The Displaced Nation

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Expats in Moscow satisfy a hunger to learn

1 Comment Posted by on April 27, 2011

Special announcement from TDN: ML Awanohara and Kate Allison will be live-tweeting the Royal Wedding from a displaced perspective. Join us from 5:00 a.m. EST, using the hash tag: #DNRW

I well remember my first foray into an American supermarket. Dozens of brands of orange juice, offset by a dearth of blackcurrant Ribena.  Cheese in aerosol cans, breakfast pizza bagels…  As for the meat — well, thank goodness everything came shrink-wrapped so I could smuggle it home and investigate its cooking requirements in privacy. Anything was better than revealing my ignorance of American cuts of beef to Stop & Shop’s rather intimidating butcher. It made me want to attend cooking classes – not because I couldn’t cook,  but because unfamiliar ingredients and lack of vital ones limited my usual repertoire. I had to eat what Americans did.

All this confusion took place in a country where the language was approximately the same as at home. How much more difficult must this experience be, then, in a country whose language is strange to you?

Borsch and blini

Victoria Agabalyan understands this problem well. She is the founder and chief executive of Taste of Russia, the first English-language culinary school in Moscow, whose students are primarily foreign tourists and expats.

In order to understand what Europeans expected of cooking classes, she, like American TV chef and one-time expat Julia Child before her, attended culinary school in France.  Consequently, Taste of Russia focuses on teaching traditional cuisine from Russia and the former Soviet Union in a cozy atmosphere. Student Bonnie van der Velde says:

“I cooked borshch and drankini with mushrooms for my mom and her colleagues in the Netherlands, and they liked it very much.”

Although Agabalyan teaches some of the classes herself, she also invites chefs to conduct culinary workshops while she or the school’s administrator translates. She plans to open more schools in other cities in Russia.

Hidden bonus for expats

Similar to my own dealings with strange supermarkets,  expats in Moscow have problems finding their way round the grocery shelves, and attendance at Taste of Russia helps them get over this difficulty. Another student, Angeline Sandmann, says that on her first shopping trip in Moscow she bought sour cream instead of the intended yogurt.

But it could have been worse. Try spraying cheese on top of your ice cream sundae.

Source:  The Moscow Times

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Burglars alarmed

1 Comment Posted by on April 12, 2011

Canine vigilantes were too much for two burglars who tried to break into expat Gerard Carroll’s house in Pruna, Spain.

When pinned to the ground by the homeowner’s specially trained guard dogs, the thieves had no option but to call the police to help them out of their predicament.

Gerard Carroll told The Olive Press that he had bought the dogs after his house was robbed a year ago. He considered the police action at the time to be less than satisfactory, and burglaries in the area had continued.

But taking the matter into his own hands seemed to have worked, he said.

At the time of the article in The Olive Press, one of the burglars was still receiving hospital treatment.

Source: The Olive Press

 

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Mobile in America

5 Comments Posted by on April 11, 2011

Today we welcome Mandy Rogers to The Displaced Nation as a guest blogger. She wrote this post in response to Kate Allison’s “The Domestic Expat.”

I don’t always understand what people are saying. I’m temperamentally unsuited to the noise and lack of personal space. I don’t think I’ll ever completely fit in. What am I?

A Mississippian in Manhattan!

My husband, Kary, and I moved to New York City two-and-a-half years ago, when we were in our early thirties. Until then, we had spent our entire lives in Mississippi. We loved it and had a great community of friends, whom we still miss.

Making the move

What possessed us to pick up stakes and try out life somewhere else?

Kary and I met in the marching band at Mississippi State. I played the flute and he the trumpet. We both landed jobs at the university immediately upon graduation. But there was something in each of us, a kind of restlessness. We knew we couldn’t be content with staying in Starkville forever. Was it a passion for travel or a fear of growing too complacent? Perhaps a bit of both…

There was also a practical reason for making the move. I’d gone back to school in my late twenties to do a masters in landscape architecture. I discovered I really enjoyed doing projects involving public spaces, such as parks, gardens, and streetscapes. Public green space isn’t a priority in Mississippi, where most people have their own land.

During my graduate studies, I’d taken a road trip with Kary and my sister to New York City, visiting Central Park, Paley Park, and Bryant Park. The amount of green space was a surprise to me. It’s something my mother, another garden lover, noticed during her first visit to the city, too.

