Ok, sorry for posting on here 50 times in a row but just saw your q slowrunner! Yes, I went back once to the States in the last two years. I know many of my friends/colleagues/fellow expats say they have reverse culture shock but it just doesn't seem to happen to me. I'm much more annonymous at home, which I enjoy immensely. Lol @ the being checked out! I don't notice subtle things anymore, I realized, because here everyone stares at you HARD and openly, even the adults. I think my radar has been busted
I'm so happy to find this thread. I'm not exactly an expat but I did live in Taiwan from 9 y/o 'til 18 y/o then I went to college and I go back every year to visit my family
I love travel so reading about food choices and availability from all over the world is SO interesting!
slowrunner: I think Taipei has a lot of available food choices but you are right that none of it is very healthy! The majority of people who lose weight there do it through starvation diets.
I really think it's a cultural thing for them to be so blunt. They blurt out whatever they think without biting their tongue. My mom does the same thing and I end up shocked and mortified. It's great when it's a compliment but not so much when it's rude. I can imagine the stares you get. I feel like staring is a problem in Taipei because I feel stared at too because I don't think I dress like a local. I've been dating my boyfriend who's Indian for the past 4.5 years now and he's going back to Taipei to visit my parents. I told him to brace himself for A LOT OF STARING. He doesn't care but I might lash out if someone says something rude to me in Chinese.
Hey international and ethnic food chicks! How's everyone doing??
takingcontrol have you left Thailand already?? goalgetta were you able to find a gym and exercise routine yet? runningfromfat How's the challenge of feeding your DH and DD with their picky veggie habits going? InControl welcome! Yes the bluntness is an Asia thing... I've gotten it in Cambodia and in India a lot. That's awesome your bf is going with you to Taiwain to meet your parents and learn more about your family's culture! pochamma I hear you on the anonymous thing. I only experienced reverse culture shock once, when I came back from studying abroad in South Asia during college, since it was my first real time away from the US and in a very poor area of the world unlike anything I had seen before. I think once you've made the transition back and forth once it's not as big a deal to do it repeatedly.
All is fine here. I'm down to eating about one Indian meal a week these days, mostly prepared by our housekeeper. My boyfriend and I are generally eating all meals at home, with one or so dinner out or at a friend's house, though the cuisine is rarely Indian. This is partly because I don't want to have a standoff with every oily calorie-filled spoonful and partly because we are pretty tired of Indian food. Unlike Thai or Cambodian food, which I can eat for every meal, Indian food has about a once-a-week max for me.
Something coming up to look forward to here: MANGO SEASON! Only about two weeks away!
Any new recipes or ongoing struggles anyone wants to share?
It's been one of those weeks for me... where everything about India is driving me completely up the wall. This country is by far the most bizarre and frustrating I've ever lived in. The point of traveling and living abroad is to gain a better understanding of other cultures, but honestly all that has happened in the past seven months is I've developed stereotypes about this city/country that are reinforced over and over and over again. Ugh.
indiblue I understand what you mean about developing stereotypes and frustrations. I find that those things come up most often when I'm just trying to accomplish simple things like food shopping or commuting. However, whenever I go traveling around Taiwan, or even in a different part of Taipei than I'm used to, I find myself loving every minute of it. I think it's all about expectations. Those daily activities are supposed to be easy, but they're not always. On the other hand, I expect to run into trouble when I step outside my comfort zone and try new things, so I'm less frustrated when things don't go my way. Funny thing is, when I am doing something or going somewhere new, I tend to have fewer troubles simply because people around me can recognize that I am on unfamiliar turf and therefore treat me a little more kindly. But once those things become familiar, the little annoyances about them start to become inflated (kind of similar to being in a long-term relationship!).
