What is an Expatriate?

An expatriate, or an expat, is someone who lives overseas, or in a different country than what they were born in, or raised in. An example of this would be, an American man, around 30 years old, was born and raised in the United States. Due to his job he is moved to South Africa and is now living there. He is now an American Expat living in South Africa.

My Experience of being an Expatriate

I was born in a small town outside of New Orleans, Gretna. My parents from opposite sides of the country, California, and Massachusetts, and one older brother, also born in Gretna. When i was three years old, we moved from Gretna to Spring Texas. This was due to my dads job. My dad was an engineer working for Chevron, and they had been moving him around the country even before he married my mom, and before me and my brother were born. We stayed in Texas for four years before it was time to move again, and this move would be the start of an adventure that would change our way of living.

London, England :

The move was to London, England. We left in the middle of the school year in my second grade, so going to a new school in a new country, in the middle of the school year, was going to be quite a challenge for me.This proved true, after the first months of being out of the United States, every day started with "I miss..... about the United States", or "Why cant we........ like how we used to do in the United States". Moving to England was the first step in becoming a true expat, it started to teach me that there are lots of cultures and ideas going around the world, not only the ones that my parents told me, and that people can speak with some pretty funny accents. Well one day, my parents were at a pub, and my dad gets a call, its his boss and the next job offer. After about five minutes of discussing it the answer was yes... we're going to Venezuela.

Maracaibo, Venezuela:

Traveling all the way to one side of the globe, and then back to the side we started on, just on a different continent. It was exciting, it was as if we were starting a whole new life, anything that i did not like about the last one, just kind of got washed away with a fresh start. So I was 8 years old, and I arrived in Venezuela... first impression... Shock. I had never seen cars that were so unmaintained, houses that were falling apart, houses that were made of tin, the kind of poverty that struck the country. The car ride on the way to the hotel that we would be staying at for the next month was a huge shock to me, and made me wish that I had never left England, and I told myself that I would never complain about living in England again. Well it was too late for that, I was now in Venezuela, and I was going to have to live with it. During my stay in Venezuela I learned a lot. I learned how to speak Spanish fluently, which is an extremely useful thing to know, so if you do not already speak a second language, then I highly recommend that you make and effort to learn one. When I was learning Spanish, I learned that its OK to make a complete fool of yourself while trying to speak another language, its the effort that counts in the end. I learned that poverty is a reality, and that not one person can stop it. You can not give money to people begging on the streets, you must give them food and water, otherwise they may spend the money on drugs and sex. I learned that crime and killings are a very real part of life, having witnessed police shootings and shoot outs between people on the street. Our car was hijacked three different times, which showed me that crime is not game to play with. I also learned a lot about politics while I was there, Hugo Chavez was the "president"/dictator during my stay in Venezuela, I'm not going to push my opinions on you or anything but... someone really needs to get rid of him. Well after four and a half years of being in Venezuela it was time to move on. Leaving Venezuela I though would be easy, but it turned out that over the four and a half years Venezuela had turned into a home.

Lagos, Nigeria:

The next destination was Africa, where in Africa? The armpit of Africa, Nigeria (look on a map, you will see what I'm talking about). So at this point I thought I had seen it all, the poverty, the crime, the black markets, the corruption. I thought, well nothing new is going to come out of this, I've already seen a lot. The first lesson I learned when I arrived to Nigeria was, you have NEVER seen it all, there is still more to see, and more to learn. There was even more poverty than in Venezuela, more corruption, and more crime. I must say that the people were the complete opposite of those in Venezuela. These people were the most welcoming people I have ever met, they greeted with the common "you are welcome" and made you feel right at home in their country. (Venezuelans tended to be very hot headed). Well I learned a lot about the black market during my stay in Nigeria, seeing as to how I lived right next to the biggest black market in the world, Lekki Market. You can buy anything, and I mean Anything at Lekki Market, whether its from video games or movies, to Rolex watches and Sony t.v.'s. It was quite an experience in the end. After living there for only one year, it was time for me to move on due to the lack of schooling. This meant that my parents would stay, and I would be off to a boarding school in Switzerland, a place that I had always dreamed of going.

Leysin, Switzerland

I was 14 years old and very excited at the thought of moving to Switzerland for two main reasons; one is that this would be the first time that I would be living in a first world country in five and a half years, and two because it would be a chance to travel without my parents and to start to live on my own and have more freedoms. For the first time, i walked into a country ready for what was about to come, living in a post card. Literally this is what it was like, you look outside your dorm room window and have a view of the Swiss and French Alps, it was wonderful. Boarding school has been one of the best experiences of my life, it has allowed me to grow up and mature on my own, and around other kids my age, and kids that were in the the same situation as me, being expats all their lives. Friendship is one of the biggest parts of being at a boarding school. I do not think that it is possible to describe to you the kinds of friends that I have made at boarding school. They are the closest people to me right now in my life, and they are a family to me. People say that in the end friends will throw you to the flames just to save themselves, and that your family are the only people who will truly love you unconditionally, well I must say, I disagree. The friends that I have made here are all willing to stand up for each other, we help to support each other, and take care of each other, we are a family. Boarding school taught me a lot about the different paths and choices that you can make in life. You can either work your ass off, and study hard to get ahead, become a smoker, drinker, and drug user that is always about finding the next party, or you can find a happy medium, and that is what life is about, finding that happy medium.

The passage above is only a very very brief description of how my life is as an expat. If I were to try to describe it in detail to you, I would need a book. It also does not describe all the countries that I visited over my years of traveling, it only describes the places I've lived.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• I grew up learning about many of the different cultures of the world
• I was able to become bilingual
  
• The people that I have met are unbelievable
• The friends that I have made are my family, a family that will help to build a world community
• I've done something with my life in the short time that I have lived
• I have experienced more things than what some people will ever experience in their life time.

Cons:

• Not growing up in my teenage years with my parents
• Not being able to have the American high school experience, with football, and other sports.
• Not having a place that I can call home

As you can tell, the Pros defiantly out weigh the Cons!

You know your an expat when:

• people ask you where your from, and you answer, what do u mean?
• you know how to swear in just about every language
  
• you start to tell the tour guide facts about the place your touring
  
• you convert prices of goods in a lot of different currencies in your head
  

Feel free to leave comments, and questions, and to add anything or any stories that you may have if you are part of the Expat community, or just someone that is interested!