. Following in the footsteps of some of her intrepid ancestors, she left her birthplace and hasn’t looked back.

Her first destination was the UK, in pursuit of higher education and a career. Trish is also half-Scottish, but, though she lived in Scotland for 12 years, her roots did not prove deep enough and she moved on to Europe and much further afield…transplanting herself to Papua New Guinea!

Yes, Trish was stationed in the West Sepik (Sandaun) Province of Papua New Guinea for five years working on aid and development projects while also serving as Honorary Consul for the British High Commission. Rest assured, conditions here were exotic enough for Trish not only to put down roots but to blossom and thrive. As she attests in the travel memoir she published last month, PNG contains the wildest places in the tropics. Among other challenges, she had to contend with crocodiles (the book is titled Inside the Crocodile), sorcery and near-fatal malaria.

Photo credits (clockwise from upper left): Mooragh Park Lake, Ramsey (Isle of Man), by Tony Hisgett via Flickr (CC BY 2.0); Trisha Nicholson (supplied); Explosions (in PNG), by Taro Taylor via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) .

Photo credits (clockwise from upper left): Mooragh Park Lake, Ramsey (Isle of Man), by Tony Hisgett via Flickr (CC BY 2.0); Trisha Nicholson (supplied); Explosions (in PNG), by Taro Taylor via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) .

The so-called Land of Surprises must have been a hard act to follow, but Asia Pacific being Trish’s most nurturant habitat, she soon found other challenges—the next one being to direct the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) operations in the Philippines while completing her doctorate in social anthropology. After the Philippines, she obtained a research grant to study indigenous tourism in Vietnam and Australia.

And I mustn’t forget to mention that along the way there have also been frequent trips to South America and Africa, along with treks in Bhutan, Tibet and Nepal.

Trish did return to England eventually—only to decide the time had come to try transplanting herself to the “winterless” far north of New Zealand, where, as she says in her blog:

native trees grow even more in winter than summer because they have more moisture.

Hmmm… sounds a little like Trish?

And now let’s talk about Trish’s body of works. A compulsive scribbler, she has produced plenty of what she calls “creative nonfiction”—from articles for mainstream media to a book on responsible travel tourism—as well as short stories during her twenty years of wandering the globe.

More recently, since moving to New Zealand, she has published a series of e-books on her travels—one of the most popular of which is the illustrated travelogue Journey in Bhutan: Himalayan Trek in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon. And now there is the aforementioned Inside the Crocodile: The Papua New Guinea Journals.

Trish’s nonfiction output also includes a volume on creative reading/writing as well as a guide to becoming a non-fiction author. And let’s not forget the historical anthology of storytelling, which she intends to sit down and write now that she’s settled on a quiet New Zealand hillside. That’s when she’s not hiding in her tree house or blogging. Her blog is called, appropriately enough, “Words in the Treehouse.”

* * *

Welcome, Trish, to Location, Locution. I know that your travels have led to much of your writing, but which tends to come first, story or location?

Thank you for inviting me, Lorraine.

It depends on what kind of writing I’m doing, of course. For short stories it’s usually character that comes first for me, but it’s close because characters are an integral part of their setting. In building up the story, character and setting feed upon each other. Location can affect a character’s mood, sometimes their whole outlook on life, and a change of location can be a turning point. But, as I said, it’s a two-way influence; people can also have an impact on their surroundings.

For my travelogues, experience of location came first, but the same principle applies: people feed off setting and vice versa. In this case, of course, the “characters” are actual people I met along the way.

Notably, you were right in saying that my travels led to my writing. I did not set out to write a book at the beginning of either of the two travelogues I have produced. I was inspired to visit Bhutan by an article in a 1914 National Geographic magazine my aunt had left me in a box of dusty old books. It was full of the most amazing photographs of mist threaded mountains, exotic architecture, and distinguished looking men wearing what appeared to be navy blue dressing gowns with broad white cuffs… Papua New Guinea, as you explained in your introduction, was a five-year work assignment, fulfilling a teenage dream to work overseas. Only afterwards did these locations compel me to write about them.

What techniques do you use for evoking the atmosphere of a place? After all, you’ve faced the challenge of describing places very few of the rest of us have visited.