In the end, it all happened rather quickly. Kary was offered the first job in New York he applied for. He actually got it via Twitter!

We packed up our belongings in a rental car — our cocker spaniel, Callie, in her seat belt harness and our three cats in their carriers — and traveled over three days to our new home in the Big Apple, staying in pet-friendly hotels along the way. (We’d flown out to find an apartment just beforehand, signing a lease for one in Brooklyn, which several of our friends had recommended as a great place to live.)

When we first moved, I didn’t have a job so spent the time exploring gardens and parks in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island. Even now that I’m working for a landscape architecture firm in Manhattan, I escape to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden whenever I can to see what’s in bloom. My dad gave me a membership there just before he died. We had a complicated relationship so it’s a nice reminder of him and our common love of gardens.

The adjustment process

People still ask me: where are you from? They usually guess North Carolina or Georgia; no one has guessed Mississippi yet.

I’m still picking up new vocabulary and pronunciations. “House-ton” instead of “Hue-ston” Street; standing “on line” at the grocery store (in the South we say “in line”).

And I continue to be amazed that the number of people living in Brooklyn equals the entire population of Mississippi (2.5 million). No wonder one of our most difficult adjustments has been to the noise and (by our standards) overcrowding.

Still, there are lots of things we love in this part of the world, beginning with the climate. Thunder and tornadoes are much less frequent here. And believe it or not, even after this rough winter, we still can’t get enough of snow.

We’ve adjusted very quickly to living without a car. You can see and experience so much more on foot than behind the wheel. That said, I usually did most of my singing in the car, and I miss that! (I don’t sing around my apartment too much, as the neighbors could hear me.)

And, although the South is renowned for its hospitality, I am often surprised by how much nicer, friendlier, and helpful New Yorkers are than they are given credit for being.

Moving right along…

Despite these many “likes,” I don’t think we’ll ever be true New Yorkers. To this day, I always relish running into other Southerners. The past two years, Kary and I have attended the annual picnic held in Central Park for folks from Mississippi. There’s always a blues band and plenty of fried catfish, sweet tea, and other Southern delicacies.

Not all Mississippians have exactly the same values, but each of us knows what it was like growing up in that neck of the woods, and it gives us a powerful bond.

During the year, Kary and I congregate with fellow Mississippi State alumni at a local bar to watch our alma mater compete in football or basketball. We’ve made some new acquaintances that way, such as a native New Yorker who went to MSU in the 1970s to run track.

Like most expats, Kary and I debate about the right moment to move on and where to go next. Will we try the West Coast, or consider moving back south? Every time I visit Mississippi these days — I’ve been back three times since we left — I realize how much I’ve missed its hospitality, beautiful forests, and tranquility. Plus it’s been nice catching up with family and friends over hearty Southern meals.

Still, the hot, humid summer would take some getting used to again. And now that we’ve been bitten by the travel bug, we’re contemplating our wish list again. We visited San Francisco last year and liked what we saw.

Being mobile in America — it’s a trip, in more ways than one. Tell me, why do so many Americans seek adventure overseas when it’s perfectly possible to be an expat here?

Question: Can being an “expat” within your own borders be just as enriching as becoming one by crossing borders?

Mandy doesn’t have a blog but you can follow her on Twitter: @mandyluvsplants

img: Mandy (right) and a friend she ran into at a Central Park picnic for Mississippians in New York. Mandy’s comment: “My friend still lives in Mississippi but was here with her daughter, who was attending the picnic as part of her duties as Mississippi’s Miss Hospitality. My mom says I can’t go anywhere without running into someone I know — I guess she’s right!”

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A week in tartan

11 Comments Posted by on April 7, 2011

Scotland Flag from PhotoEverywhere.co.uk – CC license

It’s time to celebrate all things Scottish. Dunk Walker’s shortbread in your tea, deep-fry a Mars Bar, eat chicken tikka masala. Read Robert Burns, watch Billy Connolly.  Drop into conversation that your great-great-grandmother came from Dundee (actually, she did). Whatever you do, though, make sure you do it in tartan.

In 1982, New York City Mayor Ed Koch declared July 1 as Tartan Day, a one-off celebration of the 200th anniversary of the repeal of the Act of Proscription — the law forbidding Scots to wear tartan. Following this, Scottish-Americans lobbied the Senate for official recognition of Tartan Day, until eventually, in 2008, President George W. Bush signed a Presidential Proclamation making April 6th a day to

“celebrate the spirit and character of Scottish Americans and recognize their many contributions to our culture and our way of life.”

