The Reluctant Expat

Tomorrow marks six months. I have been in the Philippines for half a year. In some ways, it feels longer. I feel so far away from everyone I know and love. I feel like I've been away from my Chicago home for a long, long time. Then in other ways, of course, I can't believe how fast this experience is going. I still feel so green. I still feel like the bumbling new student and every week is the first week of school.

All the expats I know tell me that the first six months are the uphill battle, and once you get past that marker you start coasting a little bit and your experience moves toward "I got this". But at six months I'm more homesick than ever. I feel like I've had this "adventure" and now it's time to go back home.

But recently I've had to reflect on the kind of expat I've been. Is one way of living overseas better than another? Would the six-month mark feel differently if I had been living in a different manner?

I always thought that if I moved overseas I would really try to live life as a local. I would dive into the experience and all the newness around me. But here, I've simply tried to export my life in Chicago to the Philippines. Instead of taking local transportation like Jeepneys and motorbikes and tricycles, I drive my own car. My windows are up, my a/c is on, and I'm protected from the life happening around me. Instead of eating street food, I eat at nice restaurants and coffee shops. Instead of learning the language, I rely on English-speakers to help me out.

Now, there are reasons for all of this. I drive a car because A) it's safer for my kids and for my belongings, B) it saves me from spending so much time out in the polluted air, and C) it allows my kids to feel at home while we're stuck in traffic. I don't eat street food often because A) there are no guarantees that what you're getting is fresh and fully cooked, and B) much of the street food here is not gluten-free. I have had minor stomach issues fairly consistently since moving here as it is; I'm not looking to turn them into major ones. And I haven't learned the language because I can't find a good teacher--and because English is the preferred language when shopping, dining, travelling, etc.

So I haven't exactly been living like the average Filipino here. But I haven't been living like the wealthy ones, either. I don't have a nice car with a personal driver, I don't have a nanny and live-in household help to do all the hard daily work or deal with car issues, and I don't live in the nicest neighborhood with the best plumbing. I'm living in this weird state of tension, right in between "things aren't so different here" and "Help!!!"

Then last week my car died. Since then, I've had a harder time buying groceries and doing school drop-offs and pick-ups. I've mostly been using taxis, for the above-mentioned reason that I don't relish the idea of riding in the back of a Jeepney, breathing in deathly black belch. And I will not put my squirmy kids and their fifty bags on the back of a motorcycle. But I did ride my first tricycle the other day! The equivalent of 36 cents got me to the nearest grocery store and back. Pretty anti-climactic, really, but I did feel like I finally experienced a little bit of reality. And when I was walking down to the main road to wait for a trike, I had my umbrella out. Here, women walk under umbrellas on sunny days. Again, I felt like a true resident of the area.

But these and other little "real life in the Philippines" experiences haven't made me feel like a better expat, or that I'm really diving in and making the most of my time here. I think I build things up in my head as being more romantic than they are, and then once I experience them I just think "Okay, check that off the list" and get back to life the way I want it: convenient, cool, and easy. If at all possible.

One other thing about expat life--there's this expectation to travel around and see as much of this part of the world as possible while we're here. People are always telling us which dive resorts to go to or which islands to boat to, which places let you hold pythons and swim with whale sharks and which places have the best food and massages. We've been to a couple of other places in the Philippines other than the city of Cebu, but I'm already weary of the travel. I never was one for traveling much. I'm a homebody at heart. And I'm definitely not a beach-lover. I have no interest in learning to scuba dive and I can barely snorkel without having a panic attack. I would rather climb a mountain and save my fish-watching for the city aquarium. But around here, you're crazy if you don't swim with sardines or go island-hopping. I'm just a bit tired of the scene. Or, more accurately, I'm tired of hearing of the scene.

