As we learned through our previous reader-submitted series, travel forces us to break out of our comfort zone, put aside preconceived notions, and build tolerance. But what happens when the trip doesn’t end? How does that affect you, your relationship to your home country, and your perspective on the world? Can you ever feel at home in a new place? What about the country you left behind? And if living abroad does scramble your perspective on the world and your place within it, why do it at all?
Jill Friant is an American expat working and living in Australia. Click on her photo journal below to delve into her experiences acclimating to life as a foreigner not only on new soil, but back in her original country, as well. For submitting her story Jill will receive a Professional Nomads sticker to further claim her duplicitous role as a “Foreigner at Home” wherever her travels take her.
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- On June 14th, 2006 (Flag Day, if you’re an observer of the Hallmark high holidays) I moved from the U.S. to London for a two year work contract. Nine years later I live in Sydney, Australia, hold two passports and feel both more and less American than I ever did before I went abroad.
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- As an expat you get used to being American becoming a bigger part of your identity, because it’s the first thing people notice about you and a conversation starter with everyone you meet. Good or bad, everyone has a story or an opinion about America. Being identified as an American first and foremost has made me more patriotic, in a way. Thanksgiving was always my favourite (yes, part of expat life means expat spellings) holiday, but being a hemisphere away has made it one of the biggest dates on my calendar. In 2011, I cooked a turkey in 85 degree weather in an apartment with no air conditioning and made my friends come dressed as their favourite Americans.
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- But about those expat spellings. When I go back to America people often think I’m LESS American. Because I spell the Aussie way and say different words for things sometimes – I write at work every day and adapting was an occupational necessity. I try and switch back as soon as I disembark at JFK, because people in the USA think it’s pretentious if I slip up and say “lift” instead of “elevator.” But there are switches I can’t flip back. I took this picture on a freezing January day in Pennsylvania, during the trip where I learned my blood has acclimatised fully to the Sydney climate and I wondered how I ever survived my formative years in northeast USA winters.
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- The first place I go on any trip to the States is the nearest supermarket. American supermarkets overwhelm me now. Even though I always thought one of the things I miss most about the USA is the endless consumer choice, when faced with it now I can’t imagine how I’d cope having to choose among all those different kinds of pickles.
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- I’ve been in Sydney for six and a half years now. A couple years into my time here, I flew back from a trip to the States on an overnight flight. I landed on a sunny morning and made jet lagged small talk with my cab driver. He asked if I was arriving home and I said yes. He asked where I had travelled from and I said “home” to that too.
Thank you, Jill, for sharing your world with the ProNo community! Check back Friday, July 3rd, to learn about Scott Underwood’s transition as an American teaching in Thailand!
