We’re very excited to feature a guest blogger by the name of Anna (IG: expatanna) on My Expat Moments.
Anna Luzader was born and raised in Cleveland, Tennessee, but has spent most of her adult life working and living overseas. After co-founding a 501(c)3 organization in 2011, she traveled back and forth between the USA, South Africa, Eswatini, and Mozambique for several years before becoming a resident of Eswatini in 2016. In 2019, Anna moved to Seoul, South Korea to pursue a career change and currently works as an editor and intercultural consultant providing localization services for multinational organizations.
Thank you, Anna, for contributing your thoughts and experiences to our expat wellness community!
When I first started living overseas in February 2016, I wasn’t exactly jumping into the deep end of the expat world. At that point, it had been five years since I co-founded a nonprofit organization working in Southern Africa, so I had been to my host country, Eswatini, many many times before. Sometimes I stayed for 10 days, sometimes I stayed for three months. At any rate, I wasn’t new to Eswatini when it was finally time to buy a one-way ticket and establish a “home” there. However, I still spent hours researching my new host country before making the big move.
I read blogs from missionaries and members of the Peace Corps, reached out to contacts I had met in-country to get a grasp of what daily life was like, and even pilfered through academic papers about Eswatini’s history and societal structure. I tried to learn as much siSwati as possible and kept a running list of cultural dos and don’ts. I felt ready, and though I was sad and scared while boarding that plane, I was also confident in my preparation.
It didn’t take too long for me to realize that I was, indeed, very not ready. Despite my intensive, self-developed “Expat 101” course, I experienced major culture shock and transition woes during those first few months of long-term residency life in Eswatini. I also grew. Between then and now, I’ve eaten more humble pie and learned more lessons than I could count, and I often think about what it would be like to sit down and have a chat with baby expat Anna in our non-air-conditioned house in the Lubombo Lowveld. So, if I could go back and give myself some words of encouragement from the older, wiser, and far more silver-haired version of me, here’s what I would say:
Keep a Journal
Despite what your 25-year-old brain is telling you now, you won’t remember everything when living overseas. So, write it down. All of it. Every single bit. Write about the many ordinary evenings you watched the sunset from the top of the water tower or about that time you found yourself face-to-face with a baboon on the beach in South Africa. Write about the joy of unexpected friendships and the deep loneliness of being an outsider. Though much of your days are filled with running errands and finding a reliable source of real butter, those experiences still hide stories, and good ones at that. Even the most mundane tasks of everyday life still paint rich pictures of your experience. Write them, type them, take pictures, make videos, whatever – just don’t let the opportunity to freeze these moments pass by.
Learn the Metric System
To you and ALL my American besties: we’ve been duped. I’m sorry you had to hear it from me, but I’m telling you this because I love you. The rest of the entire world (minus Liberia and Myanmar) uses the metric system. It’s only appropriate to say “miles” when it sounds good in a song. Can you imagine trying to sing, “And I would walk 500 kilometers and I would walk…”? No. It doesn’t work. So, familiarize yourself with all the metric system vocab. A hot day will be over 35 degrees Celsius, and a 6-inch Subway sandwich is now 15 centimeters. Got it? Good.
Let Relationships Surprise You
You’re gonna meet some characters, and it might be a little shocking to you. It will also be one of the biggest joys of your time living overseas. Invite the Chinese construction shop owners over for dinner and send an email to those diplomats you met at the concert. Your friend group is about to look SO different from the small-town Tennessee bunch you grew up with. But these wonderful people will welcome you and teach you AND let you shower at their house when your hot water and Wi-Fi haven’t been working for months. They will challenge your perspective and your biases while showing you how to make their favorite hometown soul foods. Your friends won’t look, talk, or believe like you, and you will be better because of it.
It’s Okay If You Change. It’s Also Okay If You Don’t
I know you love all things culture – observing it, studying it, talking about it, adapting to it – and certain thoughts and behaviors of yours are going to change because of the immersive experience you’re having. In fact, you should change! I don’t think there’s anyone that wouldn’t be different after living where you’ve lived and seen what you’ve seen. That’s good! But you don’t have to sacrifice your identity at the altar of cultural assimilation to fit in with whatever community you live in. You’re only human and, to be honest, you will probably never completely fit in. But that’s all right.
It’s okay to add “Eish” to your daily vocab just like it’s okay to still enjoy a good meat ‘n’ three. It’s also okay to love some of your host culture’s deeply held ideals while feeling resistance or disdain about others. All these things can exist at one time, and that’s a gift. You belong simply because you are there. Be you, do you, that’s enough.
I’m So Proud Of You
This experience is really hard, and few people will understand it, but you have no idea how strong, resilient, tenacious, and intelligent, you are. There will be times throughout this journey when you will grieve the stability of a “normal” life, but I hope you can always find your way back to gratitude and reflect on why you chose this path in the first place.
It takes bravery to step out of the only world you’ve known and dive headfirst into life 8,000 miles (er, 13,000ish kilometers) away. When you feel like an alien or like “home” no longer exists, remember the profound depth that your life now holds because of your decision to step outside of your comfort zone. You’re doing so well, you have done well, and you’re going to do well in the future. Take things one day at a time, eat lots of bread, and whether your feet are in Asia or Africa or anywhere in between, don’t forget to extravagantly enjoy living overseas in this wild and wonderful life.
If you could have a conversation with your baby expat self, what would you say?
Oh my gosh, Anna! That is beautiful and even touches on some of the things things I remember, experienced and struggled with and that was only in such a short amount of time compared to yours. Thanks for sharing your story and thanks for the time you shared with us while we were in eSwatini. ❤️.. I took a lot of comfort being so far from home knowing there was someone my own kid’s age there to enjoy company with… helped my homesickness. ❤️