I'll give you an example from today. This morning, I went to a butcher in the traditional market near my apartment for the first time. In fact, it's the first time I've ever gone to any traditional market for meat (in almost 6 years of living here), since I've always lived near grocery stores and felt less out-of-place when shopping in them. But my new apartment doesn't have any supermarkets nearby, and I'm determined to start getting more protein, so I made myself go to the butcher. I pass by the market every single day, usually several times a day, but have never gone in during the 6 months I've lived in my new place. During my trip today, I made my way over to the nearest butcher and fumbled my way through ordering - not because of the language, but mostly because of my inability to recognize meats without labels on them. I misidentified beef 3 times before the man helped me out and told me which ones were beef! The whole process took what felt like 10 minutes, between all the confusion, the slicing, and the fact that the man was interrupted 3 times by other people while dealing with my order, including a phone call and a delivery he had to make to the other side of the building. These interruptions happen often in Taiwan, and it usually drives me crazy when I'm in line first and others come and make whatever errand I'm doing take twice as long. But the butcher was friendly and I was forgiving, and I left feeling proud of the $10USD worth of beef, pork, and pork liver I had managed to get. The thing is, I know my forgiveness came from the novelty of what I was doing, and if I continue to go regularly, no doubt I'll start feeling as impatient as I do when I'm checking out at 7-11 and someone pops in front of me to ask for a pack of cigarettes.
I'm trying to be more patient with the cultural differences, but I don't really know any foreigners living in Taiwan (even those who have been here 10-20+ years) who don't still get frustrated sometimes with how things run. It's not a judgment on Taiwanese culture, exactly, but a frustration of knowing that there is a more efficient, polite, or fair way to go about things but being completely unable to change it. One thing that helps me be a little more patient with people, at least when out in public? My iPod. I listen to audiobooks whenever I'm commuting or running errands, and it keeps me patient and not so focused on little things that drive me crazy. It doesn't help with bureaucratic nonsense like taxes and immigration, but it at least makes the day go by more smoothly.
On a related note to the butcher story, does anyone have any experience cooking meat in a pressure cooker? I've just roasted some pork with vegetables, but won't have any till dinner, and already am a little worried it will be flavorless. I don't have an oven, so my only options are the pressure cooker and frying pan, really. I want to eat more protein (all the rice and noodles here are killing me!), but I'm at a loss for how to make nutritious high-protein meals. Any ideas?
Hey all, just checking in! Indiblue Thanks again for the chana masala recipe! I had a rather interesting time trying to find all the ingredients as I'd never seen tumeric or garam masala (or components) here! Food here tends to be quite bland - they really don't cook with many spices, which is pretty disappointing for me. Anyway, after much adventure and finding some random Indian fellow selling spices in the corner of this weird hotel (!), I managed to get all of the ingredients! So those little chick peas are having a bath right now! I'll let you know how it turns out when I get around to making it.
Since we're on the topic of recipes, do you happen to have a recipe for aloo gobi? Probably my fave Indian dish and I just bought some cauliflower so I'd like to make it this weekend for my weekly meal! I googled some recipes but they all seem soooooo oily!
Indiblue and slowrunner I can empathize about feelings of annoyance/reinforcing of negative stereotypes. It's funny but I used to live in an even more remote part of the rural area and somehow it was much easier to deal with the challenges of daily life and my work, especially my lackluster staff! Maybe because I anticipated them? Now that I am in a bigger town, I find myself more frustrated by the small challenges of living in a very underdeveloped country.
I've also noticed that, as I get closer to my departure date, I am getting less and less patient. You would think it would be the opposite, that I'd be so happy to go home that nothing would effect me. I'm wondering if it's because I am so stressed out about getting everything done before I go? Not sure.
Some days though, I really just want to be annonymous. I am not interested in making 15 new friends on my 10 minute walk home from work. I don't need a taxi and I really wish you'd stop staring/shouting "foreigner" when I walk down the street. Then other times, I don't mind at all. Go figure!
Oooo slowrunner and pochamamma I can soo relate to all of these!
For me it's the Indian psyche. It was really well-described in this article, written by an Indian in the New York Times: uncompromising practicality. It's the "this makes sense in this very moment so that's what I'm going to do." It's the maintenance man showing up 3 hours late because he decided to take a trip to see his parents over the weekend and the bus back to the city was late. See? That all makes sense as an explanation, why would I need to call you and tell you I'm going to be 3 hours late? I had to go see my parents and the bus was late. Now I'm here. What's the problem?