I’m not sure if it’s a technique because it’s not something I do consciously as I write, but your question made me think about it. It’s not so easy to explain, but I seem to identify a feature that is characteristic of a particular place and use my senses to link to it emotionally—trying to recreate in words what I felt when I was there. It’s not simply “place” though, but more a series of “moments-in-place.” The atmosphere of a place changes depending on time of day, seasons and events. It’s possible to keep track of these changes if you maintain a detailed journal as I always do—scraps of information about everything I see, hear, smell and feel. With buildings and landscapes, for example, I record how light and weather affect them. A grey stone wall, for instance, may look hard and forbidding in Scotland, but under a tropical sun it feels surprisingly soft and warm. I note sounds and snippets of overheard conversation, clothes, colours, rhythms of people’s movements—all of which suggest place. Scribbling is a bit of an obsession with me, perhaps a way of hanging on to something I don’t want to end. My other obsession is photography, probably for the same reason. In my early travelling days I used Kodachrome but film was expensive; now you can take large memory cards and click away without a thought. When I’m writing, I scroll through my images and they recall whole scenes for me. The jottings and photographs aid my memory for those sensuous details that I believe evoke atmosphere.

Two of Trish's tools for capturing the details of places. Photo credits: (top) Notebook collection, by Dvortygirl via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0); Kodachrome, by Pittaya Sroilong via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Two of Trish’s tools for capturing the details of place. Photo credits: (top) Notebook collection, by Dvortygirl via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0); Kodachrome, by
Pittaya Sroilong via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Which particular features create a sense of location? Landscape, culture, food?

They all can, of course, depending on the story and a writer’s personal interests. I’m certainly no foodie, but even I can feel the tropical heat of Papua New Guinea when recalling drinking kulau (Tok Pisin for “juice from a young green coconut”) straight from a young coconut—the rough, dry shell on my lips, the smooth sweet coolness dribbling down my chin. Language, too, has always been a significant feature for me. Many writers avoid using dialect or foreign words in dialogue so as not to stress the reader, but there are ways of making it easier, and readers enjoy a little challenge. I write dialect or local language in short stories and in travelogues because it draws readers closer to people. And if I want to create the sense of a very specific location, I focus on whatever features are found only in that one place—for example, in Bhutan, the painted red bands around a building that tells you there are sacred relics inside, or in Australia, the surreal landforms of the Bungle Bungles that seem to stride across the landscape enacting their own primordial drama.

Which of your works provides the best illustration of place, and can you give us a brief example?

From Inside the Crocodile, a jungle moment on the hair-raising trek from Oksapmin to Lake Kopiago:

The heavy shower was reduced to drizzle under the canopy and it invigorated the forest; every shade of green was intensified, glistening and vivid. Lazy drops of water glided along leaves, dripping silently onto moss beneath. Fine hairs on the ribs of fern fronds, usually invisible, were lit-up by tiny twinkling water droplets like miniature fairy lights. And the air was filled with the fecund mustiness of moist earth seasoned with the tang of wet foliage … the forest stood in strange, expectant silence, muffled by the press of growing, spreading vegetation all around us. Yet every surface, especially the dark underside, was teeming with life we could not see, or would not recognise if we did, and we couldn’t see beyond the next tree trunk or veil of hanging moss. The sense of being enclosed, entrapped within an unknowable multitude, was overpowering.

Photo credits: (top) A frog inside the papaya tree, one of many critters found in PNG; one of many disintegrating bamboo bridges in PNG (by Trish Nicholson, supplied).

Photo credits: (top) A frog inside the papaya tree, one of many critters found in PNG; one of many disintegrating bamboo bridges in PNG (by Trish Nicholson, supplied).

And if I’m allowed another little one, from Journey in Bhutan, my journal entry the evening after we visited the ancient temple of Kyichu Lhakhang:

… I want to remember how it felt when I first entered the lhakhang – the dark wooden floor, polished and worn into grooves by centuries of calloused feet; distant chanting heard through a haze of incense; Buddhas lustrous in the flickering light of butter lamps – thirteen centuries of reverence are distilled in that room creating an almost palpable sanctity. I feel the balm of its atmosphere as I write – it’s almost like a presence.

Photo credits: (clockwise from top left) Rinpung Dzong, a large dzong (Buddhist monastery and fortress) found in Paro District, Bhutan; book cover art; ancient religious relics inside the lhakhang (all photos supplied by Trish Nicholson).

