Geopats: expats and internationals

Did you blog your way through your first experiences in a new place? Shannon Martin does this. She is an American who has lived in Shanghai, China for 6 years. In this two part interview she shares her first impressions of China via a blog post she wrote in 2012 with her current life in Shanghai. Shannon brings up many nuanced aspects of daily life in Shanghai that often get overlooked like personal space differences, cartoon patte...

The first year in a new country is always the hardest.

Evan did what I did, he took to writing a blog to sort out the think through what he was seeing, experiencing and feeling. In this conversation we revisit an early blog post of his from when he first arrived in China. We chat about dogs, language and so many more nuanced aspects of Chinese (and American) culture. 

🤸🏽Music from
Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www...

Do you have a spiritual home? Xing Zhao does. He's a Chinese Writer, Translator and former international student in Edinburgh, Scotland. Xing shares with us a blog post, Kapa Zhou, that he wrote during his first year studying in Scotland. He goes on to reflect on how his memories of that time period and how they are not fully represented in the blog entry. Xing also shared a post he wrote on the Chinese language version of thi...

Have your expectations about a place ever gotten you into trouble? 

American expat Evan, also known as my husband, was kind enough to be our first guest on the podcast show back in 2017. He shared a group email that he wrote to his family and friends back home with us as well as what he thinks about his culture shock now, 20 years later. 

🤸🏽Music from
Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo....

Questions about family can be triggering if the experience was not ideal. This is one of the reasons that Steph's talked about her family in tiny drips here and there but not in depth. But it felt disingenuous to ask other expats to open up about their early family life growing up with immigrant parents without diving into these experiences herself. So to help with this tabled turned interview, Melissa was kind enough to hop i...

Have your immigrant parents ever visited you in any of your expat places? Georges' parents have and it shifted how he understood their struggles moving from Greece to Canada. We cover a lot more ground on his parents' immigrant story and how it has both positively and negatively influenced his own expat experience.

🤸🏽Music from
Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo.com/
an...

Have you ever wondered why your immigrant parent(s) didn't prepare you for being a global citizen? 

Chelsea thought this when she was struggling in her first expat place. Over time she began to understand the distinct difference between her mother's immigrant experience and her expat one. In this conversation, we unpack the lasting impression that Chelsea's mom had on her expat life and which influences she ...

How much do our immigrant parents impact our adult expat experiences? This is what we're exploring in this conversation with return guest Alison.

Alison and I dig into growing up with two unequal cultures in one household,  the racial struggles she's seen in many countries during her years living outside of her passport country of the U.S. and her coming to terms with the differences between her mother's im...

Language podcaster Craig is from the UK but has been podcasting in Spain for many years. Alternatively business podcaster Pilar has the opposite geographical podcasting experience being from Spain and podcasting from the UK for a long time. And yet they found each other and created a podcast about the scene in Spain some years ago. In this conversation with Craig and Pilar we dig into what they learned about podcasting in these two...

This episode is about half of a conversation that Matthew Boyle of Legendary Language Learner YouTube channel and I had about language teaching, content creation and the intersection between the two.

🤸🏽Music from
Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo.com/
and
Key Frame Audio (more recent eps) :https://keyframeaudio.com/

🔥Need help with your podcast: https://www.coffeelikemedia.com/

Top 3 serv...

Yuki and I sat down to have this conversation far too long ago. Life has been crazy and, to be honest, I even stopped drinking coffee for awhile. So it felt weird publishing this episode during that time.

But things feel a little more frothy these days, so here it is! And here SHE is:)

Yuki has sought out, enjoyed and brewed coffee in many locations globally. She's more known for her Book Nerd Tokyo Instagram account cause she&a...

In December 2019 my dear friend Shannon Martin and I sat down and recorded an episode about The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. We were so intrigued with the book that we wanted to repeat the process with the more autobiographical version of the book, A Moveable Feast.

And then we both left China and you know what happened.

We did record this follow up episode in mid-2020 but life was still hectic. So here it is, nearly a year la...

Can social media ground us and make us feel more at peace in this crazy world? 

This conversation with Tania from Swahili Secrets will present an answer to this question that is not common but very refreshing. Tania was born in Kenya and moved around a lot. Her geographical footprint includes 4 other African countries, Thailand, Austria and Germany. Although she calls Germany home, her heart and her projects revolve around Kenya. In...

Can learning a new language unlock part of your personality? 

This is something I've wondered my entire language play experience. And I've been asking guests flavors of this question more and more lately. How Kyle and Diane answer this question is really going to tickle your funny bone and get you thinking about this too. They are two Americans who went to Albanian separately to do the Peace Corps. Yes, yes, we a...

Language can be a lens into culture, a way to share our experiences and a tool to help others.  These are some of the aspects of language that we discuss with guest Elizabeth Gowing. She worked in primary education in inner London before moving to the Balkans in 2006. From then until very recently she split her time between Kosovo, Albania and the UK. During her time in the Balkans she immersed herself in many of the languages used...

If you've ever wondered what it's like to live and do linguistic research in Kathmandu, Nepal, this episode is for you! Big & White, their podcasting nicknames, are two American Linguists who, until very recently were living in Nepal and creating a rather hilarious audio account of their daily lives on their podcast (the https://bigwhitepodcast.libsyn.com/website (Big & White podcast). Their connection and how the...

If you've ever wondered what it's like to live, work, and podcast in Kathmandu, Nepal, this episode are for you!

Big & White, their podcasting nicknames, are two American Linguists who, until very recently were living in Nepal and creating a rather hilarious audio account of their daily lives. Their episodes covered much of what expat podcasts cover like food, weather, language, and cultural differences but there is an...

This episode is really special for me. Last month for NaPodPoMo I had the extreme pleasure of chatting with Damon Castillo for this episode. Yes, THE Damon Castillo of the Mess of Me album that we've been using for the past 2 years in all of the Geopats Podcast Network shows. We talk about the longevity of the Damon Castillo Band, his geopatness, my favorite song on the Mess of Me Album (Saint Cecilia), his recording studio in...

Our first guest on Geopats Online (then called Virtual Expats) in September 2018 was Joanna Czutkowna, Founder of Life in Breaths & I went shopping today. When we first met back then she was very passionate about sustainability within the fashion industry and also about redefining how we view age, beauty and the ability in how we design. Even though we have both moved from China to other places, it's been a joy to watch he...