And my kids are already getting spoiled with the idea that we should go spend money doing something fun every weekend. Both days. Every Friday evening they ask "What are we doing tomorrow? Can we go to a beach resort/water park/mall arcade/bounce house?" What?! When we lived in Chicago we didn't go do something big and fun every weekend. (Maybe that's because we had parks and friends.) But we certainly didn't travel all the time. (Maybe that's because the only place within driving distance was Iowa.)

I have been calling myself the reluctant expat lately. I want to experience life in the Philippines while I'm here so that I leave with no regrets, but I desperately long for my old life with all its comforts and conveniences. I do the things my husband and kids want to do here, but I honestly feel like I'm just putting up with it all--and I feel like I might soon explode.

Luckily, I do have little outlets. I have been doing Zumba in my living room with a DVD. I get out and have coffee occasionally with women I met here. I am cataloguing all the things that I need in life to keep me sane and relatively happy. And once in awhile something forces me out of my bubble and into real life here. Maybe, at six months, that's exactly where I should be.

Brushstrokes

You have to take what you can get sometimes.

I love to recreate past moments. I was once told that I was refreshingly sentimental--but my sentimentality usually feels like a burden that costs me the gift of enjoying "today".

Moving to the Philippines has been hard, no joke. I no longer have seasons that I recognize. I don't have the crisp breezes and earthy smells of fall bringing back memories of school and cozy home days and holiday preparations. I don't have snow that blinds in the sunlight, forcing to mind memories of past storms and comforts.

I do have summer. I live in a forever summer. Most of my friends, stuck in snowdrifts in the Midwest, think I'm so lucky to be missing winter. But they don't really get how much I am missing it. Being a "homebody", fall and winter were always my favorite seasons. No pressure to be "outdoorsy", and it's always a good day to bake.

Still, I have a lot of good summer memories. I just hadn't expected to be reconnected to any of them here in the Philippines, because I figured I'd be too preoccupied with missing fall and winter. And summer in Cebu City is not like summer in the places I call home. Here, there are no parks. There are no decent beaches anywhere near my house. The sun goes down at 5:30 every evening, so there are no long summer evenings. I could go on and on about how the conditions and the sights, sounds, and smells around here fall short of really making me feel at home.

But then, there's this:

 

The sky. That glimpse of a summer sunset in the middle of city traffic was enough for me the other night. It carried me back to summers past in my hometown in Colorado, free from the stress of schoolwork and alarm clocks; the giddy freedom of being a new driver and cruising with the windows down; outdoor concerts and late frozen yogurt runs.

 

And then this:

 

Fall leaves! Totally out of season and without the accompaniment of the aforementioned breezes and wafts of cinnamon, but there they were--crunching under my feet. And I instantly traveled back a few years to a Chicago park with my kids, throwing leaves at each other for what seemed like hours. And then there's the "memory within a memory"--remembering that day in the park so well because it had brought back memories of my parents raking up piles of leaves for me and my sister in the backyard.

 

So there are little brushstrokes of familiarity here that I'm learning to spot. And now that I'm in my sixth month here, I think I'm ready to let them be enough for me. 

Next time, stay for the whole thing...

I need to give you an embarrassing but important update on my last post. My daughter performed a song with her Chinese class at a school assembly, and I was a little annoyed to find that all the girls in her grade level except her were performing a dance in costume in front of the singing group. I wanted her to have her chance to shine, too. Well, I had to leave the assembly early to take my son to his school, and I missed the part where they give out awards. They do it every week, apparently.

And this particular week my daughter won an award! "For being a risk-taker by having the courage in trying new things and singing an entire song with confidence", it says. Almost two weeks after receiving this, I found the certificate in her backpack and had to ask her about it before she would tell me that yes, they called her up to the front and presented her with the award, etc.

So...the teacher did, in fact, have her eye on Esther. And she had her moment to shine. And wouldn't I rather she get recognition for the hard thing she accomplished instead of being chosen for a dance just because she looked cute in the costume? I'm satisfied (for now) and I think I need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and let my daughter make her own way. With mom close behind if needed.