The Displaced Nation

A home for international creatives

Tag Archives: Repatriation

Eight months into my expat life, two roads diverged and I — I took the one home

11 Comments Posted by on March 27, 2013

Kat Collage_dropshadowToday we welcome back Kat Selvocki to the Displaced Nation. She wrote for us once before: a travel yarn about spending Christmas in Europe with friends. She had just been toiling in the farmlands of Iceland as a volunteer, and was about to head Down Under to begin a new life as a yoga instructor in Sydney. Now, just over a year later, she is back in the United States. What happened? Here is Kat’s repatriation story.

— ML Awanohara

As my year-long working holiday visa for Australia began to wane, I started considering my options.

Or rather, my option.

I teach yoga: a career that doesn’t generally allow for work sponsorship. I also had a rocky relationship with my Australian boyfriend.

The only I way I could feasibly stay in Sydney was to enroll in a course.

I’d heard tales from other expats of reasonably-priced options — reasonably-priced meaning anything under $8,000 a year — but knew in my heart it wasn’t going to work. I no longer had that kind of cash in the bank, and even if I had, you wouldn’t catch me spending it on some ridiculous “business basics” class.

It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted to stay; I just wasn’t sure I wanted to uproot my life after spending just eight months building a new life in Australia. There were places I still wanted to visit in that vast country, things I still wanted to do. And I loved the classes I was teaching.

But then I got glandular fever — commonly known in the US as mono, or the kissing disease. A month into fighting overwhelming exhaustion, all I wanted was for things to be easy again. In the end, it was having a such a debilitating illness that drove me over the edge.

I bought a plane ticket home.

The three emotions of repatriation

First came relief:

  • No more comments about how my tattoos, taste in music, or style were “too American.”
  • No more complicated calculations to figure out when friends or family would be available to Skype.
  • No more job rejections on the basis of not being a citizen.
  • And most importantly: central heating in abundance — finally, I’d stop getting sick so often!

Self-doubt followed. I’d spent years wanting to live as an expat, and when I finally had the opportunity, I’d been utterly miserable.

Had I failed, or not tried hard enough?

Should I have fought to stay longer, or at least until the end of my visa?

Were my reasons for leaving the right ones?

Why hadn’t I applied for that job working at a roadhouse waitress in the Outback, so that I’d at least seen more of the country?

Next up: fear. As I headed off to Oxford, UK, at the end of last year, to spend Christmas with friends before returning to the States to seek work, the wheel had come full circle. As reported on this blog in December 2011, I’d spent my first Christmas away from family, in Europe, on my way to a new life in Australia.

Whereas before I’d been full of excitement and anticipation, this time I was full of worry. I worried about how welcoming people would be when I returned. So many of my relationships had disintegrated while I was away, and I wasn’t sure if that was because of distance or because people were fed up with my use of Aussie slang in our conversations … or was it all my whining about being so bloody tired? (Hm, there’s that slang again!)

I had no idea whether finding work would actually be any easier, especially considering the much higher unemployment rate in the US.

I didn’t know how to talk about my time in Sydney without sounding bitter or depressed — but was also afraid that even if I sounded upbeat, people wouldn’t care to hear about it.

Old habits die hard…

I’d always believed that if something doesn’t work, you can simply head back to the place you were before.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure about that.

I had decided to move back to Seattle, a city where I’d lived eight years earlier. But would that be a terrible mistake? I pictured trying — and failing — to recreate the life I’d loved before.

Last time I wrote for the Displaced Nation, I reminisced about the four months I’d spent living in Prague on a study abroad. What I didn’t report was the depression and reverse culture shock I battle against upon returning to the United States.

If that were true after a mere four months, what impact would a year-and-a-half away have? Would I be feeling even more out of place? I dreaded the long readjustment.

I also worried about money, and whether I had enough to get settled again quickly.

…or do they?

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. (Except for the money concerns. Then again, I’m convinced that no matter how much I’d saved before returning, I still would have worried.)

From the moment I stepped off the plane, it was as if someone had flipped a switch inside of me. Even though things had changed — something that was particularly evident in New York City, which I passed through on the way to the West Coast (I’d lived there after Seattle) — it all felt normal. Easy. Almost as if I’d never left. My internal map and compass worked again; I knew where I was and where I was going.

And I still believe that — even though, two months after returning to the States, I continue to look the wrong way when crossing the street.

* * *

Thanks, Kat, for sharing your story. I found it very moving. Readers, any comments, questions for Kat — any similar stories to share?

Kat Selvocki — badass yoga instructor, photographer, writer and traveler — is currently kicking ass and taking names in Seattle after returning from her expat adventures. Learn more about her on her Web site: KatSelvocki.com. You can also follow her on Twitter: @katselvocki.

STAY TUNED for the final post in our fashion and style series, by the ever-so-stylish Kate Allison! (Well, she certainly has flair!)

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:

images: (clockwise, starting top left) Chelsea Market, NYC; Capitol Hill, Seattle; Circular Quay, Sydney; Chelsea Market, NYC; The Rocks, Sydney; in the air when flying from Sydney to Melbourne; Pioneer Square, Seattle. Center shot of Kat Selvocki was taken in Seattle. All photos are Kat’s with the exception of the Circular Quay in Sydney, which came from Morguefiles.

Golden Oldies, Pot Luck , , , , , , , , , ,

LESSONS FROM TWO SMALL ISLANDS — 6) Keep Calm and Run a Bath

10 Comments Posted by on March 7, 2013

I didn’t think seriously about fashion and beauty until I, an American East Coaster, became a resident of two small islands: Britain and then Japan.

Both London and Tokyo are fashion capitals, and living in each of these cities, I found that every so often I really enjoy thinking about striking clothing combinations, make-up, and self-pampering.

Would I have discovered this love of what America’s Puritan founders would call frivolity had I stayed in this country? It’s conceivable, especially if I’d moved to New York City, where I now live as a repatriate. (NOTE: While I do not have Puritan ancestry, I was raised to be a bluestocking, not a girl in rhinestone-studded pantyhose.)

But in the event, I discovered fashion and beauty through my travels — and from learning about how women in other countries clothe and groom themselves.

So what, you may ask, were my key take-aways from this relatively speaking decadent period of my life? No specific beauty products or fashions, but these five guiding principles:

1) To get an English rose (or any other perfect) complexion, you have to be born with it. Nevertheless, skin care is worth it.

As a Caucasian woman, one of my beauty ideals was that of the English rose: a woman with flawless porcelain skin and rosy cheeks that look as though they’ve been produced by good bracing walks in the countryside wearing sensible shoes and tweed skirts.

When I first moved to England and encountered some actual English Roses, I wondered: is it because of the climate, the cosmetics from Boots the Chemist, the diet? (How do I get me one of those?)

My research soon revealed that diet has nothing to do with it. Not in a country where people grow up eating chips and crisps.

And as nice as the No7 products are, they can’t work miracles.

So maybe a glowing appearance is the result of England’s unique climatic conditions: a paucity of direct sunlight and the moisturizing drizzle that almost always seems to be in the air?

I hardly think that can be the case, as there are plenty of Britons with problem skin…

Trying not to turn pea green with envy (hardly a flattering shade!), I could come to only one conclusion: you have to be born with it.

But, not to despair! Once I reached Japan, where women are obsessed with their skin — some even use whitening lotions to obtain a creamier complexion — I learned that of all the things you can do for beauty, skin care is the most worthwhile.

Ladies, if you protect your skin, you might find yourself turning into an English Rose when you get a bit older — the Last Rose of Summer, so to speak.  While some may swear by Crème de la Mer, I go with the regime I picked up in Japan: sunscreen, a hat and a parasol.

I’d also recommend befriending your dermatologist, who knows a lot more about skin care and sun protection than the woman behind the cosmetics counter…

2) Don’t be afraid of experimenting with your hair: it can add some spice and life to your image.

In the UK one of my English rose-complexioned friends favored a chic bob — but with a streak of blue, green or red in it.