It just keeps compiling. I told my boyfriend last night that India did nothing right today (meaning everything I tried to get done or accomplish or every interaction I had was a complete disaster, and I was blaming it all on India as a country). Then just as we finished trying to laugh off our frustration and go to bed, the neighbors started this huge party outside, complete with a live Bollywood singer and stage. I have never, ever heard such loud music before in my life. In the middle of a residential neighborhood. At 11 PM at night. We had to take our pillows, close every door in the house facing the neighbors, and go into the far corner of our living room and sleep on the floor. In the US you can go talk to the neighbors or call the police to report the disturbance. Here, the police have already been paid off by the family to leave them alone and let them have their concert in the middle of the night during the workweek.
Rant over.
pochamamma YAY you found your ingredients!! Yes, let us know how the channa masala goes. Our housekeeper does aloo gobi with very little oil and sauce and I really like it. I don't know her recipe (she just estimates and we have trouble communicating so I'm not going to try) but I've seen her make it and this one looks pretty similar: http://www.indianfoodforever.com/veg...loo-ghobi.html. If you can find ginger-garlic paste at the Indian market buy it, otherwise you can prepare fresh ginger and fresh garlic. She also adds peas in her version.
Also, slowrunner, I don't eat meat so I can't help you on meat in a pressure cooker, but how about beans? You can make lentil or black bean chili, black bean burgers, falafel, etc. I use this website to look up the proper times for beans and other foods: http://fastcooking.ca/pressure_cooke...ure_cooker.php
My family of origin is Greek, and Easter is coming up, so I have to do my share to contribute. My sister is making the lamb, but I'm going to bring a roasted salmon fillet. I plan to have a little of both, plus my mother's spanakopita(spinach pie in filo pastry), salad and other veggies. My plan is really just to load up on veggies, a little protein, and avoid the really high carbs and fats. That's the plan...
Then there's dessert. I'm not necessarily partial to dessert, but there's this one, galactoboureko, which is basically the Greek version of flan, with a honey/lemon syrup. It's not something I make every year. Maybe once every five years. I plan to make a pan of this, only big enough to give everyone a single serving...because I know what will happen to the leftovers. They will go home with me, internally!
So, it's a single event, a "high holy day", as my godfather calls it, which, he says, gives us dispensation to go against what the doctor and his wife tell him to do and eat! Dang, we're Greek! We don't need special dispensation to eat like this! We're entitled to it!
(When my father used to urge me to eat something and I told him I wasn't hungry, he'd say, "What does hunger have to do with eating?" This is the mentality I have to work with!)
In a Greek home, eating is like...a requirement. It's a sign that you're intimately joining with family and loved ones in a sacred ritual. And if you don't fully participate, you're scrutinzed, questioned, someone feels your forehead to see if you have a fever, they look at your eyes, and then they give you something to eat so you can get over what it is that ails you. If you somehow succeed in avoiding the overeating, it is remembered, and somehow goes on your permanent record, with GOD! Or even worse, Jesus' mom's list of non-eaters!
And don't think you can put food on your plate, push it around, eat something while Yiayia is watching (my mother) and then dump the rest...Yiayia will know, and dumping food in the trash means you're going straight to he##!
So, basically, I'm screwed. But I can plan for it, take walks in between courses, accept that I will be showing a gain for that week and move on to healthy choices the next day. Just like regular, balanced, thin people do.
(I forgot about the grapeleaves! OMG!!! I'm so glad all this food is too much work for me to do the rest of the year!)
re: culture shock I just wanted to say it was very interesting for me to read everyone's culture fatigue-related anecdotes - so much to deal with on top of just struggling to eat healthy and understand what's going on. I think that since I have a "deadline" and am leaving Japan in just over three months, my anger and frustration is all but dissipated - but in the past there have been so many little things that bother me, and occasionally still pop up. I'm lucky in that I look Japanese so I don't get stared at or pointed at or gossiped about in public, but god forbid I go out with foreign-looking expat friends. Every male friend is assumed to be my boyfriend or husband, gangs of kids follow us around going "Harro, I rike seksu," old people stare (and sometimes spit), and waiters/store clerks only speak to me because they assume these whack foreigners I hang out with can't speak Japanese. I don't know how visible foreigners deal - even these isolated incidents which only happen at most a couple times a week drive me absolutely insane!