Photo credits: (top) Rinpung Dzong, a large dzong (Buddhist monastery and fortress) found in Paro District, Bhutan; book cover art; ancient religious relics inside the lhakhang (by Trish Nicholson, supplied).

How well do you need to know a place before using it as a setting?

This is a particularly interesting question because I believe one can be in a location too long. The point is not how much time is spent in a place, but how well we “see” it. In an urban setting, I can spend an hour leaning against a wall on a street corner, or a day walking the streets at random, and gather a huge number of impressions and factual details. In remote areas it takes longer because the changing elements have a greater affect on atmosphere. But this may be enough for the setting of a single story. Obviously, for a travelogue, longer immersion is necessary to reach a depth of understanding across time and seasons. But it depends also on how one writes about a place, the scope of the account. I was in Bhutan for a month, much of that time trekking, so although I included monasteries and temples, and carried out a lot of research on cultural and historical background, Journey in Bhutan focuses on the trek rather than trying to cover the whole country superficially. So, how long is too long? After a few years in Papua New Guinea I noted in my journal:

I’m losing all sense of “normal”.

I began taking for granted what seemed extraordinary to a visitor. Fortunately, I had recorded early events that revealed my astonishment and joy and alienation as a greenhorn during those first months. Without the journals, Inside the Crocodile would have lacked that perspective on the location because, after a while, we cease to “see” so clearly.

Which writers do you admire for the way they use location?

Hard to pick a few from so many: Vikram Seth for his depiction of India—but his first book, From Heaven Lake, was a vivid travelogue of Sinkiang and Tibet; he was still a student but the novelist is already burgeoning in those pages. Khaled Hosseini, who so cleverly weaves his characters into the texture of place in The Kite Runner, and Nikolai Gogol, especially in Dead Souls, where his detailing of personal possessions in a room reveals not only a distinctly Russian steppes atmosphere, but also a character’s past and present. And one more: Ruth Rendell appears to break all the “rules” in The Keys to the Street by opening with almost two pages describing London’s ornamental iron railings—but in such a way that with the first paragraph we are already anxious about those spikes.

Trish's picks for writers who have mastered the art of writing about place.

Trish’s picks for writers who have mastered the art of writing about place.

Thanks so much, Trish! I can easily see why one reviewer described you as “full of humour, adventure, and iron determination…”

* * *

Readers, any questions for Trish Nicholson? Please leave them in the comments below before she disappears back into her treehouse.

And if you’d like to discover more about Trish, why not visit her author site. She also chirps on twitter at @TrishaNicholson.

Until next month!

Lorraine Mace writes for children with the Vlad the Inhaler books. As Frances di Plino, she writes crime in the D.I. Paolo Storey series. She is a columnist for both of the UK’s top writing magazines, has founded international writing competitions and runs a writing critique service, mentoring authors on three continents.

STAY TUNED for the next fab post!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of weekly posts from The Displaced Nation, with weekly updates and much, much more. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

Photo credits (top of page): The World Book (1920), by Eric Fischer via Flickr; “Writing? Yeah.” by Caleb Roenigk via Flickr (both CC BY 2.0).

Cool Columns, Location, Locution , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For this expat writer who has photographed everything from the Gulf of Alaska to her own back garden, a picture says…

6 Comments Posted by on August 6, 2015

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAGreetings, Displaced Nationers who are also photography buffs! “A Picture Says…” columnist James King is still away, so I am filling in again. But the good news is, he approves of the columns I’ve produced thus far! I know I’ve enjoyed spending time with the previous two guests, fearless and feisty photography pro Steve Davey and fine-art photographer Dave Long.

And today I’m excited to introduce Madeleine Lenagh, an American who, having lived in Holland for more than four decades, has made it her base for an impressive range of creative pursuits.

Madeleine Lenagh moeraki

A photo of Madeleine Lenagh taken in New Zealand, among the magnificent Moeraki Boulders.

I first heard about Madeleine from Springtime Books, which published her memoir, Passage of the Stork, Delivering the Soul: One Woman’s Journey to Self-Realization and Acceptance, several months ago.