As an American fresh off the boat, I was rather scandalized. Why was she ruining a perfectly good hairstyle?

Over time, however, I came to realize that when you live in a country where skies are often the color of lead, adding a bright color to a strand of hair can brighten up your day.

By the time I left England, I could no longer understand why any woman, once she reached maturity, wouldn’t dye or highlight her hair. She doesn’t know the fun she’s missing out on! And, even though I have yet to streak my hair in an outrageous color, it’s definitely on my bucket list.

In Japan, too, I got some kicks from playing with my hair — this time, by adorning it with the kinds of hair ornaments that have been popular since the times when women wore kimono and kanzashi: combs, hair sticks and pins, hair bands, and fancy barrettes.

I did not have particularly long hair when I first reached Japan, but as long hair is the signature of Japanese ladies — and they were my new role models — I soon had locks long enough to make the most of such accessories. My favorite was the snood — I had one that was attached to a barrette covered with a bow. What a great way to keep long hair out of one’s face.

3) Gemstones and pearls are a girl’s best friend.

Sorry, Marilyn dear, but after living in the UK and Japan, my BFFs are gemstones and pearls. Is this because I went to England in the era of Princess Diana, with her (now Kate Middleton’s) 18-carat sapphire ring?

My relationship with colored gemstones only deepened after I moved to Japan and went on several sojourns into Southeast Asia, land of rubies and sapphires, among others.

My engagement ring is a ruby (purchased by my hubby in Tokyo!).

In Japan itself, I fell for pearls and now have quite the collection of necklaces, earrings, rings, and bracelets, mostly from Wally Yonamine’s in the Roppongi area of Tokyo. The owner, Jane, wife of  Wally (a professional baseball player who played with the Yomiuri Giants) is a displaced Japanese Hawaiian.

4) Youth is the time to have fun with fashion.

In the UK, I was taken in by the spectacle of punk and post-punk kids and their strange fashions, while in Japan I found it mesmerizing to watch the Lolita fashions of the Harajuku kids, on a Sunday afternoon.

Eventually, instead of thinking they were weird, I regretted never having had my own equivalent of wearing Doc Martens with a Laura Ashley dresses … sporting long, back-combed hair, pale skin, dark eyeshadow, eyeliner, and lipstick, black nail varnish, along with a spiked bracelet and dog-collar … dressing up like a Victorian boy …

It just wasn’t the done thing, in my stiff, conservative American circles, to wear outlandish garb. And now it’s too late, of course. Youth is the time when you can get away with it. After that, you have to wait for Halloween. (Unless, of course, you want to come across as “mutton dressed as lamb,” as the English say…)

5) Last but not least, my top beauty tip, reinforced by both of these countries: A bath is much preferable to a shower.

At the beginning of living in England, I missed the American shower so much. I was convinced I would never be clean again. But then one day I woke up and realized I’d been brainwashed into believing I needed to have a shower every day. In fact, daily showers dry out the skin. As one dermatologist puts it:

Most people wash far too much. Using piping-hot water combined with harsh soaps can strip the skin of its oils, resulting in dryness, cracking and even infection.

That was around the same time I opened my mind to the possibility that baths — which tend to be favored over showers in the UK (at least in my day) — might actually be preferable. Nothing like a long hot bath with a glass of wine and a book, my English friends would say. Or, as one British beauty site puts it:

A nice bubble bath is the closest you can come to having a spa-like relaxing experience in your own home, without much effort or without spending a lot of money.

Too true! Plus the English shops sell such wonderful bubble bath creams. My favorite was the Perlier Honey Miel (actually from Italy).

Still, I didn’t mind giving all of that up once I reached Tokyo — not the bathing but the bubbles. In the land of the communal bath, you scrub the skin first and then have a long soak in clean hot water, in a tub (ofuro) that is deep rather than long.

Indeed, Japan was where I learned the benefits of exfoliation: I ended up sloughing off dry skin from parts of my body I didn’t know existed. And then the immersion in clean hot water: bliss! Like returning to the womb…

For a Japanese who works long hours, bathing is a sacred time, a ritual. While I haven’t quite converted that far, I have a Pavlovian reaction every time I hear bath water running. Time to go into Total Relax Mode!

I even have a Japanese bath here in my apartment in NYC, and the thought of sitting in it is what keeps me going … That said, I must confess that I sometimes put bubbles in. What can I say? I’m displaced.

* * *

So, readers, what do you make of my five beauty principles? Have you picked up any of your own in the countries where you live? I’m all ears — only please excuse me for a minute while I make sure the bath water isn’t running over. (I don’t want my downstairs neighbors knocking on my door at 3:00 a.m.!)

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, another installment in the life of our fictional expat heroine, Libby. (What, not keeping up with Libby? Read the first three episodes of her expat adventures.)

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:

Image: MorgueFile

Golden Oldies, Lessons from Two Small Islands (series) , , , , , , , , , ,

A once-displaced author on muses, monkeys & murder — and your chance to win her new book!

13 Comments Posted by on January 22, 2013

EdithmcclintockOur first featured author of the new year, Edith McClintock, is today’s guest. Her post should help to alleviate the January doldrums and this “brass monkey” weather. By way of introduction, I should point out that even though she does write mysteries, she herself is a bit of a mystery. Tee hee-hee ha-ha! On the one hand, she is a former Peace Corps worker, and has worked to preserve rainforests. On the other, she has harbored dreams of killing off her fellow researchers in the Amazon! Indeed, working with Edith sounds about as much fun as a barrel of monkeys! But let’s find out more about her creative muses, shall we, before leaping to any conclusions…

— ML Awanohara


I can’t pinpoint the moment I decided to write a novel. The idea percolated for years starting in my early teens. I did, however, always know — to the extent I even understood book categories, which was not much — that my first book would be a mystery, heavy on romantic suspense, and definitely a touch gothic.

Maybe a modern-day version of M.M. Kaye’s light mysteries (before she wrote The Far Pavilions), each set in an exotic locale.

And maybe a little Barbara Michaels mixed with Elizabeth Peters’ humor.

They were all early muses.

But so was travel. I knew the setting would have to be international, exotic…romantic. I wanted my characters to be trapped in a confined setting — like the best Agatha Christie.

From my first trip to Spain when I was thirteen, across Europe and Central and South America in my twenties, I contemplated castles, ruins, plunging cliffs, and remote islands based on their novelistic setting potential.

We are not aMUSEd: “Writing is hard”

But I needed more than a muse to write a book. I needed an obsession. For me, that’s the only way it could have happened, because writing Monkey Love and Murder was hard. Writing is hard. The rejection was crushing.

I cried. My sister cried. The rewriting and rewriting and rewriting again often felt meaningless. More sacrifice than joy. Sometimes exhilarating. More often tedious and lonely.

The truth is the time lost probably wasn’t worth it. I had demanding, more than full-time jobs. I wrote on weekends and evenings. My friends and family were celebrating, playing, gathering, the sun shining. I was hunched over a computer screen talking to my make-believe world.

It takes a certain arrogance to believe you can even write a book. To believe it will get published. To believe people will actually like it. Maybe love it. I had that in the beginning. For years, really. I had to love the idea, the place, the characters.

The place as muse

Because it took an obsession to keep writing and rewriting, in my case probably much longer than I should have. But it wasn’t a person that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. My muse, my obsession, was the rainforest and a place called Raleighvallen in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve.

MonkeyLoveAndMurder_dropshadowI think my protagonist, Emma, expresses it best:

Even with all the frustrations, I fell completely and irretrievably in love with the rainforest that week — the deep rich smells of dirt and decay and teeming, thriving life; the warm soft light of the rocky moss-covered paths hidden beneath layers of climbing and tumbling lianas and roots; soaring tree trunks wrapped in colorful bromeliads, orchids, moss, and lichens; and the canopy of leaves of every conceivable size and shape. Each day was a new adventure, new wildlife (some good, some terrifying) and ever changing forest, from the sunlit traveling palm groves to the dense, swampy marshes near the river; to the rocky, open forests with the towering trees the spider monkeys loved. I enjoyed watching the spider monkeys too, but I could have been just as happy watching any number of wildlife. It was simply being in the rainforest I loved most.

