Feeling like a foreigner?

After all the summer school posts and showing off my mother's day delights, I didn't have a lot of inspiration to write a blog post this week, so last night I asked my friends on Facebook for suggestions. This morning I found 3 replies: 2 about 'food' (bitterballen and frikandellen, Dutch snacks) that I can't write about for the risk of dribbling all over the key board.
The third suggestion was more helpful (sorry Liset and Carla). My Libyan friend Rasha suggested to write about:

How living abroad slowly changes you and you feel more and more like a foreigner when you actually go home.

I wonder if that is true for me, has living abroad changed me? Do I feel like a foreigner when I am in The Netherlands?
The answers? "Yes!" and "A bit".

We are now half way through our posting in India (or maybe not...) and this is our fourth country besides our base country. We have lived on different continents, experienced different cultures and religions and met people from all walks of life. I think life as an expat is bound to change you. To 'survive' a life like this you have to be open minded and curious, you have to be able to adjust and 'go with the flow' to a certain degree. You will be overwhelmed, bewildered, disappointed and pleasantly surprised. There will be misunderstandings over simple things and frustrations galore, but there will also be the very valuable friendships and the joy of figuring it all out.

We have never had a posting in a country that is even remotely similar to The Netherlands and in 3 out of 4 of them we were/are the obvious foreigners, sticking out in a crowd like a sore thumb (In Australia we could pretend to be locals till we had to talk. The Aussie accent is not easily mastered).

How does living abroad change you?

I think and hope we have become more open minded. When you live in a country with a different culture and religion, you get to understand it better. Things that seemed weird or even scary can become familiar and (almost) normal when experienced in their context.
When you know someone's back ground from close by, you understand why they react the way they do and maybe not the way you would want/expect.

I am sure living abroad has made our family a very close knit union. The 5 of us are the one constant factor where ever we go. I know we would have been close if we had stayed in The Netherlands, but moving around and settling in in unfamiliar places does make the cement just that little bit stronger. We are the only 5 that have gone through the same thing, the only 5 that know exactly what it was like for us.

If there is one thing you have to learn as an expat, young or old, it is making friends. Friends are essential! Friends are the key to staying sane. You don't need many, but you need a few good ones.
When you live in your own country, friendships are formed at school or at work, maybe during sports or while waiting for your children at the school playground and those friendships tend to last for a long time. When you stay somewhere for a limited amount of years, forming friendships is a different ball game. You have to be fast and furious, no time to waste. That same approach scares the hell out of people at home. You run the risk of being labelled a stalker or a least a bit pushy.

Do I feel like a foreigner when I am in The Netherlands?

Maybe a bit, or maybe not like a foreigner, but I do feel different. We live a life that changes often and we try to make the most of our time by sight seeing and travelling around. A lot happens in a short time. When we go to NL for holidays I am always a bit surprised to see how little has changed while we were away. The same lady is still at the till in the super market, the same faces on the television.

The one thing that does make me feel different is the fact that I can't really explain our way of life abroad. It is so different from the 'normal' life at home, that I soon feel like the stereotypical spoiled and lazy expat wife (good thing I don't drink). I have to consciously stop myself to tell stories about our experiences abroad for fear of being perceived as a show off or a 'know it all'.

We miss out on a lot of things at home. We miss our family and a lot of special occasions, happy and sad ones.
My boys miss out on the Dutch way of life and probably know more about other cultures than our own. They have lived abroad longer than in NL. Time has to prove whether we made the right decision, whether we made them into world citizens or into foreigners in their own country.



These are my personal views and opinions. Other expats might have a different perspective. What do you think? What is your view? Please let me know!!!