As those who perused our summer reading recommendations may know, Madeleine’s book was one of my picks. I was intrigued that she chose to tell her life story using poetic vignettes and commentary by archetypes from Nordic mythology and fairy tales.

From the title of the book alone, it’s possible to discern that that Madeleine is in touch with nature at an almost spiritual level. She looks to the stork to deliver her soul (in ancient Egypt, a drawing of the stork served as the hieroglyphic for “soul”). And if you read the book’s prologue, you’ll see that her view of nature includes mermaids—as evidenced by the prologue’s very first sentence:

Three mermaids play in the huge rolling waves, splashing and diving in the curling spray.

It comes as little surprise, then, to discover that besides being an author and blogger, mother and grandmother, and life coach and counselor, Madeleine is a shamanic practitioner. She has been influenced by Dutch shamanic teacher Daan van Kampenhout, whose method fosters connections with helping spirits and ancestors.

What I didn’t realize, though, is how much Madeleine loves to travel and take photographs. She even has her own photography site.

Now let’s see what other worlds Madeleine can conjure up for us with her photos!

* * *

Hi, Madeleine, and welcome to the Displaced Nation. I’ll start the same way as James, by asking: where were you born, and when did you spread your wings (an apt metaphor in your case, given your fondness for storks) to start traveling?
Hi, ML, thank you for inviting me to take part in this column. In answer to your first question: I grew up in Westport, Connecticut. When I was two years old, my stepfather was sent to Europe as a Naval attaché to the NATO. For three years, we lived in Paris, Bad-Homburg, and London. We returned to Westport when I was five. Although I have few memories of those early years, I believe my love of traveling was born then.

So you didn’t end up being raised as a Third Culture Kid?
No, I didn’t leave the United States again until I was 21, when I coaxed my family into giving me a trip to Europe for my 21st birthday. I traveled all around Western Europe and down into former Yugoslavia. At the end of the summer, I was in The Netherlands and my money was running out. I didn’t want to go home yet and found an au-pair job for six months.

Which countries have you visited thus far, and of those, which have you actually lived in?
My travels have taken me all through Europe, as well as to India (Rajasthan), Indonesia (Java and Bali), Costa Rica, and New Zealand (South Island). I believe that Canada and Alaska deserve a separate mention as they are beautiful and remote parts of the world. But, apart from those few years when I was a small child, I have only lived in the United States and The Netherlands.

It’s interesting to me that you chose to make The Netherlands your home for your adult life. What made you settle there in particular?
When I became an au pair in The Netherlands 45 years ago, I sold my return trip ticket to buy winter clothing. Somehow I never got around to leaving. It often amazes me that I, a lover of wild places in nature, could feel so comfortable in this relatively “tame” country. There were key moments in my life when I asked myself, so where am I going now? But there was always more reason to stay than to go. Passage of the Stork, Delivering the Soul describes, among other things, my struggle to put down roots and find a sense of permanency.

“She will always love the sea…” —from the Prologue to Passage of the Stork

Moving right along to the part we’ve all been waiting for: a chance to appreciate a few of your photos. Can you share with us three photos that capture some of your favorite memories of the so-called “displaced” life of global travel? And for each photo, can you briefly tell us the memory that the photo captures, and why it remains special to you?
Occasionally I arrive somewhere and think, I could live here. One of those places was South Island, New Zealand. I love the wild remote land, the warm friendliness of the people, and the ever-changing scenery. The photo I have chosen here is the perfect arch of a totally deserted beach in the Catlins, way down on the southern end of the island.

catlins_800x

Untainted by the modern world, the Catlins are the kind of place where a mermaid might appear. Photo credit: Madeleine Lenagh

Wow, that’s the kind of place where it would be easy to imagine mermaids! I have only been to New Zealand’s Northern Island, but even there, I felt that it attracts people who want to get away from it all…
Along the same lines, another place I would be seriously tempted to live, if it weren’t so cold and dark in the winter, is Alaska. I love the pioneer spirit of the people who live there. My brother runs nature tours out of Paxson, which is located in one of the prettiest spots in the state. To the north of the Denali Highway, one sees the dramatic Alaska Range, with its snow-capped peaks and glaciers. An outstretched tundra lies to the south. However, the photo I have chosen, of a fishing boat near the shore, was taken down on Prince William Sound, during a day cruise in 2010. I like the muted colors, with only the bright splash of red on the boat to off-set the fog.