Like Emma, I spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Suriname living in the capitol, Paramaribo. Unlike her, I joined a monkey research project post-Peace Corps simply because I wanted to spend more time in the rainforest — and chasing monkeys through the jungle seemed like fun.

It was. Hot, frustrating, itchy and wonderful.

I was there for six months, ideas percolating, but I didn’t begin writing until I came home. That’s when I moved beyond the idea of writing as abstract concept and into deep obsession.

Ignorance plus arrogance — a lethal combo?

I came home to the United States, spent three months working full-time and decided I couldn’t continue. Not yet. I was in the throes of a typical angst-ridden readjustment process combined with the initial bubbling of obsession. So I quit my job and drove cross-country to housesit for my sister and then a friend while I pounded out that first draft. I finished and returned to full-time work again, sure my first draft was destined for the bestseller lists.

I clearly had the arrogance. Unfortunately, I also had heaps of ignorance. I still do. I don’t understand publishing. I may never understand publishing.

Nine years later, following hundreds of rejections, countless rewrites, frequent tears and regular quitting (for months, even a year), my first novel is finally published. People, friends, strangers, will read it. Judge it.

It’s wonderful and scary and it took a passionate, often-painful obsession. But still, I’d do it again. I am doing it — I’ve just finished my second mystery (I hope). I have a plan for the next and the next and the next.

As for Monkey Love and Murder, thankfully, I’m finally over that obsession. And it turns out the best thing about finally being published is that I NEVER have to read or rewrite it again!

But still, I hope you’ll read it. I hope you’ll like it. I certainly did. For years.

* * *

Whoop! Whoop! Thank you, Edith! Readers, to whet your taste even more, here are a couple of reviews for Edith’s debut novel, Monkey Love and Murder:

Kirkus Review:

This debut from McClintock, who served in the Peace Corps and worked on a monkey research project, has the ring of authenticity, along with romance and a mystery that keeps you guessing.

Library Journal Review:

This romantic-suspense debut is perfect for those seeking adventure mixed in with their mystery. McClintock creates a vivid jungle environment, a perfect venue for a closed-room mystery. Her characters run a little larger than life, making the story feel like a reality TV show. With a bit of Scott Smith’s tone, this would work for Hilary Davidson fans too.

And let’s not forget the blurb:

Emma Parks joins a monkey research project deep in the South American rainforest on a whim. She refuses to admit it might have something to do with a close friend’s death from which she hasn’t recovered, but it’s certainly not because she knows anything about spider monkeys, least of all what they look like. She’s barely arrived when International Wildlife Conservation’s renowned director drowns during a party celebrating the group’s controversial takeover of the park. Tension mounts following the machete murder of a researcher, threatening Emma’s budding primatology career, her secret romance with an Australian zoologist, and more importantly — her life.

Can’t wait to read it? Why not download the first chapter?

I know, I know, one chapter isn’t the same as reading the whole book. SO ENTER OUR DRAW TO WIN A FREE COPY — in 3 easy steps:
1) Comment on Edith’s post
2) Like her book’s Facebook page
3) Subscribe to our Displaced Dispatch
Yes, of course you can take just one of these steps, or two — but do all three and you’ll have an even greater chance of winning!!! @(‘_’)@

The winners will be announced in our Displaced Dispatch (and on Edith’s Facebook page) on Feb. 2, 2013. She will contact you for your address and is open to shipping anywhere in the world.

NOTE: If you’re not lucky enough to win one of Edith’s books, you can always order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or The Book Depository.

Born in a school bus in the Tennessee woods on the largest commune to come out of the sixties, Edith McClintock works in the conservation and development field and blogs about travel on Novel Adventurers. Although a lifelong reading addict, she didn’t write fiction until post–Peace Corps, when she joined a monkey research project deep in the Amazon. Trapped in a tiny jungle cabin for six months, there was little to do but imagine creative ways to kill off her fellow researchers (all of whom were too nice to make it into her first novel, despite their begging). To find out more about Edith, visit her author’s blog.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, also on expat writing.

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:

Images: Edith McClintock’s author photo (yes, that’s her — in Chinatown in Seattle, buying mangoes) and book cover.

Features, Fiction writers , , , , , , , , ,

LESSONS FROM TWO SMALL ISLANDS — 5) Keep calm and pour some tea

12 Comments Posted by on December 3, 2012

Teatime CollageDecember greetings, everyone! Can you see us twinkling? The Displaced Nation wants to be part of your Festival of Lights this December — a source of brightness and enLIGHTenment during the dark days of winter. (Unless, of course, you reside in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case, you should be helping all of us to feel brighter!)

But before we get to that — Kate Allison will be delivering some tips tomorrow on generating holiday cheer regardless of location — do you fancy what the Brits would call a cuppa?

If you said no, that you’d prefer coffee or cold beverage, I suspect you may be a compatriot of mine. Once upon a time, I was an American like you — I didn’t drink any caffeinated beverages apart from Diet Coke. But then I traveled to Europe and Asia, and now I can’t imagine a life without tea. As the Chinese lady who owns Ching Ching Cha, a traditional Chinese tea house in Georgetown, DC, once remarked to me, when I told her how much I’d grown to like tea from my travels: “For me, tea is a way of life.”

Those who already know what I’m talking about may read no further. But for the unconvinced, here are 10 lessons I learned while living in two major tea-drinking nations, Britain and Japan, for many years. (If you’re the bucket-list-keeping type, think of it is as 10 reasons to develop a tea-drinking habit before you die!)

1) Even if coffee is more your cup of tea, so to speak, give tea a chance.

Coffee is great for that jolt to the system. One of its most effective uses, apart from first thing in the morning when you’re going to work, is for the jet lag that occurs after a really long international flight — say between the United States and Japan. (Japanese, btw, love coffee as much as the English do — and perhaps thanks to German influence, can make an even better cup than anyone in the UK or the USA.) But unlike coffee, tea is what keeps you going day in day out, putting one foot in front of the other. It’s the sustenance beverage for the marathon known as life.

2) I mean tea, not tisanes.

I apologize to those expats who’ve spent their formative years in France. I have nothing against those herbal drinks with medicinal qualities. I just think it would be a shame to miss out on the kind of caffeine that tea has to offer — the kind that produces sustained mental alertness. Not to mention tea’s own medicinal qualities — all of those lovely antioxidants. Why do you think the Japanese live so long, with all their bad habits of smoking, drinking to excess and overwork? Likewise, the English writer, George Orwell, was able to sustain himself on cups of tea when living “down and out” in Paris and London.

3) Tea has a special role to play in the holiday season.

It’s the perfect libation to help you recover when your feet are aching after a full day of shopping and wrapping gifts (surely, the bane of any adult female’s existence this time of year!) or when you think your hand will drop off if you have to write one more Christmas card. It’s also the perfect drink to serve, because so convivial and relaxing, when meeting up with friends or family you haven’t seen in a long time.

4) Tea is a primary aid for developing a more stoical attitude towards life.

As explained in the very first post in this series, I found it a bit of a challenge to adapt to the brand of stoicism-cum-fatalism both of these small islands, England and Japan, have cultivated over the centuries. But the day I worked out the connection between tea-drinking and stoicism marked the beginning of the end of my struggle. If only I’d paid closer attention to Orwell, who said:

All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes.

5) Tea may also be the key to a philosophical approach to life.

The process of drinking a cuppa slows you down for long enough to clear your head of pressing thoughts and work out what is important. Strangely, I found Brits to be almost as insistent on the importance of a regular tea-drinking habit as the Japanese — even though it’s the latter who are renowned for their Zen approach to tea. Take these words of Rudyard Kipling’s, for example:

We haven’t had any tea for a week…
The bottom is out of the Universe

It reads like a haiku, doesn’t it? Certainly, his sentiments are not far removed from the Japanese proverb:

If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.

6) The rituals are just as important as the tea itself.

