Adventures of an Expat in South Africa
This blog post is an attempt to give a glimpse of what's in store for an expat family the first few weeks after their arrival in South Africa, from Babbalas to Yebo, from enrolling the kids in school to going on the first safari, from watching weaver birds build nests in the yard to watching them tear them apart, from learning what robots are to learning what to do when they're broken, and more.
I recently went on a South African school trip as a chaperone. My job was to see that the boys didn't pull the girls' hair or scream too loudly on the bus ride, and to make sure the same number of kids returned home as left that morning. It was also my job to make sure that all the kids washed their hands after the bathroom break and before the picnic lunch.
I love Pamela Druckerman.
I also envy her a little bit, as she went from blogger to bestselling expat memoirist to New York Times columnist. But mostly I just try to admire her. I’ve mentioned her here when I talked about balanced (expat) families.
Most recently she wrote about clutter, or rather, ...
Have I told you I love Bill Bryson? Probably on more than one occasion. Anyway, I was reading The Lost Continent some time ago, and came across this gem of a passage, where he talks about how Americans are convinced their country must be the best.
“Countries just don’t come any better. ...
Reverse culture shock upon repatriation is worse than any culture shock. Before, there was the excitement about living in a new country, coupled with the benevolence you feel towards a people you don't completely understand. Then you return home and feel like you understand everyone far too well, and you don't like what you think you know about their psyche.
You don't have to go abroad to experience culture shock. You really just have to travel, say, seven hours on the Autobahn from the North of Germany to the Southern lands of Swabia or Bavaria. Somewhere along the way you'll cross over the Weisswurschtläquator (white sausage equator, South Africans might recognize it as a relative of the Boerewors Curtain) into Süddeutschland.
Culture shock is a topic every expat is familiar with. You get it when you go abroad, and then, surprisingly, you get it again when coming back. Sometimes the latter hits you even harder.
The thing with culture shock is, you usually get over it pretty quickly. So that if you fail ...
The following is a guest post by Barbara Bruhwiler.
A strange thing is happening to me: Here I’ve happily been living as an expat in Johannesburgfor more than five years, but suddenly I’m suffering from a severe case of culture shock.
My symptoms? I feel ...
You know me. I often rant about crappy service here in Africa. Like the time Telkom decided I could do without internet for a week. That’s right, an entire week. And yet I shudder ...
Most of us expat bloggers have a reading list of a few other expat blogs that we enjoy reading and occasionally glimpsing new story ideas from. One of my favorite of these is Life ...