alaska77

While cruising through the calm, protected—and mysterious—waters of Prince William Sound. Photo credit: Madeleine Lenagh

Ooh, I really like this photo. So moody and atmospheric… Though I’ve never been to Alaska, I picture it as having this kind of mystique. Where are you taking us next?
This summer I traveled back to the New England of my youth. I realized how much at home I feel there, in spite of having left 45 years ago. Those of you who have read my book know that I have a special relationship with storks. One of the things they reflect about me is their migratory nature, feeling at home in more than one place. I love this photo of a white stork, taken near my home in The Netherlands, doing its special bill-clacking dance as it returns to the nest.

stork-s_800x

Time for a spot of beak-clapping, says this Dutch stork. Photo credit: Madeleine Lenagh

Hm, until now I have always associated storks with the arrival of babies. But after hearing what you have to say, I may start thinking of them as the avian counterpart of the serial expat!

“I lie on my stomach, hearing gossamer wings rush by.” —from the Prologue to Passage of the Stork

Having seen your first three photos, I expect it’s a bit of a tough choice, but which are the top three locations you’ve most enjoyed taking photos in—and can you offer us an example of each?
I’m actually going to pick three new places for you. The first one is India. It is a riot of color and ornate decorations, a photographer’s paradise. The photo I have chosen illustrates this perfectly: a group of children posing for me in the “best room” of their desert compound near Jaisalmer.

212_desert

Colorful life in India’s Thar desert. Photo credit: Madeleine Lenagh

I also have a special relationship with Norway (disclosed in my book) and I love photographing birds. Up in the Lofoten archipelago, I had the unique opportunity to photograph white-tailed sea-eagles. I’m very proud of this shot, catching the bird just as it had landed on a rock.

eagle_800x

A white-tailed sea-eagle touches down on this untouched land within the Arctic Circle. Photo credit: Madeleine Lenagh

Finally, though I’ve taken you far afield, my last pick for favorite photography locations is my own garden! I love the simple beauty of the nature I find there. A perfect illustration is this photo of a spider web covered with droplets of fog.

spiderweb-s_800x

Is it a spider web or the finest lace? Photo credit: Madeleine Lenagh

I love that you’ve taken us back to your own garden! It makes me think of a fellow New Englander of yours, Emily Dickinson, who took companionship as well as inspiration from her garden in Amherst.

“You can cage a bird, but you can’t make him sing.” (French-Jewish saying)

Going back to your photo of the children in India, I wonder: do you ever feel reserved taking photos of people, particularly when they are conscious of your doing so? How do you handle it?
I am very reserved about taking photos of people, especially in other cultures, and will only do so if they have given me permission. Usually, asking people if you can take their photograph is a wonderful way of making contact with them and often leads to spectacular portraits. The photograph of the children in India is a good example. I love how the two sitting girls (unmarried and therefore veiled) unveiled their faces for the photo.

When did you become interested in photography and what is it about this art form that drew you in?
I believe I have photography encoded in my DNA. My grandfather was taking brilliant photographs in the 1920s. My mother never went anywhere without her 1953 Leica. My Norwegian father (caution: book spoiler!) was a cinematographer. I started taking photographs (and working in a darkroom) when I was about 18 years old. I believe that I was originally drawn in by the fact that it required no real motor skills and I was dreadful at drawing! I’ve always had the urge to express my feelings in some creative fashion, whether it be writing, photography, painting, or dance. Currently, my greatest motivation to photograph is to share the beauty of the natural world with others; to draw them into the same sense of awe and majesty that I feel when I’m in touch with nature.

“Listen to all, plucking a feather from every passing goose, but, follow no one absolutely.” (Chinese saying)

And now switching over to the technical side of things: what kind of camera, lenses, and post-processing software do you use?
Most of these photos were taken with earlier cameras but, at the moment, I use a Canon EOS 6D, a full-frame camera. My favorite lens is a 70-200mm f 2.8 lens. I have been using a 2x extender to get up to 400mm, but recently decided that it slows down the focus too much so I will be looking for a good telephoto lens soon. I find that, as my experience grows, I grow more and more fussy about my equipment! I photograph in RAW format and process the images in Adobe Lightroom.