After nearly a decade of living in Britain, I had it all down to a fine art: boiling water to serve tea, heating the pot, putting the milk in the cup first, and pouring the tea without spilling. To this day, I cannot imagine making a pot of tea without pouring hot water in it first to heat the pot. The water and the pot need to be at the right temperature to brew the tea properly. Imagine the affront I experienced upon returning to this country and being served a cup of either semi-warm water or boiling water with a Lipton’s tea bag on the side. And though I found some of the Japanese tea-drinking rituals a bit obscure, especially those related to the tea ceremony — twirl the cup around three times, really? — I still took delight in the spectacle.

7) Tea should be served with something sweet.

“Tea and biccies, anyone?” as they say in England — usually meaning the chocolate-coated digestive biscuits. And the perfect way to offset the super bitter green tea (macha) of the Japanese tea ceremony is with the almost sickeningly sweet kashi and wagashi — confections that are usually served beforehand. A tad of sugar helps this most medicinal of teas go down. Not only that but it’s a beautiful combination, as anyone who has sampled green tea ice cream, by now a classic flavor, will attest.

8) Tea should be served in an aesthetically pleasing cup — never paper or plastic!

Part of the pleasure of taking tea at Fortnum & Mason’s or the Ritz is the bone china it is served in. If the world had a treasure chest, surely it would contain a full set of Wedgwood or Royal Doulton? In Japan, by contrast, it is the roughness and imperfection of the tea cup that provides aesthetic pleasure, or, if you’re drinking Western tea (usually served with lemon, not milk), the sheen of a fine china tea cup — either English (Wedgwood Wild Strawberry is very popular there) or a Japanese version (eg, Noritake). Can’t be bothered with china? At the very least, make your tea in a proper mug.

9) Tea is the ultimate social drink.

Perhaps the British writer known as Saki (yes, he was born in the Far East) put it best when he wrote:

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.

Japanese may not be as fond of having a natter when they take tea; nevertheless, they see it as a custom that fosters social harmony.

10) No one should ever be too busy for a tea break.

My fellow Americans, are you still with me? This pointer is particularly for you — particularly those of you who are always crazy busy — although as Tim Kreider pointed out on the New York Times‘s Opinionator blog, it’s often not clear why what you’re doing is so important. Perhaps if you took time out for a regular tea break, you would slow down a bit — see 5) — and find an escape from your self-imposed “busy trap.”

****

And now I must leave you as the clock says ten to three — only, is there still honey for my tea?

Readers, do you agree that tea may be the answer? Or is this just another of my moonbat pronouncements that’s put you in need of a strong cup of Joe?!

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post from Kate Allison.

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:

Img: Collage made of two photos available on Flickr via Creative Commons: (left) “High tea,” by John Heaven, and “Japanese tea ceremony,” by JoshBerglund19.

Golden Oldies, Lessons from Two Small Islands (series) , , , , , , , ,

And the Alices go to … these 3 expat writers for their Hurricane Sandy posts

7 Comments Posted by on November 26, 2012
© Iamezan | Dreamstime.com Used under license

© Iamezan | Dreamstime.com
Used under license

My husband and I have a habit of going on holiday just before some major world crisis occurs — after which we have no choice but to spend several days holed up in our hotel room watching the events unfold on CNN. Twice it was a crisis involving water: the deadly Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

But for Hurricane Sandy, we were very much on the scene — ensconced in our apartment in NYC’s East Village, and with no television to watch, not even a radio to listen to! As those who read my post of earlier this month are aware, we were deprived not only of power but also water, communications and public transportation for several days, and displaced from our home for one night — an inconvenience that, while somewhat traumatic, turned out to be minor compared to what others had suffered in harder-hit areas.

As I mentioned then, the experience gave me a chance to test this blog’s basic premise: that forcible displacement at some level compares with the kind of displacement one has when living in a country that is not your home. And if so, can a former expat like me draw on the strengths gained from living overseas to keep calm and carry on?

While pondering these fundamental questions, I came across three posts by expats on Hurricane Sandy that gave me some fresh insights — not only on Sandy but on the down-the-rabbit hole nature of international travel and the expat life.

Thus I’d like to hand out three “Alices” today to (in reverse chronological order):

1) PETE LAWLER

Awarded for: Clouds from the Past: My Reflections on Sandy, Gloria and the Jersey Shore, in his personal blog: The American Londoner
Posted on: 3 November 2012
Moving passage:

But here and now, when things are raw, when my cousins have been without power for a week and my parents are cooking with a propane tank and a Coleman portable grill even high up in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, I mourn. My heart goes out to those suffering and I mourn for that place of childhood sunshine and wish it a good and steady recovery in the coming months.
All the best, Jersey. I am thinking of you.

Citation: Pete, before Sandy, you probably weren’t thinking that much about “that place of childhood sunshine,” the Jersey shore — because, after eight years in London, you try not to think too much about sunshine any more. But then Sandy plunged you into mourning for all the good times you had as an all-American kid — the “long sunny days spent lazily frolicking through waves, collecting shells, and cautiously avoiding jellyfish.” It even made you think with some nostalgia of Hurricane Gloria, which you rather enjoyed as a seven-year-old. Absence, plus tragedy, can indeed make the heart grow fonder… What’s more, I sense how bad you must have felt about being powerless, from a distance, to help your parents and your cousin in their time of need — a guilt that’s at the hard core of the expat life. Just ask Linda Janssen — I’m thinking of her aptly titled “Down the Rabbit Hole” post of last summer, about her father’s illness.

2) MADELINE GRESSEL

Awarded for: Hurricane Sandy and the unspoken attraction of disaster, in Matador Abroad
Posted on: 1 November 2012
Thought-provoking passage:

Now, as New York City is sloshed by a record-breaking 13ft wall of water, it is I sitting comfortably in a café in Hong Kong watching the light October rain outside. … My friends post photos on Facebook of candlelit dinners, submerged cars, and the powerless, darkened skyline.

And I wish I were there with them. Not because I’m afraid for their safety (I’m not), but because I’m missing a moment of New York history. I’ll never be able to say, “Remember the flood of 2012? That was insane.” I feel jealous at the pictures, like I’ve seen a photo of an ex-lover with his new flame.

Citation: Maddie, I wonder why it is, as we also learned on this blog this month, so few American expats feel the need to connect with their homeland during a presidential election — which, too, provides a chance to be “part of history,” especially if the race is closely contested? I think the answer may lie in your rather astute observation: people love a disaster. Come to think of it, a friend of mine has confessed that during Sandy, she had the overwhelming urge to go outside — in the storm! (Even though it was expressly forbidden by Mayor Bloomberg.) In addition, your post reminded me of another old expat adage: out of sight, (afraid of being) out of mind…

3) RUTH MARGOLIS

Awarded for: “I wasn’t afraid of Superstorm Sandy — until the lights went out,” in Telegraph Expat
Posted on: 31 October 2012
Moving passage:

Forty-eight hours ago, I was relishing my role as stoic, cynical Brit, refusing to bow down to an impending crisis. I bashed out jokey emails to friends and family noting that it was “a bit blustery”…

…my husband and I — plus my visiting younger sister — spent much of Sunday and Monday quite enjoying the commotion. Like kids playing an imaginary game, we stocked up on all the (un)necessaries: crisps mainly, and garish American junk foods…

Then, something strange happened: the lights went out in Manhattan. … “Ah,” we thought, followed by a shaky: “Hmm”. … Eventually, we went to bed, with the radio on. No one got much sleep.

When the next storm hits, I expect I’ll ditch the cockiness sooner.

Citation: Ruth, there I was, trying to conjure up the “keep calm and carry on” ethos that I’d learned (rather begrudgingly) from nearly a decade of living in Britain, when, had I known you were down in Brooklyn, I could have asked for a refresher course (ah, yes, the junk foods and the jokey emails!). Still and all, I’m glad to know that even for a native-born Brit, there are limits, one of which is seeing the lights go out in lower Manhattan… (From now on, I won’t be too hard on myself!) I can also relate to what you said about these disasters having a cumulative effect (made worse by the fact that you’re living far away from your homeland and already feeling somewhat displaced). As you point out in your post, Sandy was the second time since emigrating that you’ve “had to assume the brace position,” the first being Irene. I can recall feeling something similar when living in Tokyo — first there was the Aum Shinrikyo attack on the subway and then the massive earthquake in Kobe, after which I decided that the stoicism required for this situation hadn’t yet been invented! (Bloomin’ heck, why was it I’d told everyone at “home” that Japan was so much safer?)

