X - Expats

Today I'm not writing about a specific person. This is a group of people who mostly don't even know each other, but they have influenced my thinking immensely.

The Expat Community

Expat is short for expatriate. It simply means 'a person who lives outside their home country'.

When you choose to live outside your home country, you meet a lot of other people who have done the same thing. There is also a special bond that is formed almost immediately upon meeting these people. After all, you have several things in common.

• You are both foreigners in a strange land.
• You are both familiar with the struggles of maintaining legal status.
• You have each struggled to find where to buy items.
• You both struggle to understand not only the language but the strange events happening around you.
• You share a common language. (Without this part the bond is rather difficult.)
• You are both looking for friends.

When over 99% of all the people you meet don't speak your language, making new friends is difficult. So when you hear your language being spoken in the marketplace, it catches your attention. Crossing paths with someone who you can actually communicate with is a big deal. However, there are some drawbacks to this.

Just speaking the same language or being from the same country is not enough for a friendship. There are people I have attached myself to just because they are someone I can talk to outside my home. Within a few days of meeting them, I realized that is probably the only reason I maintained this relationship.

When you are in your own country surrounded by people who speak your language, you have choices in who you hang out with. You form a group of friends you enjoy spending time with. Once you step out of that scenario, you take what you can get. Sometimes you realize very quickly that if you were actually back in the States, there is no way you would be friends with this person. I am not saying anything bad about these people. They are just not my preferred crowd if I have a choice.

However, there is another group that really gets under my skin. In every country I have been in, there is always a group of people who just love to trash the country they are living in. The favorite pastime of many of the expats I have met is complaining about how stupid, uncivilized, unorganized, rude, or dirty the locals are.

I just don't get it.

Sure. I see things now and then that I think could be done a different way. However, I have that view based on the way I am used to doing something. That rarely means that it is actually the way it should be done. It is just the way I grew up doing it. Plus, different parts of the world are in different stages of development, with different cultural systems, different histories, different resources, and many other things. Things are going to be different sometimes out of necessity. And I have many examples of times where I have learned that the "new" way I see something done ends up being far superior to what I grew up doing.

However, my biggest complaint with this attitude is not the unwillingness to recognize the resourcefulness of the locals. It is the overall negative attitude.

Especially since that person chose to live here.

I have listened to literally hundreds of people over the years drone on and on about how much better things are in their home country (Australia, England, Germany, America, etc.) than they are at the place we are sitting. My response is always the same. "Then go home."

There are hardships involved with living overseas. I will never pretend that there are not. However, it is a choice to decide if they are worth it or not. And if a person does not think they are worth it, I have no problem with that. Everyone has their own preferences. But if they think it is not worth it, then leave. Go to a place that is more to your liking. Why choose to be miserable?

A few months ago, my wife made a remark about how much we loved our life here. The woman she was with turned up her nose. "You actually like it here. Why?" Red gave her a list of things we love about this place. The woman retorted with her complaints about the place. However, she had been here less than six months and had already found a job in another country. She was moving on.

I had no problem with that. Go where you are happier. Plus, I didn't really like her anyway, so I had no problem with her moving on.

However, some people will never be happy or satisfied anywhere. The perpetual complainers, the eternal pessimists, and the grumblers will always find something to be unhappy about. And their greatest satisfaction in life seems to be finding others who will help them reinforce their negative outlook on everything. I've learned to watch for them and avoid them. Those people are poison.

Slowly, I have gathered a few people (mostly Aussies) here in Hội An, Vietnam who love living here. These people not only enjoy life (as I like to do) but help each other. We trade secrets on where to find key items, the great restaurants, and coffee shops, tips on how to ship things, travel, get service, etc.

Whether traveling the world or sitting in your hometown, there are healthy and unhealthy people to associate with. It is well worth the extra time to weed out the bad ones and find your tribe.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.