Finally, can you offer a few words of advice for wannabe photographers who are traveling the world or living abroad?
I suppose the most important advice is just to go out and photograph the things you love. Good photography takes practice and more practice. Study the manual of your camera and don’t be afraid to experiment with settings. Study paintings and sculpture by the artists you admire, to develop a sense for light and composition. As I develop as a photographer I find myself growing more and more critical of my work. It’s not just about showing the things I’ve seen or taking good photos. It’s about taking great photos that show a unique moment.

And I think the most important advice to any aspiring photographer was voiced by Pablo Picasso:

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

Thank you, Madeleine! I appreciate your sharing a selection of photos that illustrate your deep connection with nature. I’m impressed that you can find so much beauty and wonder on your own doorstep as well as on your travels to the world’s most unpopulated and unspoiled places.

* * *

Readers, what do you make of Madeleine’s travel-photo experiences and her photography advice? Please leave any questions or feedback for her in the comments!

If you want to get to know Madeleine and her creative works better, I suggest you visit her author site and her photography site. You can also follow her on Facebook (she posts her latest photos) and Twitter. But to really get to know Madeleine, I recommend getting her book, Passage of the Stork, Delivering the Soul. You’ll never look at storks, or mermaids, in the same way again!

NOTE: If you are a travel-photographer and would like to be interviewed for this series, please send your information to ml@thedisplacednation.com.

STAY TUNED for next week’s fab posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of weekly posts from The Displaced Nation and SO much more! Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

A Picture Says..., Cool Columns , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CULTURE SHOCK TOOLBOX: Tired of constant adjustments? TCKs and expats, just be yourself!

Leave a comment Posted by on March 25, 2015

Olivia Charlet for Culture Shock ToolboxIt’s turning into Third Culture Kid Week at the Displaced Nation! Today our newest columnist H.E. Rybol, who has a German dad and a French mom and is a self-described “transitions enthusiast,” interviews a fellow adult TCK, with a French dad and a Belgian mom, about the tools she used to face the inevitable culture shocks during her family’s many moves. Later in the week, TCK Talent columnist Lisa Liang will be interviewing the poet Maya Evans, who was displaced from Egypt as a child. And you know something else? H.E. recently interviewed Lisa on her own blog. Though not a TCK myself, I always learn a lot from this rather tightly-knit group. I expect you will, too.

—ML Awanohara

Hello, Displaced Nationers! This month I am proud to introduce my first guest to the Culture Shock Toolbox column: Olivia Charlet, a fellow adult TCK and the founder of TCK Dating, a site that explores how our multicultural backgrounds influence our relationships. Olivia is fascinated by questions like: Are we TCKs happier with partners who share a similar nomadic background, or do opposites attract and we gravitate towards those who’ve lived in the same place their whole lives?

Today she has kindly agreed to answer my questions about the culture shocks she has experienced, along with tools she has used to overcome the feeling of not belonging. Here’s what she had to say…

* * *

Hi, Olivia. Thanks for joining me. First, can you tell us a little more about your background: which countries you’ve lived in and for how long? 

Sure! I was born in Tokyo, Japan and lived there for my first four years. I then lived in Düsseldorf, Germany for two years. We later moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, for six-and-a-half years. Finally, I spent middle school in Vienna, Austria, for almost four years. I completed my last two years of high school in Hamburg, Germany, and then went to university in Boston, Massachusetts, for three years, after which I lived in Auckland, New Zealand, for six months. I have now been living in London for around five years. 

That’s a lot of moving! And now we should move on to the topic of my column: cultural transitions. Can you recall any memorable occasions where you “put your foot in,” so to speak, during your many moves?

I still feel like I’m doing that, as an adult TCK here in London, especially when spending time with people who grew up in this part of the world. When I’m with a group of internationals, who are often my friends, this doesn’t happen as often since there’s this shared understanding that we all have slightly different cultural backgrounds. Let’s see… I think it mostly happens when I’m simply being outspoken—when I say things like “I love this!” or “This is amazing” or “It was terrible.” I picked up these expressions from American schools, I think. British people tend to be more understated. They’re more likely to say things like “Yeah, it’s alright” or “She’s nice.” It’s not so intense. 

How do you tend to handle those inevitably awkward situations when you feel people may have misinterpreted you?