* * *

So, readers, do you have a favorite from the above, any comments on these bloggers’ ruminations, or any further posts to suggest? I’d love to hear your suggestions!

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, some comforting advice and (hopefully) words of wisdom from The Displaced Nation’s resident agony aunt, Mary-Sue Wallace.

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:

Images: All from Morguefiles.

2012 Alice Awards , , , , , , , , , , ,

The accidental repatriate on the 2012 elections: Looking back — and forward

7 Comments Posted by on November 12, 2012

The Displaced Nation’s coverage of the 2012 U.S. elections would hardly be complete without a post by our accidental repatriate, Sezin Koehler — who, to add yet another whammy to her many counter culture shocks, had to cast her vote in the District of the Hanging Chads. Please note: Although Sezin always gets our vote, her opinions are her own, not necessarily those of the Displaced Nation.

The last time I voted in the United States was the disastrous 2000 election in which George W. Bush effectively stole the race from Al Gore, all on account of “hanging chads” and allegations of voter fraud in Florida.

That election was actually the first time I ever voted, and the polling station was even in my place of residence for my final year at the Occidental College (in Los Angeles) — at the Women’s Center. I cast my ballot with shaking hands: my dear friend Wendy had been murdered just the week before and I had returned from her funeral in Texas only a few days before the election.

Emotional to the max.

The long — and nightmarish — march to Election Day

My accidental repatriation in December of 2011 brought me right smack dab in the middle of the so-called American election season. I had completely forgotten that, unlike many European and other governments which only allow campaigning for a short period directly before the election (for example, in the Czech Republic it’s a mere six weeks), the USA has no such rules.

And worse, the addition of Super PACs — a new loophole passed in 2010 that allows for an organization to indirectly campaign for the candidate of their choice, spending as much money as they can raise — brought home a frightening new reality for me in the form of the corporatization of our government. The Campaign-Industrial Complex.

Further, I would actually be voting in the same Florida district that was under such great contention in 2000.

Horror mounting, I watched President Obama forced to make his birth certificate public even though his opponents kept their tax records secret. The outright lies about the president being a Muslim, socialist, un-American, and so on swirled around me in the conservative pocket of Florida in which I live. Every other commercial on television was an attack ad, each more vicious than the last. It was becoming clearer and clearer: the problems people here (and Republicans) have with the president comes down to the color of his skin.

Bumper stickers like “Re-Nig 2012” and “Put the WHITE back in the WHITE HOUSE” adorned some of the cars in my neighborhood, so proud were some of the anti-Obamaites of their willful ignorance.

After voting from abroad all these years, it was a complete shock to the system to be confronted daily with the dysfunctional American political system.

I asked myself over and over: How is it possible that I’d ended up here?

From jitters to jubilation

As the presidential debates unfolded it became more and more clear that Romney and Obama represented two distinct visions for the future of this country. Mitt Romney’s a plan to bolster the already wealthy and set women’s rights back to the 1950s. President Obama’s to continue the slow going of getting the country out of the mess his predecessor left behind as well as get the United States in line with the rest of the developed world by providing things like affordable healthcare and protecting the rights of women.

Clearly, a very Divided States of America.

Election Day loomed ever nearer and my anxiety levels were through the roof, stomach in knots, wondering which America its citizens would choose.

When I went to cast my ballot I was shaking so terribly my husband had to hold me up and help me to my voting seat. It only occurred to me afterwards that my body remembered the trauma of 12 years ago, right down to a terrifying election.

After leaving the polling station, my husband and I wandered around in a daze. Waiting for results felt like years passing by. Every bit of news a cause for momentary relief or stark panic. As the first reports — from Fox News no less! — said Obama had been re-elected, we were still too scared to get excited. It wasn’t until Mitt Romney finished his acceptance of defeat speech that I stood up and cheered.

We had won.

I’ve never in my left felt such a feeling of sweet relief. I hadn’t given America enough credit. There are more than enough Americans like me, concerned about healthcare, women’s rights, human rights, to balance out the conservatives! Hallelujah!

However, that didn’t stop the losing party taking to social media and proving what we’ve known for ages: their biggest problem with the president is that he’s African-American. I predict it’s the beginning of the end for the Republican and Tea Parties.

Gee…am I no longer displaced?!

Though it took five days for us to get the Florida results! WTF?! Seriously, developing countries get election results quicker than that! And President Obama even won here, in spite of Governor Rick Scott’s illegal attempts to disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters by sending out mailers with the wrong election date, purging voter rolls, and making it generally difficult for Obama-supporting areas to vote.

Amazing. I moved to a Republican state and even with all their tampering, it is now Democrat. I feel instantly better about where I live. Just like that.

In these seven days since the Obama victory I’ve lost five+ pounds without doing anything, the weight of incredible stress that’s simply melted off. I’ve been sleeping better than I have in years. My husband tells me I’m even snoring, something I’ve only done when with cold!

So, after a miserable first year in Florida coupled with an absurdly harrowing “election season,” I finally feel there is reason to hope in this country’s future and my own place within these red and blue borders.

Sezin Koehler, author of American Monsters, is a woman either on the verge of a breakdown or breakthrough writing from Lighthouse Point, Florida. Culture shock aside, she’s working on four follow-up novels to her first, progress of which you can follow on her Pinterest boards. Her other online haunts are Zuzu’s Petals‘, Twitter, and Facebook — all of which feature eclectic bon mots, rants and raves.

STAY TUNED for Tuesday’s post, announcing this month’s book giveaways.

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:

Images: From Morguefile, apart from the one of Sezin Koehler, which is her own.

, , , ,

How the 2012 elections looked to a repatriated American who is now a digital global citizen

10 Comments Posted by on November 7, 2012

Global citizens follow the US elections closely; some even see American politics as a spectator sport. For today’s post, we asked Anastasia Ashman, an occasional contributor to the Displaced Nation, to tell us how she felt about the 2012 elections. An expat of many years and an active proponent of global citizenship, Anastasia recently repatriated, with her Turkish husband, to her native California.

Rather than drifting away from the American political process when I was far from my fellow citizens, it was during an expat stint that I became most deeply involved.

My involvement had a displaced quality, of course.

I have always been on the edges of the American experience, hailing as I do from the countercultural town of Berkeley, California. The first time in my life I owned and brandished an American flag was after 9/11. It felt like a homecoming after a lifetime of being the outsider.

Even now that I’m back in California, my political involvement continues to have a displaced quality because I know what it’s like to be a citizen on the front lines of our nation’s foreign policy. For most Americans, the issue of how the rest of the world perceives our country is distant, amorphous, forgettable — but not for those of us who’ve lived abroad.

Clark for President!

I’d discovered Wesley Clark on television after 9/11. A four-star general, he was talking about the world we’d suddenly plunged into like a polished, collected and thoughtful world-class leader. It was easy to feel a kinship with the philosopher general even though I’d grown up in a household that vilified the military. Instead of activist or escapist pursuits, I chose to join him in geopolitical chess.

During the months between September 2003 and February 2004 when Clark competed in the presidential primary to become the Democratic candidate, I campaigned for him from afar. My email inbox soon filled with security warnings from the U.S. Consul urging Americans to keep a low profile.

If I had been able to get my hands on a campaign poster back in 2003 and 2004, I wouldn’t have displayed it publicly in my Istanbul apartment window. We were invading Iraq, and Istanbul was the site of four al Qaeda-related terrorist bombings that November. Avoid obvious gatherings of Americans, the emails cautioned. No mention of red, white, and blue “Clark for Democratic Candidate” campaign posters plastered on your residence — I had to extrapolate that.