— which, naturally, entails a long parade through the streets of New York in an attempt to out-do the other Celts’ celebrations on March 17.

Not just New York, either. Tartan festivities are held throughout the rest of the USA, plus Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, although the last two stick to July 1 for their day of plaid fabric observance. Even Scotland joins in the fun.

However, do the U.S celebrations really “celebrate the spirit and character of Scottish Americans” as President Bush said? The key word in that phrase is, perhaps,  “Americans.”

As Scottish expat and travel writer/blogger Aefa Mulholland says in her interview with Scotland’s Daily Record:

“People [in America] have very different views of Scottishness from what most people in Scotland would have today. Scottish-Americans tend to remember and celebrate Scotland the way it was when they left it.”

But that’s simply the way of the expat world: homesick for a place which doesn’t quite exist any more — only in memory.

On another note — it’s strange that a law banning an item of clothing should have such far-reaching celebrations. Certain U.S. towns currently making the wearing of saggy pants a criminal offense should perhaps ponder this point, for the benefit of future generations.

Question: Which style of dress would you like to see commemorated every year?

image: Scotts_flag by www.photoeverywhere.co.uk
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How many years should an expat stay? The answer is blowin’ in the wind…

Leave a comment Posted by on April 5, 2011

Most human beings feel disconcerted when they lose the self-validating “mirror” that tells them who they are. That’s what we hear from the relocation experts — as cited by Kate Allison in her article exploring how even people who move within the same country can have something akin to an expat experience.

But in my own experience of being displaced, first in England and then in Japan, trying to live in a country where you share a great deal — ethnically, culturally, linguistically — with the natives is easier to sustain for lengthy periods. Under those conditions, it’s possible to maintain the illusion of the mirror still being in place.

After all, quite a few Americans — comedians like Ruby Wax and Reginald D. Hunter, writers like Bill Buford and Bill Bryson — have made it in England. In Japan, by contrast, although foreigners can become talento, they will never achieve the same level of belonging.

Thus when I first learned the news that Junichi Kinoshita had won this year’s Taipei Literature Award, the first non-native writer to do so in 13 years, I thought, well, no wonder. On the face of it, Taiwan should be a relatively easy adjustment for a Japanese person.

But does Kinoshita actually feel that way? Yes and no. His first impression of the Taiwanese was how similar they looked to the Japanese, and though he found learning Mandarin a challenge, he eventually mastered it to the point where he was able to write his debut novel in Chinese, and at a level that garnered it a prestigious award.

On the other hand, life in Taiwan posed a considerable culture shock as people there tend to be much more hospitable than the Japanese. In Kinoshita’s book, the title of which can be roughly translated as Dandelion Floss, five Japanese expatriates in Taipei struggle to adjust to the local culture — and when they finally get the hang of it, must grapple with the question of when (and whether) to go home to Japan.

At the end of the novel, one of them says:

I think every expatriate is following some kind of mysterious calling from their heart. There is some predestined relationship between a person and a city. One leaves the city when the affinity ends, be it a few months or 10 years, it just happens.

Kinoshita intended his book as a swan song to his life in Taipei. After submitting it to the contest, he planned to return to Japan with his wife, who is also Japanese. Now, however, they are rethinking their next step: perhaps the prize is a signal that Kinoshita isn’t finished with the city yet? Besides, he has already decided on a theme for his next work of fiction, as well as a language: Chinese again.

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The domestic expat

2 Comments Posted by on April 4, 2011

A photograph on a Minnesota news website showing a street in Brooklyn, NY, has the caption:

A long line of Minnesota expats wait to enter the “Minnesota State Fair Affair.”

Meanwhile, on a classified ads website, someone from Wales is looking for other Welsh expats to meet in a pub – in Winchester, England.

While convention and Wikipedia define an expatriate as:

any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen

it seems that this definition is being gradually challenged, as shown by these two examples. You no longer need to cross borders to be an expat. You can be a domestic expat. A fish out of water in your own country.

Leaving aside the touchy debate of whether Wales and England are separate countries – for the purposes of passport control and this article, they both come under the umbrella of the United Kingdom – this challenge, upon consideration, is perfectly reasonable.

An intrinsic part of expat life is culture shock, which is, says the University of Northern Iowa College of Business Administration,

the trauma you experience when you move into a culture different from your home culture.