When I was younger I would have tried to mold into what they believed to be “normal” or “appropriate” behavior. But unfortunately (or fortunately?), I’ve become less and less likely to do this as I’ve gotten older. I want to be able to me. And express my difference. I don’t like pretending and I need to be authentic. If I’m trying to please them by saying what they want me to say, I won’t be genuine. Growing up outside of my passport country, I spent years learning how to adapt quickly and meet new friends. However, every year that goes by in London, I realise I can find people in the city that won’t expect me to be something else. They’re just fine with me being me (crazy mix of customs and all!).

Looking back, can you recall any situations that you handled with surprising finesse? Why do you think that was? 

Well, that’s really my point. Having grown up moving around so much, I became really good at mimicking customs and behaviours—but not because of any natural ability. I just wanted to fit in. For instance, I played on a German football team in high school, and none of the girls spoke a word of English. They saw me as one of them after only a couple of months. Likewise, while attending university in the United States, I honed in on what the American students and professors needed to see for me to blend into their culture.

If you had to give advice to TCKs or new expats, what’s the tool you’d tell them to develop first?

Strangely, I don’t think I would have said this six months ago, but basically my advice is to truly know yourself. Who are you? What do you love to do? What do you not like to do? How do you like to behave? Are you loud? Are you soft-spoken? Extroverted? Be you. Because really, as much as we try to fit into another world, the truth is you’ll find people in no matter what culture who “get” you and understand you just the way you are. The more you try to change and adapt to what other people want you to be, the more you’ll lose a sense of who you are. And the most important thing (at least for me) about living in a different country is to not lose your core of self. What are your goals? What is your purpose? Who are you? That’s what should matter. And with that will follow meeting people who match that.

Thank you so much, Olivia, for sharing your stories and reminding us that, regardless of where we are, we’ll meet others who “get us.” In a sense your tool consists of putting away the toolbox when it’s a question of remaining true to ourselves.

* * *

Readers, what do you make of Olivia’s advice? Hopefully, it has you “fixed” until next month!

Until then. Prost! Santé!

H.E. Rybol is a TCK and the author of Culture Shock: A Practical Guide and Culture Shock Toolbox. She loves animals, piano, yoga and being outdoors. You can find her on Twitter, Linkedin and Goodreads. She is currently working on her new Web site and her second book.  

STAY TUNED for Lisa Liang’s interview with Maya Evans.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of weekly posts from The Displaced Nation—and much, much more! Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related post:

Cool Columns, Culture Shock Toolbox , , , , , , , , , , , ,

LOCATION, LOCUTION: Kiwi-Brit author team produce first in eco-thriller series spanning continents where they’ve lived

5 Comments Posted by on February 10, 2015
JJ LN Collage

Columnist JJ Marsh (left) talks to Lambert Nagle, Kiwi/Brit co-writers of international thrillers.

Today we welcome JJ Marsh back to the Displaced Nation for this month’s “Location, Locution.” If you are new to the site, JJ, who is a crime series writer (see her bio below), talks to fellow fiction writers about their methods for portraying place in their works. We’re excited that her guest today is the better half of a husband-wife team who have composed an eco-thriller that takes place all over the world, including places where they’ve been expats.

—ML Awanohara

Lambert Nagle is the pen name of co-authors Alison Ripley Cubitt and Sean Cubitt. They write thrillers set in sunny climes.

Sean’s day job is Professor of Film and Television, Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been published by leading academic publishers.

Alison worked in TV and film production for companies including the BBC and Walt Disney but her passion has always been for writing. She is an author, screenwriter and novelist.

Serial expats, Lambert Nagle have lived in Malaysia, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and are now based in leafy Hampshire.

Now let’s find out how they perceived the connection between location and locution for their debut novel, Revolution Earth. (Alison is answering for the pair.)

* * *

Which comes first, story or location?

We knew that Revolution Earth had to have a circular structure as one of the themes is that an event in one part of the world will have an impact in another. We needed a major global city for the inciting incident as well as the conclusion and we chose the one we know best—London. Sean was once a bicycle courier and he knew what it was like to have to dodge potholes and taxis in Soho and still get the delivery there on time.

We wrote the New Zealand section after we’d reluctantly left my native land and moved to Melbourne. It was a bit of a love letter to a place we adored but needed to leave in order to pursue professional opportunities abroad. In southeast Australia we were thrilled to find that there was an oil refinery—identical to one we had driven past in Cheshire years ago, which inspired the story.