Instead, I became active in online forums and wrote letters to undecided voters and newspapers in numerous states for my choice, the former N.A.T.O. Supreme Commander Wesley Clark. That was all I could do.

Obama for Re-election!

I’ve now been back in the USA for a year and have followed this election cycle, like the last one, mostly via social media. Online is an ideal place to become disconnected from echo chambers you don’t resonate with, and to stumble into rooms you don’t recognize. Both have happened.

But for the first time in the American political process, I don’t feel displaced. I feel like I am right where I belong.

Maybe it’s the San Francisco environs, which, although they may not match my concerns, don’t rankle too badly. At least I’m not in Los Angeles being asked to vote on whether porn actors must wear condoms. (They should, obvs!)

I feel less displacement in this election because of the resonant connections I’ve made online in the last four years or more. I’m in open, deep geopolitical conversation with Americans, American expats and with citizens of other nations, all over the world.

During this election I’ve been using my web platform, my digital footprint, to gather political news and opinion, enter discussions, and raise awareness. I’ve been reconciling my patchwork politics by weaving together who I relate to, and what I care about, and what sources I pass on to my network and what conversations I start. I now know that I am

  • A woman from an anti-war town who campaigned for a general!
  • A Hillary supporter who’s backing Barack, and
  • An adult-onset Third Culture Kid who understands how and why Obama’s Third Culture Kid experience confuses the average American.

What I have chosen to share on social media during this election cycle is a processing of all that makes me a political animal. I feel I have participated in this election cycle as the whole me, and that is all I can do.

I’ve shared that I care deeply that

I am buoyed that these abominations are leaking out and being countered. I was edified to hear others share my disapproval of eligible voters who choose to throw their votes away.

I have been able to be an active digital world citizen during this election cycle, someone who votes for the bigger picture, not just at the ballot box, but in everything I do. And that feels like home to me.

ANASTASIA ASHMAN is the cultural writer/producer behind the Expat Harem book and discussion site. The Californian has been on a global rollercoaster: fired in Hollywood, abandoned on a snake-infested island off Borneo, married in an Ottoman palace, interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today show. She brings it all home in the “Web 3.0 & Life 3.0” transformational media startup GlobalNiche.net, empowering people to be more visible in the world and develop personally/professionally through social web technology. Get your copy of the Global You manifesto here.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s account of the American election cycle from a British expat’s perspective.

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:

Pot Luck , , , , , , , , , ,

A veteran of the expat life, I thought I knew displacement…but then along came Hurricane Sandy!

7 Comments Posted by on November 5, 2012

The topic of today’s post is Hurricane Sandy. We’ll get to that soon. But first I want to tell you how I’m feeling today, one week after this monster storm struck.

I’m feeling like Joy in the Flannery O’Connor short story, “Good Country People.”

Joy — in fact, she calls herself “Hulga” in an act of rebellion against her simple-minded mother. With a Ph.D. in philosophy, Joy fancies herself the intellectual superior of her mother and the rest of the country bumpkins around them. (Although 32, she still lives at home because of being handicapped — a childhood hunting accident cost her one of her legs.)

But Joy’s advanced degree doesn’t help one iota when, out of the blue, a Bible salesman pays them a visit. In fact he’s a con man and cons Joy into giving him her prosthetic leg. For all her smarts, Joy is left stranded in the barn loft, immobilized.

I’ll tell you something — you ain’t so smart!

As one of the founders of the Displaced Nation — and as a long-time expat who has now repatriated to my native U.S. — I thought I knew displacement. I even considered myself something of an expert on the feelings one has when living in someone else’s place instead of your own.

But did this background in displacement help me at all when, like Joy/Hulga, I met my nemesis, Hurricane Sandy? Sandy left me, along with my husband and our two dogs, stranded without power, water or communications for four whole days.

Instead of sophisticated urbanites, my husband and I were no better than cave dwellers, Neanderthals. Our daily routine entailed going up dark stairwells, through dark halls and into a dark apartment, where we would gather around the fire (our gas stove still worked) and make tea and cobble together some dinner from the food that would otherwise spoil (but without opening the fridge door too much).

No longer seeing the light

I will never forget the moment the lights went off, and we were plunged into this unreal netherworld. We were eating chicken pot pie and Greek salad when it happened. I’d made us a proper dinner thinking that even though Frankenstorm’s monster was on its way, we may as well “keep calm and carry on” — a lesson I’d mastered from living on two other small islands before Manhattan: England and Japan.

We kept calm enough and carried on for the rest of that evening. After finishing the meal, we headed down one floor with our trusty flashlights to the apartment of another couple, with whom I’d communicated just before the blackout. Another couple from a higher floor joined us.

The six of us sat around a flashlight — that was the closest we could get to simulating a camp fire — and kept each other entertained while waiting out the storm.

“Bailing” out

The next day, however, the excitement of camping out in the city wore off rather quickly, especially as we no longer had any water. I’d followed the advice of the Weather Channel and filled the bathtub — but it’s no fun stumbling about in the dark to get a pan full of water when you need to flush the toilet.

It is also no fun going up and down 12 flights of stairs with two dogs in a pitch-dark stairwell, made only slightly brighter by your average flashlight. Note to self: Get one of the those miners-style flashlight headbands for the next time. Dorky they may be, but it’s so much easier to have two hands available.

After three days, like most East Villagers, we bailed — something I’m not very proud of, but my office (at Columbia University) had opened again and I was having a dickens of a time getting there and back using buses — there were no subways running.

A kind colleague with a spare room made an offer we couldn’t refuse. She doesn’t mind dogs (has one herself).

What have I learned from being — literally — displaced?

So, is “displacement” a good metaphor for international travel and the expat life? Does it hold water, so to speak?

Here are three quick lessons I’ve derived from the experience:

1) You know all those expat sites that talk about developing resilience? Well, that’s not such a crackpot notion after all, when it comes to real displacement. Now, I was never someone who admired the Brits for their stiff upper lip, or the Japanese for their gaman. But I ended up imbibing these traits by osmosis, as explained in a previous post — and I’m so glad I did.

New Yorkers like to brag about how great they are at weathering crises, but in this particular instance, they seemed like a bunch of wimps! (They were far more stoical in the wake of 9/11.)

Take for instance the downtown fashion set — including Anna Wintour, Carine Roitfeld, Pat McGrath and Marc Jacobs — and celebs like Naomi Watts and Liev Schrieber. As the Wall Street Journal reported, they immediately sought refuge in the Mark Hotel on E. 77th St., to await the return of power and water and normalcy.

The younger crowd, led by Emma Watson, were at the Carlyle.

C’mon, guys, I got through three nights!

Another prime example were the bus drivers who refused to take any of us cave dwellers south of 26th St. because it was “too dark.”

As a result of their intransigence, I found myself walking down nearly 20 blocks of darkened streets in the company of another East Villager — a young woman from New Orleans who’d already had the misfortune of having been evacuated during Hurricane Katrina. Two flashlights are better than one under these circumstances, and together we dodged rogue vehicles that were taking advantage of the no-traffic-lights chaos. All for the pleasure of, in my case, climbing up 12 flights of stairs to my little cave. Gaman shita.

2) My priorities are in the wrong place. As it turns out, I’d be better off doing fewer blog posts on developing a “core” of self while living abroad and more Pilates, developing an actual core. This is of course assuming I continue to live a dozen flights up in a high-rise apartment building.

Likewise, I’ve been placing too great a priority on hyper-communications. Even though I’m the first to feel offended when someone texts while I’m talking to them, I can’t describe how elated I felt when I at last managed to exchange texts with outside world.

When I was an expat, I could be happy in my own company for days on end. What happened?

3) I’m not sure it matters if you’re at home or abroad when you become forcibly displaced. I used to think differently, as I pointed out in my post about what happens when reality bites for expats.

But as it turns out, displacement is a God-awful experience no matter where you happen to be — and in some ways, being able to understand the language and the culture makes it worse.

You’re planning to hold the New York City marathon, Mayor Bloomberg, really? I can’t tell you how agitated I became upon hearing that announcement. Yes, I knew it meant a colossal loss of income to the city. But at a time when many of us were leading disrupted lives, did we need yet another reminder that life goes on uptown, where no one really suffered?

And did any of us really want an influx of entitled outsiders into the city at a time when our own people are in need?

Thank goodness he saw sense in the end and called the thing off.

And don’t get me started on the debates we ought to be having — but won’t — on climate change as well as the need to re-engineer New York’s waterfront to withstand storms of this nature. I feel incensed — not so much because of what I’ve personally endured, but on behalf of the some 40,000 New Yorkers who are still displaced.

* * *

Readers, do you have any Sandy experiences, impressions, or insights to share? Do tell! People who are truly displaced love community! And please hurry! They’re forecasting a northeaster on Wednesday. When it rains, it pours…

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, a poll about, of all things, expat voting…

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:

Image: MorgueFile

Pot Luck , , , , , , , , ,

19 more films that depict the horrors of being abroad, or otherwise displaced

4 Comments Posted by on October 31, 2012

Readers, we have to confess, ever since horror novelist, former expat and Third Culture Kid Sezin Koehler suggested 15 horror films on travel and the expat life, we’ve become rather addicted — and have invited her back here today for another hit. Go ahead and indulge yourselves — it’s Halloween, after all!

Being the horror-obsessed film nut that I am — and loving how my expat/traveller life has collided with my scary movie self — I offer here are a few more honorable mentions within the three sub-genres I presented in last week’s post:

  1. The expat.
  2. The world traveler.
  3. The otherwise displaced.

1. Expat Horror: Caveat expat, or expat beware (or in some cases, beware of the expat!).

1) Blood and Chocolate, about an American orphan who goes to live with her aunt in Bucharest. Oh, and the orphan is a werewolf.

 

 

 

2) Drag Me To Hell, in which a Romany shaman in the US is evicted from her home and takes her rage out on the lowly loan officer who refused to give her a mortgage.

 

 

 

3) In The Hole we find an American student in a British boarding school who gets trapped in a World War II bomb shelter with a few classmates. So we’re led to think…

 

 

 

4) In The Grudge, Sarah Michelle Gellar gets far more than she ever bargained for living and working in Japan as a nurse, when a malevolent creature in her house begins an awful campaign of harassment, mayhem and torture.

 

 

 

5) Orphan finds us with a family interested in adopting a young Russian girl, only the longer she’s with them the more the mother suspects she’s not the child she claims to be.

 

 

 

6) + 7) The Joss Whedon marvels Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, both of
which feature a number of prominent expats — a few are slayer trainers sent over to California from the Old World (Britain), a few are expat vampires who’ve decided the anonymity of the United States better suits their feeding habits.

 

 

2. Traveler Horror: “Let your suitcases gather dust!”, cry these films.

8) In Shrooms, a group of young Americans go to meet their Irish friend on his home turf in order to experience the hallucinogenic mushrooms indigenous to the fairylands of Ireland’s bonnie green forests. He forgot to tell them that their chosen “tripping” site is also the home of a haunted and abandoned insane asylum. And that not all the mushrooms are the magic type.

 

 

9) In Open Water, two Carribbean cruise snorkelers are left behind, to be tormented by a shark. Based on a true story — and one of many reasons why I keep my feet on dry land despite now living in Florida.

 

 

 

10) In the same vein we have Piranha 3D, in which half-naked spring-breakers are set upon by prehistoric piranha that have been released through an underground fault.

 

 

 

11) The Hills Have Eyes features a family on a road trip through the post-nuclear testing New Mexico desert are set upon by a group of psychopaths who live in the hills.

 

 

 

12) Worlds collide in From Dusk Till Dawn when a reverend on a road trip to Mexico with his children is hijacked by two ruthless killers on the lam from the law after a series of brutal murders and robberies. They find themselves like fish out of water when their rest-stop bar turns out to be a haven for vampires.

 

 

 

13) When a group of friends go white water rafting in Appalachia, the idylic back country scene turns nightmare when a group of inbred locals terrorizes the group, and one of its members in particular. Deliverance is not for the faint of heart.

 

 

 

I could keep going with this sub-genre, but surely you get the point by now. Stay home!

3. Displaced Horror: “Think twice about moving or taking a sojourn outside the ‘hood” is the moral here.

14) Rosemary’s Baby, in which Mia Farrow discovers that her new Manhattan residence is also the home to a group of mad Satanists who’ve got their sights on her unborn baby.

 

 

 

15) The slasher musical Don’t Go In the Woods features a band on the verge of a breakthrough go camping to write some new tunes. Only, there’s something else in there with them that’s picking them off one by one.

 

 

 

16) Every incarnation of the Alien series brings us a group of Earth’s citizens in outer space, battling a wretched and basically unkillable xenomorph. Keep your feet on land. Save yourself the trouble.

 

 

 

17) In Friday the 13th, a group of summer-camp goers are stalked by a relentless killer. Man, this one makes me glad I never went to summer camp, even though growing up I always wanted to.

 

 

 

18) A writer on a summertime retreat to a supposedly peaceful cabin is brutalized by a gang of locals. One of my personal favorites, I Spit On Your Grave is a grotesque revenge fantasy come to life and suggests one might be better off simply working from home.

 

 

 

19) And we can’t forget one of the most iconic examples of Displaced Horror: The Shining, in which Jack Torrance, temporary caretaker of the historically creepy and ever haunted evil Overlook Hotel, goes mad and tries to murder his family. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, eh?

Happy Hallowe’en!

* * *

So, are you ready to burn your passport and throw away all your travel gear yet? 😉

And while we’re still at it, do you have any other films you’d add to Sezin’s best-of abroad horror list?

Sezin Koehler, author of American Monsters, is a woman either on the verge of a breakdown or breakthrough writing from Lighthouse Point, Florida. Culture shock aside, she’s working on four follow-up novels to her first, progress of which you can follow on her Pinterest boards. Her other online haunts are Zuzu’s Petals, Twitter, and Facebook — all of which feature eclectic bon mots, rants and raves.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, in which our fictional expat heroine, Libby Oliver, checks in and lets us know how she’s doing back at “home” in Merry Olde.

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:

Pot Luck , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

15 films that depict the horrors of being abroad, or otherwise displaced

4 Comments Posted by on October 22, 2012

Readers, we’re getting goosebumps and our blood is curdling. Horror novelist, former expat and Third Culture Kid Sezin Koehler is here to remind us that, however glamorous the life of an expat or world traveler may seem, it has a netherworld — one that horror movie makers are fond of depicting. To proceed is at your peril.

As if moving or traveling abroad isn’t scary enough, there is a whole host of films that would put the kibosh on even the most adventurous of people. For today’s guest post for The Displaced Nation, I’m breaking down these tales of terror into three groups:

  1. The expat.
  2. The world traveler.
  3. The otherwise displaced.

What follows is a rundown of some of the best horror films that will make you never want to leave home again.

1. Expat Horror: Caveat expat, or expat beware (or in some cases, beware of the expat!).

1) Ils (Them) (2006), dir. David Moreau and Xavier Palud.
In this terrifying French film, two expat partners, a teacher and a writer, living outside Bucharest in Romania are terrorized and psychologically tortured by an unknown group for days before their murder. Based on a true story, the villains — who were apprehended in real life — turn out to be even more shocking than the events they perpetrated.

My big question: Why on earth do you choose to live out in the middle of nowhere in Romania? Tragic story indeed, but really, they should have known better. Now you do.

2) Suspiria (1977), dir. Dario Argento.
Considered one of the classic horror films and what many now consider to be the father of the arthouse horror genre, Argento’s dark and twisted tale features a ballet school in Rome full of young girls from all around the world who live and study within walls haunted by a chilling presence that picks off the girls one by one. The score by Goblin is enough to give you nightmares and make you reconsider sending your children away to school. Ever.

