Saturday, April 27, 2019

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.


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.

18 comments:

  1. Maybe this is a naive thought but if you're lucky enough to find good work overseas, you should count your blessings and appreciate the new country you're in as much as you're able :)

    Visiting from A to Z - Words from Sonobe (http://wordsfromsonobe.wordpress.com)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly. Even you did not choose to live there, do you really want to be miserable. Learn the culture. Learn the language. Meet some people. What is so hard about that?

      Delete
  2. An excellent post! I'm Scottish and lived in Holland for 3 years 1979-1981. I could have done the ex-pat thing, but I'm not a 'morning coffee' person complaining about what is negative. I made friends and I learned some Dutch but like you point out, those friends are still my friends decades later. I've been lucky to have short stays and holidays around the world (wherever hubby was working) but those ex-pat complainers, that you mention, still baffle me. That they want to only eat British or Continental food is even more bewildering! http://nancyjardine.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was staying in hotel in China and the Brazilian sitting next to me scoffed at the food. "Why can't they just serve a normal breakfast?"

      I could not get him to see that it was a completely normal breakfast...for China. He thought I was being ridiculous.

      Delete
  3. Even just tourists do it and it's maddening.
    My first trip abroad was with a tour group and one couple especially could not stop whining about how it wasn't like this at home.
    I'm sorry, what part of "The Soviet Union" made you think it would be like New Jersey?
    (WIth the corollary, "Then why leave New Jersey if you want every place to be like it?")

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just want to choke those people. The very first time I was out of the U.S., I was on a short-term mission trip with a bunch of other people. When we got off the plane, we were starving. We stopped at a restaurant to eat and half the group opted to go to the McDonald's across the street.

      Seriously?

      Delete
  4. Okay, so they voluntarily move to Vietnam and then... complain? Why? I mean, I get if they were born there and had no options, but they went to all the trouble of...

    You know, I'll never understand some people. It's like the only thing they know how to do is complain, so that's all they do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's my conclusion with many of them. They will never be happy anywhere. They just love to gripe about stuff.

      Delete
  5. I have not lived abroad, but have traveled occasionally and I'm embarrassed to be from the US sometimes when I hear other tourists around me. The worst was in Nagasaki, Japan, when were visiting the place where the atomic bomb was dropped. Lot's of loud complaining in such a somber place. I couldn't believe it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have experienced that. Some people just can't appreciate the gravity of where they are.

      Delete
  6. " It is well worth the extra time to weed out the bad ones and find your tribe."

    Very true.

    I went to Jamaica once. Tourists complained about prices but I met my Jamaican pen pal who worked TWO full-time jobs and he couldn't IMAGINE the luxury of eating at a restaurant (not even a NICE restaurant, fast food was totally out of his budget). So, I was pretty appalled to hear tourists complaining about $10 for a handmade item that had obviously taken hours of work.

    A-to-Z participant MsDarkstar - Darkstarian Discourse

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ANY tourist you chooses to eat at a "tourist" place should expect higher prices anyway. If they don't want the tourist prices, step out into the real world of the country and eat where the locals do.

      Maybe actually learn something.

      Delete
  7. Thank you for visiting my blog site! I've been skimming through and reading this and that on your blog site. What a great topic, to focus on others... cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  8. We ran into the same thing in Ecuador...then why not leave if you hate it OR want it to "be like home". We loved and embraced the differences. Did we struggle? At times. Did we need patience? a LOT! But what a great adventure it was.

    As to the Aussies, they seem to have a love of living life more than any other nationality I've met.

    DB McNicol, author
    A to Z Microfiction: Xylophone

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. I am really coming to appreciate my new Australian friends.

      Delete
  9. This occurs when people move to a different state of the US also. I have a neighbor who complained about everything here and always talked about moving but after almost a decade she remains. I've decided it is just in the nature of some people to enjoy complaining.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My parents retired to Florida and they have said the same thing.

      Delete

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