What’s your technique for evoking the atmosphere of a place?

For the Antarctica portion of the story, Sean had spent four years in Canada as a post-graduate student. The memory of cold is something that never leaves you, so we drew on that, starting from the physical experience and expanding out into the visual side of things.

Photo credits (clockwise from top left): Kakadu in the Australian outback, by Muireann Ní Cheallacháin via Flickr; book cover with photo of Snowy Mountain region of New South Wales, Australia, taken by Alison Ripley Cubitt; lady bicyclist in London, by Danica via Flickr; Alberta, Canada, by davebloggs007 via Flickr (all Flickr photos CC BY 2.0).

How well do you need to know the place before using it as a setting?

Revolution Earth was originally a screenplay. As a screenwriter you have to know a place extremely well before you’d dare use it as a setting. Film is a literal medium and your job is to give very clear instructions about an actual place—as a camera has to be able to film the location exactly as you’ve described it. So we went to extremes: including a trip to a uranium mine in the Outback, thousands of miles from where we lived in Australia.

Eventually we realised we needed to write a novel first, before we could interest film-makers. But by then, we knew we couldn’t get to every location and would have to inhabit some places purely through imagination. The important thing is that the imagined places have to be just as detailed, just as carefully tuned to the physical experience of being there, as the real ones. Something really familiar like a dusty, disorganised office in a backstreet in the East End of London should be as deeply felt as battling a storm in a leaky boat in the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica. As someone who goes green at the mention of the phrase “rough seas,” this is where the imagination comes in as well.

The liberation of cresting the top of a hill on a bicycle before swooping down towards the valley is the same everywhere, but knowing the twists of the road, the steepness of it, how it burns up your lungs before filling them with joy, is all the richer if you can take your reader into what is special about this road, this time of year, for this character.

Which particular features create a sense of location: landscape, culture, food?

Whether it’s real or imagined, a place comes as a feeling first. Then you identify the elements of that feeling: what can you hear, smell, see, taste. How do people talk? Hot, cold, windy or still? What plants and animals, how personal or impersonal, what sense of the past, ancient or recent, does it communicate and what are the things that carry that sense—things like the absence of birdsong or the sound of a kettle boiling. Sometimes you reach out to the reader to share an experience, but sometimes you have to lead them into an experience they have never had, and then it’s often the emotion of the characters and scene that drive the description rather than its physical elements.

Can you give an example from Revolution Earth that illustrates place?

Great mountains of blue-white floating in a sea caught between the colour of the sky and the fresh green of young pine forests under mid-summer sun. Between them, smaller floes drifted about aimlessly, as though in some kind of trance. On the horizon she saw, thanks to Novak, a steep rise of endless white cliffs. This must be where the glaciers came down to the sea, where the icebergs calved. It was as alien a place as she had ever seen, more alien even than a science fiction film because it was right there, illuminated for her in the startling clarity of dazzling sunshine.

Which writers do you admire for the way they use location?

For Sean, Dickens immediately comes to mind: hardly a scene goes by that isn’t redolent of a life lived in it—stuffy banqueting rooms, Essex marshes, debtors’ prison… I admire Tim Winton who writes about his home state of Western Australia in such a way that I just want to jump on a plane and go there. He’s as comfortable describing what life’s like for the struggling poor living in beachside shacks as he is showing the reader what the inside of a wave looks like from a surfer’s point-of-view.

* * *

Readers, if this interview has piqued your curiosity about Lambert Nagle and the Cubitts, we encourage you to visit their author site.

JJ Marsh grew up in Wales, Africa and the Middle East, where her curiosity for culture took root and triggered an urge to write. After living in Hong Kong, Nigeria, Dubai, Portugal and France, JJ finally settled in Switzerland, where she is currently halfway through her European crime series, set in compelling locations all over the continent and featuring detective inspector Beatrice Stubbs.

STAY TUNED for next month’s Location, Locution, with Carl Plummer, who lives in China and writes comic thrillers as Robert E. Towsie.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of weekly posts from The Displaced Nation, with seasonal recipes, book giveaways and other extras. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

Cool Columns, Location, Locution , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts