Never sleeps
TL;DR version: I have moved back to the US after 10 years away. It's nice, but I often still feel like I'm in a foreign country.
The people who came to see me in Abu Dhabi (lousy_science, mandragora1, and kittygoslingp and of course aruan who showed me just how it was done) knew that I was certainly not to be pitied. I was not exactly buried in sand. It's going to go down as one of the sunnier times in my life, both literally and metaphorically. I went with a bit of trepidation but I practically left kicking and screaming.
There are typically two ways to become a long-term expat. One is to 'ghetto-ize' yourself: find a community of expats from your country and never leave it. Or you can throw yourself wholeheartedly into the culture you're in, learning its signifiers and nuances and aping them as best you can.
I usually chose the latter route. One thing I didn't consider about that: while it makes you happier while you're away, it makes things much weirder when you get 'home'. Because in the same way you can't step in the same river twice, you really can't go home again. Sometimes I feel like a long-lost relation looking up at a child I knew 10 years ago, thinking 'whoa, you got really big.'
I left Atlanta when I was 18, moved to Washington DC for 3 years, spent a year in Munich and another in Frankfurt. I lived for a year in Savannah, Georgia. Spent 7 years in Los Angeles, 7 years in London with many months in between in Moscow and Montana. And now 3 years lost in the desert, not really wanting to be found. I've kind of become accustomed to having my eccentricities written off as 'foreign', now I'm going to need to find some other excuse.
We're trying to ease into Americana like it's boiling water. Feels like that sometimes. To that end, we've decided to live a retiring, quiet lifestyle in one of those quaint New England towns...they used to call it New Amsterdam. Now they call it something else.
The people who came to see me in Abu Dhabi (lousy_science, mandragora1, and kittygoslingp and of course aruan who showed me just how it was done) knew that I was certainly not to be pitied. I was not exactly buried in sand. It's going to go down as one of the sunnier times in my life, both literally and metaphorically. I went with a bit of trepidation but I practically left kicking and screaming.
There are typically two ways to become a long-term expat. One is to 'ghetto-ize' yourself: find a community of expats from your country and never leave it. Or you can throw yourself wholeheartedly into the culture you're in, learning its signifiers and nuances and aping them as best you can.
I usually chose the latter route. One thing I didn't consider about that: while it makes you happier while you're away, it makes things much weirder when you get 'home'. Because in the same way you can't step in the same river twice, you really can't go home again. Sometimes I feel like a long-lost relation looking up at a child I knew 10 years ago, thinking 'whoa, you got really big.'
I left Atlanta when I was 18, moved to Washington DC for 3 years, spent a year in Munich and another in Frankfurt. I lived for a year in Savannah, Georgia. Spent 7 years in Los Angeles, 7 years in London with many months in between in Moscow and Montana. And now 3 years lost in the desert, not really wanting to be found. I've kind of become accustomed to having my eccentricities written off as 'foreign', now I'm going to need to find some other excuse.
We're trying to ease into Americana like it's boiling water. Feels like that sometimes. To that end, we've decided to live a retiring, quiet lifestyle in one of those quaint New England towns...they used to call it New Amsterdam. Now they call it something else.