Work culture is completely inefficient, with people clocking overtime every day for the same amount of productivity as if they just did things efficiently in an 8 hour window. Everyone at my office stays at work at least an hour or two past quitting time. Here it's not important how productive you are, but how much time you put in. That's the reason the subways close at midnight - to force businessmen to go home at night instead of just staying at work 24/7. Something is broken; the suicides here are through the roof, dwarfed only by former Soviet bloc countries with alcoholism problems and South Korea.
When I feel really fed up/homesick, I cope by immersing myself in American movies/TV, specifically "Forrest Gump." I went through a lengthy homesick period a few months ago during which I probably watched "Forrest Gump" five or six times. How does everyone else cope?
Krampus - when my family lived overseas, we were moved every four to five years. We lived in fairly restrictive locations, so the frustrations of living in the fish bowl came up a lot. Different people coped in different ways, or not at all. We could leave for R&R twice a year, plus had the summers to come "home" to California, although we didn't have a home to come back to. Living with family during the summers had it's own set of frustrations.
I got pretty good at planning out the year with distracting activities, but there were times when I could have killed for an escape hatch! When I got really homesick, I had DVDs of all sorts to watch. We got some American programming, so I could keep up with American Idol or Desperate Housewives. I'd get the suitcases out and start packing a couple months in advance. I spent time on the computer buying things we were going to need the following year on Amazon.com and having them sent to my sister's house where I'd go pick them up later. I cleaned and organized the pantry, a lot. I picked through our clothes to see what had to go and what needed to be replaced.
When I lived in Indonesia, and it was almost Christmas, and we weren't going anywhere for the holidays, I'd turn up the a/c till it was really cold inside, and decorated the house, baked cookies and watched Christmas movies. I threw a lot of going-away dinner parties too, because the end of the school year meant there was another group of people leaving.
There are aspects of the expat life I don't miss at all. But when I chat with friends on Facebook who still live overseas, and they're talking about how anxious they are for home leave or their problems with not finding the right household help, I miss it just a little.
Tomorrow I'm going to have lunch with a group of women who all lived at my last overseas assignment, Kazakhstan. I don't miss that place at all! Leaving was a very difficult time because my marriage had fallen apart. There are no warm, fuzzy memories of that place. But the women who were there were the only support I had at the time, and none of them knew what was going on for me. I want to thank them for being such good friends.
That's what I miss the most about my expatriate experience. Moving back to my home town, no one has time to befriend me. It's been a long, difficult road to putting together a social life. I have had to change how I do everything, again! No one comes to dinner parties I plan. No one is available to just spend an hour at a day spa to get pedicures and drink a glass of wine. No one gets my jokes! They all so literal! And conservative! And have such narrow world views!
Going expat changed me. Not many in my family or hometown know what to make of me. Makes me want to renew my passport!
geoblewis, renew that passport! I'm sorry to hear that building a social life has been such a challenge - what kind of people are too busy to go to a dinner party?! It's refreshing to hear that you are still in touch with the people who were your support network in Kazakhstan; unfortunate that your memories of that placement are negative, but it sounds like you made lifelong friends.
There is definitely something about the expat lifestyle that sticks with people forever. It's easy to tell who has and who has not spent an extended period of time living elsewhere. I'm a bit anxious about repatriation and its impact on my social life and ability to transfer my existing lifestyle to a different location. In a way I feel like I have become addicted to culture shock; I've already got grand plans to move my life from upstate NY to Austin, TX partially just because it's something new.
Does anyone have any good dolmas (stuffed grape leaves) recipes? My neighbors grape vines that hang over the property line are just starting to leaf out. Last year I made some stuffed with a brown rice filling that were really good, but I'm thinking of trying something different this year.
With regards to dolmas, I'm your gal! Grapeleaf season is quickly approaching in Central California, and all the old Greek yiayias are out scouring the vineyard for the best leaves.
Here's a Turkish recipe for a lentil and rice filling. You can use either ground lamb, beef or turkey with rice with this Greek recipe, but while the author makes his with Arborio rice, I've used Uncle Ben's long grain rice with excellent results. I found a Persian dolma recipe on line too. I've made all these variations in the past. All good!
I'm so happy to find this thread. I'm not exactly an expat but I did live in Taiwan from 9 y/o 'til 18 y/o then I went to college and I go back every year to visit my family 
Ugh.
