What Makes A "Good" Expat?

Last week while in the U.S., I talked with a woman who had spent 7 months with her military husband in Germany several years ago. She said she hated every minute of it, and that looking back, she still feels like she lost 7 months of her life. I also have met several Americans who moved to Norway years and years ago, who now consider Norway their true home. We have Norwegian friends who have lived in Brazil and Singapore--they absolutely loved Brazil and would move back there in a heartbeat, but they were so miserable in Singapore that they left a year earlier than intended. What ingredients are key to a successful expat experience? In the case of our Norwegian friends, in Brazil, they didn't speak Portuguese when they first moved, their apartment wasn't finished so they ended up living in a hotel for the first 6 months there, but because they were welcomed so warmly by the Brazilian people, they had a wonderful experience. In Singapore, they had no problem communicating in English, they had a brand new, huge apartment and a housekeeper, but because they found the people to be less friendly, their expat experience was ultimately unhappy.

I have been thinking about being an expat a lot lately, probably because my experience is drawing to a close. I don't know why I never got over my homesickness, why I had such a hard time adjusting to life in Norway. I think part of it might be the that the town we live in is small, in a rural setting. Because so many of the people who live here have always lived here and there are very few transplants, perhaps it's a more insular society than say, Oslo or other larger Norwegian cities. I suspect, though, that my dissatisfaction has more to do with my personality than with any demographics of the area in which we live. I don't like change, and although we have moved frequently, each move has been hard for me. I love the idea of growing roots in an area, of being able to give crazy, random directions like, "You take a right by where the Jenkins' barn burned down 5 years ago, drive 2 houses past the yellow house with the 3 legged dog in the yard, and you're there. Can't miss it!" Our stay in Norway was originally supposed to be 3 years, but after a year, I felt so sad. Our life in New York was still recent enough that we could have it back, friends and all, our life in Norway still felt very empty compared to the life we left behind, and even if we met more friends and began to feel more at home here, we would just be leaving it behind in a couple of short years. I guess it stopped seeming novel and interesting and started seeming a little pointless to me.

I think that the language barrier was also a huge difficulty for me. I tried really hard to learn Norwegian, but after studying intensively for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week for 5 months, I realized that I was nowhere near fluency. I was at the top of my class, my teachers were so impressed with my pronounciation and grammatical ability, but in every social situation I was in, the conversation flew past me. I have never felt so frustrated with myself as I did at those parties where everyone was laughing and joking and having a great time while I sat there in a fog of incomprehension. That being said, would I have been happier in England or Australia, where I could speak my native language? I don't know, I still might have been homesick, and again, I'm not overly adventurous...but maybe I could have been involved in enough interesting, stimulating, funny conversations which would have energized me and helped me through the harder times.

Oh well, I guess it's a little late for me to learn the secret of being a successful expat as we're moving back the second week of November. (The photo above is of our new backyard overlooking Oneida Lake in New York.) But I really am interested in how some people are able to start over completely in a brand new place and create something wonderful for themselves. I know that some expats read my little blog, so please comment freely if you know some things (or lots of things) that I don't!