It has several stages:

Excitement/fascination – ignoring small problems; a sense of being on extended vacation;

Crisis period – when difficulties arise, the new country turns out to have feet of clay, and you realize you can’t go home;

Adjustment – a change from negative attitude to positive; rediscovery of sense of humor;

Acceptance/adaptation – a sense of belonging in, and adapting to the new culture;

Re-entry shock – upon return to the original country, when the whole process starts again.

In her 2002 article, What To Expect When You Relocate, Achievement Coach Nancy Morris says:

Surprisingly to many, culture shock can show up even when relocating from one region to another within our own country – we assume ‘culture shock’ only occurs when moving to a completely different country.

If you’ve ever moved from London to Newcastle, or from New York to Alabama, or from Toulouse to Paris, you’ll know she’s right. All the symptoms above can be yours, and you don’t need the inconvenience of an international flight to get them. A domestic flight will do it – or, in the case of our Welsh example, a short trip along the M4.

Nancy Morris goes on to say that

moving to a new cultural environment can turn from culture shock to “self-shock”.

During most of life’s transitions – changing jobs, divorce, bereavement – we have a tendency to question ourselves, and who we are. Surrounded by familiar family, friends, environment, we are usually able to make sense of this question and find an answer, even as we struggle to accept the change in our lives. When the change is cultural, however, acceptance is more difficult. As Morris puts it:

At home we have a mirror which helps to validate and re-affirm us. Within a new environment, the mirror no longer exists. So, at a time when you are seeking the answer to the “who am I” question, your surroundings are asking “who are you?”

Surrounding yourself with culturally familiar people – those with the same accent as you, those who feel as displaced as you; in other words, expat communities – is just one way of putting that mirror back in its place.

And it doesn’t matter you’re an Englishman in New York, or a Welshman in Winchester.

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RANDOM NOMAD: Anita McKay, Property Manager

7 Comments Posted by on April 1, 2011

Born in: Indonesia
Passport(s): Indonesian and British Permanent Resident
Countries lived in: Australia (Sydney): 1999-2001; Scotland (Aberdeen): 2007-2009; Western Australia (Perth): 2009-2013
Cyberspace coordinates: Finally Woken (blog)

What made you leave your homeland in the first place?
I left in 2000 to study for a master’s degree in Sydney. I left again in 2007 because my then fiance (now husband) got a job in the UK. Philosophically, I have never really felt at “home” in my own home country of Indonesia. Lots of its values don’t match with mine. From the time I was a child, I felt like an alien and longed to go away.

Is anyone else in your immediate family a “displaced” person?
No. My brother doesn’t like to travel and still lives at home with my parents. But three of my father’s sisters are married to Germans: two still in Germany and one in Indonesia. And I have four cousins living in the Netherlands and Germany.

Describe the moment when you felt the most displaced over the course of your various travels.
It was in Sydney. I was working as a casual staff at an ice cream shop while doing my postgraduate study. It was winter, around 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. I had just closed the shop and was waiting for the bus. It was rainy and cold, and then all of a sudden, there was a hailstorm. I almost cried, I felt so sorry for myself. I was thinking about how if I’d stayed put in Indonesia, I could have been working for a big company and earning a nice salary by then, living with maids and a chauffeur. I wouldn’t have to mop floors or clean windows to pay the rent. In the Indonesian island where I come from, everyone knows me and my family, but here in Sydney, no one cares who I am or whose daughter I am…

Describe the moment when you felt least displaced.
Weirdly, I almost always feel more at home in anywhere but my own country.

You may bring one curiosity you’ve collected from your travels into the Displaced Nation. What’s in your suitcase?
A flash disk containing thousands of photos.

You’re invited to prepare one meal based on your travels for other Displaced Nation members. What’s on your menu?
Chicken tikka masala — it’s originally from Glasgow, most people don’t know that — and cranachan for dessert.

You may add one word or expression you’ve picked up from the countries you’ve lived in to The Displaced Nation argot. What word(s) do you loan us?
“Bollocks.” My hubby, who is Scottish, says it sounds cute when I say it. I try to use a Scottish intonation. He would let me say it whenever I wanted — until I said it in front of his 95-year-old grandmother, and then he explained it was actually a very very rude word.

img: Anita McKay (left) with a good Indonesian friend who was visiting her in Scotland, in front of Balmoral Castle, the only royal residence outside England.

