An expat kind of life
Daily Life posted an article on the expat life and it sparked a little gurgle of desire to blog about this same topic, but from my much more limited experience. I've lived overseas three times, the longest stint was my exchange in Milan (six months). So I've never quite gotten to that point where you're supposed to start feeling what it's really like to live somewhere. But each time I think I've come a little closer to having this expat life.
The first time I was purely a student. Being an exchange student is far, far different from being an expat, in that you always know that you're going home. It's an intense little burst of excitement and cultural immersion, but you have this strong feeling that "this is not real life".
The second time I was again a student, but a Chinese language student. And I could have stayed, if I'd wanted to enough, if I'd pushed myself a little harder, and if I hadn't had the lure of a job back home. I was in China, with my family, so there was less of that intense-ness, more just a nice familiarity and routine that I developed.
This year was the closest I think. If I'd stayed, I could have done it. Could have become this elusive "expat". I thought about it. I met all these people who said "oh I just came to Cambodia to visit, then somehow I ended up staying". Part of me wanted to be one of those people. But it was all wrong, oh so wrong. I think that there is an emptiness and shallowness that can be part of an expat life, and it was there in Phnom Penh in spades. It is an exceptionally transitory place (more so than other places, as people come for as little as two months for a brief volunteer placement) and I think that the cheapness, and the difficulties of the place (the weather, the poverty, the corruption), cause some people to turn to drinking and partying to an extreme level.
I like that you can turn up there and have insta-friends. It was easy to always be surrounded by people. But I found for the most part (with a few exceptions) that the people who were long term stayers in Cambodia were not the people I would want to become. Some were Stayads (AYAD being an Australian volunteer program - stayads are people who did that program and subsequently stayed on) who found they loved the boozing a little too much (I have an example of one Aussie girl that I knew who epitomised this kind of person, I really really disliked her, even though she was a good friend of a friend of mine - I think that was just bad taste on his part - I may blog about her one day, but she was pretty awful), some were those creepy old men who had found Cambodian wives, and some just seemed to be escaping from something at home.
Did I pick the wrong place? Was it the wrong time? Am I just not quite cut out for it?
I don't quite know.
The first time I was purely a student. Being an exchange student is far, far different from being an expat, in that you always know that you're going home. It's an intense little burst of excitement and cultural immersion, but you have this strong feeling that "this is not real life".
The second time I was again a student, but a Chinese language student. And I could have stayed, if I'd wanted to enough, if I'd pushed myself a little harder, and if I hadn't had the lure of a job back home. I was in China, with my family, so there was less of that intense-ness, more just a nice familiarity and routine that I developed.
This year was the closest I think. If I'd stayed, I could have done it. Could have become this elusive "expat". I thought about it. I met all these people who said "oh I just came to Cambodia to visit, then somehow I ended up staying". Part of me wanted to be one of those people. But it was all wrong, oh so wrong. I think that there is an emptiness and shallowness that can be part of an expat life, and it was there in Phnom Penh in spades. It is an exceptionally transitory place (more so than other places, as people come for as little as two months for a brief volunteer placement) and I think that the cheapness, and the difficulties of the place (the weather, the poverty, the corruption), cause some people to turn to drinking and partying to an extreme level.
I like that you can turn up there and have insta-friends. It was easy to always be surrounded by people. But I found for the most part (with a few exceptions) that the people who were long term stayers in Cambodia were not the people I would want to become. Some were Stayads (AYAD being an Australian volunteer program - stayads are people who did that program and subsequently stayed on) who found they loved the boozing a little too much (I have an example of one Aussie girl that I knew who epitomised this kind of person, I really really disliked her, even though she was a good friend of a friend of mine - I think that was just bad taste on his part - I may blog about her one day, but she was pretty awful), some were those creepy old men who had found Cambodian wives, and some just seemed to be escaping from something at home.
Did I pick the wrong place? Was it the wrong time? Am I just not quite cut out for it?
I don't quite know.