Category
Daily life, challenges, and joys of living overseas as an American expatriate — the phone calls you avoid, the friendships you make, and the languages you learn along the way.
Read the medical clearance storyMoving overseas means rebuilding ordinary habits far from home. Phone calls become an effort, introductions take longer, and everyday errands happen in a language that is not quite yours yet. These are the notes from that adjustment — small observations about how expat life actually feels rather than how it is supposed to feel.
Written by Natasha, a writer and runner, married to Kail, a Foreign Service Officer with USAID, the blog follows postings across El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Washington DC, and further abroad in Cambodia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Jordan, Laos, Nepal, New Zealand, Panama, the Philippines, Thailand, and Hawaii.
Questions or ideas for a post? Get in touch.
Communication
Sometimes I think that if I could, I would conduct all my communication in writing. I am an introvert, I obviously like to write, and I generally dislike talking on the phone. Before we left the U.S., I only talked on the phone if I was walking somewhere or otherwise multitasking.
Skype and FaceTime filled the gap while living in El Salvador, with an iPhone 4 arriving in the “Spanish Friday: Mi Nuevo iPhone” post of September 28, 2012.
Social dynamics
Meeting people in a new country adds a layer of difficulty that stays at home. Conversations run through translation, jokes land differently, and the usual cues for reading a room are missing. Learning to let friendships build slowly takes patience.
Cooking locally also turns into a way of connecting with host-country food.
Language
Bilingual “Spanish Friday” posts pair English with Spanish, alongside tools like Rosetta Stone. Progress is uneven but steady, and the language stretches far beyond the classroom.
More on this in the About page, or see the medical clearance story for the paperwork side of a posting.
Why a writer would rather type: habits around calls before and after moving abroad, filed under Expat Life and Foreign Service, and tagged with communications, introversion, iPhone, and Skype.
The arrival of an iPhone 4, written in the bilingual Spanish Friday format.
Obtaining medical clearance to accompany Kail abroad, including State Med appointments, bloodwork, chest X-rays, and a TB skin test reaction.
Living abroad rewires the small rituals that once felt automatic. Grocery aisles rearrange themselves, addresses no longer mean what they meant, and a weekend errand can turn into a two-hour expedition without a map. The language barrier is the most visible challenge but rarely the deepest one; the quieter adjustments arrive gradually, in the way you greet a neighbor, how you read a pharmacy receipt, or when you realize you have started thinking in the local cadence of speech. These reflections gather the honest, unglamorous side of expat life as an American family making their way through Europe, one unfamiliar afternoon at a time.
Expat life also holds a freedom that is easy to forget from a distance. Without the familiar scaffolding of home — the school you always drove past, the shop where everyone knew your order, the shortcut home — you learn who you actually are when none of it is assumed. Friendship is rebuilt slowly and more carefully, travel becomes a weekend possibility rather than a special occasion, and the ordinary days of living overseas sharpen into something vivid. The notes collected here capture that feeling: the homesickness that fades, the awkward phrases that turn charming, and the strange satisfaction of finally knowing which street to take.
| Region | Places |
|---|---|
| Central America | El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama |
| North America | Washington, DC, Canada, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia |
| Asia | Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand |
| Middle East & North Africa | Egypt, Jordan |