3) & 4) Red Dragon (2002), dir. Bret Rattner; & The Silence of the Lambs (1991), dir. Jonathan Demme.
In Red Dragon Dr. Hannibal Lector is just a British expat living and practicing psychiatry in the United States. In fact, he’s helping the police with a brutal series of murders in which specific body parts had been taken as trophies. Detective Will Graham eventually discovers that not only is psychiatrist-to-the-stars Dr. Lector responsible for these grisly killings, he’s also eating the missing pieces.

The next time we meet Hannibal the Cannibal is in The Silence of the Lambs, where he is safely tucked away in a maximum security prison until the FBI needs his profiling assistance in uncovering the identity of a man who is kidnapping and skinning women.

Maybe Dr. Lector is a reason why locals are so wary of expats around the world?

5) The Omen (1976), dir. Richard Donner.
It’s hard enough being the wife of the American ambassador to the UK, but when Lee Remick discovers that there is something very wrong, very evil with her son, Damien, matters only get worse.

In many ways this is the kind of expat horror to which we can most relate: being in a foreign country, going through a difficult time, and not having the kind of support one might have at home. Even though the Thorns are wealthy and have a full staff at their beck and call, Mrs. Thorn cannot confide in them her misgivings that her son is the Antichrist — nor can she with anyone else since she’s the ambassador’s wife. In the end she goes mad from fear and frustration.

As expats, we’ve all been there. Luckily, though, we didn’t have the incarnation of Satan as our son. At least I hope not.

6) Freaks (1932), dir. Tod Browning.
This magnificent film follows a group of sideshow circus performers in Dust Bowl America — the majority of whom are European expats from all over the continent. As foreigners as well as displaying physical deformities of all kinds, this group is the marginalized of the most marginalized in America not just at that time, but even today.

The gorgeous German and “normal” trapeze artist Cleopatra finds out that Hans, the midget, is fabulously wealthy and sets out to steal him away from his same-sized girlfriend Frieda — with disastrous consequences as the group of freaks tries to bring the wicked Cleopatra into their embrace. Cleo finds out well and good that one does not mess with members of the sideshow.

The message here? Respect your local customs, even if you think them freakish. It could be what stands between your body as it is or being turned into a human-chicken hybrid.

2. Traveler Horror: “Let your suitcases gather dust!”, cry these films.

1) Hostel (2005), dir. Eli Roth.
A group of backpackers passing through the Slovakian capital city, Bratislava — it has no semblance to the real place whatsoever — gets kidnapped by an organization that sells young people to the highest bidders so that they can be tortured and murdered in the Slovakian outback with impunity. While the film is rife with cultural and geographical blunders, it nonetheless preys on a legitimate fear of kidnapping and/or human trafficking while traveling, especially for young women as we see in the two follow-up films in this gory franchise.

Kids, don’t fall for the local pretty girl/handsome boy who picks you up in a bar. You have no idea whom they could be working for.

2) American Werewolf in London (1981), dir. John Landis.
Two American backpackers (uh-oh) in the Scottish highlands stray from the road and are attacked by a wild beast. One dies, the other is in a coma for three days with horrible gashes across his chest. When the doctor informs him he was attacked by a madman he’s confused, claiming it was a wolf that had killed his friend and wounded him. Come full moon, young David Kessler finds out it was neither man nor wolf, and he’s becoming one.

There’s nothing like a story about a horrific accident taking place while traveling, especially when said accident turns you into a monster. Always remember, STAY AWAY FROM THE MOORS/MUIRS!

3) The Descent (2005), dir. Neil Marshall.
After the tragic death of Sarah’s husband and daughter in a wicked car accident, her fellow British extreme-sporting friends decide to take a trip across the pond to Appalachia for a spelunking expedition. Why anyone would think that crawling around in caves would be a good idea I haven’t a clue — let alone choose to take an already-traumatized woman into that scenario. But hey, they do. And not only do they find themselves in an unmapped cave system that has no way back to the surface, there are others down there in the dark who’d like to ensure the girls never leave.

Dear People Traveling to America: For Pete’s sake, avoid the US’s back country! Monsters are above and below.

4) Wolf Creek (2005), dir. Greg Mclean.
Two British tourists in Australia pair up with a local to check out a supposed alien-landing site in the middle of nowhere. All is fine until their car battery dies. Stranded in the badlands of Oz, grateful are they when a mechanic rolls up and tows them to his place to fix their vehicle. But oh, he’s not a mechanic at all. He’s a serial murderer who waits for tourists to come out to the Wolf Creek Crater, and takes his good time torturing them before their slow death.

The film is based on a true story — one of the British girls actually survived and made it to the authorities. It turned out the man had killed hundreds of people over decades, and nobody even suspected a thing. Shiver…

5) Primeval (2007), dir. Michael Katleman.
During the Rwanda-Burundi conflict, bodies were dumped into the Ruzizi River at such alarming rates that the crocs began eating human flesh. One of these crocs, nicknamed Gustave by the locals, gets a taste for human flesh and begins hunting humans inland. An American team of journalists are sent to capture and bring back the beast amidst an ongoing civil conflict between warlords and villagers.

The best thing about this movie is that there really is a 70-year-old, 22-feet-long croc named Gustave who swims the Ruzizi. He was last sighted in 2008, but I know he’s still out there. I can feel him.

3. Displaced Horror: “Think twice about moving or taking a sojourn outside the ‘hood” is the moral here.

1) The Amityville Horror (1979), dir. Stuart Rosenberg.
As if moving doesn’t suck enough, can you imagine moving into a house that not only was the site of a brutal family murder but is also haunted? I don’t even know how many whammies that makes the scene. Also based on the true story of the Lutz family, who were terrorized by their house to the point where they fled without any of their belongings and never went back to collect them.

Word to the wise: Always check about the house’s history before you move in, and always remember to burn sage throughout, even in cabinets and drawers, before you move anything in anything at all. Trust me on this one.

2) Se7en (1995), dir. David Fincher.
Heralding a promotion to detective, Brad Pitt gets transferred to an anonymous city with a reputation of being among the worst in America. *Cough* Detroit *Cough*. His wife is miserable as she wants to have a family, but cannot imagine raising children in that town. The first case he lands is a serial killer murdering people based on the Seven Deadly Sins — one that quickly sucks both him and his wife into a horrific spiral of torture and murder.

Women, don’t let your husband drag you to a horrible city. Just don’t. Your life very well may depend on it.

3) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), dir. Marcus Nispel.
A group of friends on a road trip through Texas and — oh crap! — their car breaks down. It’s just their luck that the person who finds them is the patriarch of the psychotic and inbred Hewett family, known for killing and cooking their victims. There are no happy endings here, people.

If you’re going on a road trip, stick to the main roads, for God’s sake! I mean, jeez, everybody knows that. And while you’re at it, stay the bloody hell out of Texas!

4) El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) (2006), dir. Guillermo del Toro.
Set in 1944 fascist Spain, the film tells the story of Ofelia, a young girl who accompanies her mother to live with her new stepfather, a barbarous Spanish general. Amidst the horror, Ofelia discovers a fairy world underneath the very grounds of their home, a place to which she escapes when the torture around her becomes too much to bear. But even fairy worlds have their horrors, as she soon finds out.

Moms, jeez, don’t marry jerks and then don’t agree to live in their military camp. Seems like logic to me, but I guess it needs to be said.

* * *

So, are you ready to burn your passport and throw away all your travel gear yet? 😉

And do you have any other films you’d add to my best-of abroad horror list?

Sezin Koehler, author of American Monsters, is a woman either on the verge of a breakdown or breakthrough writing from Lighthouse Point, Florida. Culture shock aside, she’s working on four follow-up novels to her first, progress of which you can follow on her Pinterest boards. Her other online haunts are Zuzu’s Petals, Twitter, and Facebook — all of which feature eclectic bon mots, rants and raves.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, which has Kate Allison continuing our horror theme.

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:

Images: From MorgueFile: Cinema; Hat and suitcase;  Bridge from biplane.

Photo of Sezin, from her newest FB page, ZUZUHULK, used with her permission.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →