I am uber excited to introduce my fabulous sister-in-law Mara who has written a wonderful post about living abroad. Mara has been living in Spain for the past 2 years, so she’s no stranger to life abroad. Even though I haven’t been living in a foreign land for as long as her, I can completely relate to this post. As I told Mara, I never really felt like the US was a particularly scary or unsafe place until I moved to a place where I feel, aside from the possibility of being hit by a moped, 100% safe. I feel like I could sleep in the middle of the sidewalk at night with 30,000 NTD (equivalent to 1,000 USD) hanging out of my pocket and, while I might get run over by a few mopeds in the night, I’d still have my 30,000 NTD come morning. (No, Mom, I will not actually try this experiment.)
But I digress. Mara’s post is much more insightful than that…
Sooooo enjoy the read, and then go check out Mara’s beautiful pictures on her blog some day you’ll have to call me dr. mara. (Thank you so much for the post, Mara!):
It is tough living in an unfamiliar city, made even worse by the unfamiliar language. And the cultural gap is something that I think I have overcome, until it rears its ugly head at the most inconvenient of times. I have been living in Spain for nearly 2 years now, and my boyfriend has been here for almost a year and a half.
We are feeling pretty comfortable in Granada; we no longer expect people to know the name of the street they are standing on, nor do we expect them to know the address where anything is located. We have reverted to seeing cell phones as a convenient place to store all of your friends phone numbers, a device that is not to be relied upon for any information other than finding out what your friends are up to this weekend, or what you should pick up at the store on the way home. We have been here long enough (and the turnover rate on commercial real estate is so fast) that we give one another directions that sound like, “Across the street from where there used to be that bread shop that sold whole wheat bread,” and we understand each other because it is a rarity to find good whole wheat bread here. We have lived here long enough to learn that “despedida” means a going away party (and to have attended a few).
Continue reading →
My Tai 