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Free at last of the media bubble: The FT’s Simon Kuper on the expat life

4 Comments Posted by on March 31, 2011

Every once in a while, I come across an article on the expat life that is so brilliant, I cannot refrain from screaming “yes!” aloud — thereby disturbing my two dogs, who don’t like being aroused from their naps unless it’s food.

That’s how I felt when reading Simon Kuper’s “Why expats don’t get tinnitus,” which appeared in the March 25 FT Magazine.

Kuper had me with the opening sentence:

I’ve lived in Paris for nine years now, but I’m still often not sure what goes on here.

Yes, I can relate, after my nine years in England and my seven in Japan!

He then goes one to say that he doesn’t actually mind living in ignorance, if it means being immune to the daily news cycle —  who’s up and who’s down — as well as the “status dance.”

Yes, I get that, too! Particularly in Japan, where I soon reached the point of not really knowing or caring whether I was meeting VIPs (the exception being when I met Prince Charles). I could decide whether I liked a person for who they were, not for the “status hat” they were wearing. (Not sure he could have worn a hat, with those ears.)

For Kuper, living in the media bubble can be likened to having a “constant dreadful ringing sound in your ears,” or tinnitus. He says he loves his tinnitus-free life, recognizing he’s not the first expat to feel this way. (No, he’s not!) He quotes the writer James Baldwin saying he was grateful to Paris for treating him with “utter indifference,” notes that Gertrude Stein appreciated Paris for a similar reason, and acknowledges Pico Iyer for capturing the liberation-through-alienation sentiment so well in his book The Global Soul.

The only thing I can’t concur with is Kuper’s conclusion, that if the Internet could be shut down, he’d be completely cured of his tinnitus. Were it not for the Web and my Google alerts, I may never have discovered this article of his, and would be the poorer for it.

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China — just TV, fantasy

1 Comment Posted by on March 20, 2011

When I was an expat in Japan, I enjoyed going to talks at various expat clubs. It made me feel more in touch with thinkers and trends from my former world.

Sometimes, however, this “old reality” dose can highlight just how displaced you are.

Nancy Lewis, who teaches English in Shanghai, furnishes a brilliant example of this in a March 9 post on her blog, Wandering Solo, about a book talk hosted by Shanghai Dolls Book Club. The speaker was Emma Donoghue, an Irish writer who lives in Canada. Her most recent novel, Room, was shortlisted for last year’s Man Booker Prize. It tells the story of a woman who is trapped in a close, sustained relationship with her captor-rapist from the point of view of the five-year-old child, Jack, who is the offspring of their union. Jack has lived in the 11-by-11-foot room of the title with his mother since the day he was born.

Donoghue acknowledges that she was inspired to write the book by the Elisabeth Fritzle case.

Lewis enjoyed Donoghue’s talk so much — she found her “warm and engaging, with a great sense of humor” — that she went home and downloaded the book on her Kindle, spending the rest of the evening engrossed in the story.

What’s more, Lewis concluded that the boy’s view — he sees everything inside the Room as real, and everything outside as TV, fantasy — has something in common with how she views her own life in Shanghai:

When I’m at home, I’m alone in my 10-foot by 10-foot bedroom, reading or studying or chatting with friends on Skype. When I’m at work, I’m surrounded by Westerners – people like me. (Since we’re writing English language learning materials, we’re all native speakers of English.)

My contact with Chinese life is short & intermittent – the morning commute on the subway, a 10-second conversation with a shop keeper, giving directions to the taxi driver. …

Every once in a while, I have to remind myself that I live in China. China! CHINA?! How did that happen? It’s not an altogether real part of my life. My job is real, my room is real, my Western friends are real. But China? China is just TV. Fantasy.

 

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PHOTO: Sea of green

Leave a comment Posted by on March 17, 2011

For the past 43 years, the Chicago River has turned green on March 17. So the residents of New York City’s East Village didn’t blink an eye when the water in the street near an Irish bar turned green this year as well. It seemed plausible to many of us that a leprechaun had been crying a river wondering why Irish Americans are more Irish than the Irish. (His eyes had not been smiling…)

“Is it a case of far away hills being greener?” he lamented with a keen.

You see, Dublin is quiet on St. Patrick’s Day, but American cities are anything but…

UPDATE: By the following morning, the green water had magically evaporated, proving we’d been right to give short shrift to the skeptic who insisted it was an antifreeze leak.

image: E. 10th St., NYC, by mlawanohara

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