Expat Carousel

So I’m sitting here right now in this stifling midsummer Beijing heat on my day off having done my chores of washing the dishes, sending a few emails and playing a couple of well deserved games on Pro Evolution Soccer. Monday afternoon is my peak chill out time after the intense working weekend, and it’s not until around 6pm that my trough of laziness begins to escape me and I start to want to do things. A person can only drink so much green tea and aimlessly surf the net whilst basking in their own sweat for a certain amount of time it seems.

It’s now officially the height of summer, and as a result most of my weekend classes are slowly disappearing as the little buggers get whisked away to various exotic locations or are sent to partake in intensive English summer camps for their holidays. It’s nice, though my own school’s summer courses are looming and having had a teacher leave last week leaving his classes teacher-less, my schedule hasn’t seen much respite. Ah well.

Expat life can be funny. I’ve found that the westerners, or westies, as a friend of mine affectionately calls them, are all by and large subconscious of the fact that we’re all in the same boat living and pressing on in a strange country, and are therefore pretty easy to strike a chord with and become your friends. Of course there are many exceptions, with archetypes ranging from the “I hate everything about China” moaners, to the “I’ve been here 10 years and am better than you” wannabe princes and princesses. It’s relatively easy to identify people like that and the majority the expat community here are all like-minded and easy to get on with. Due to the similarities of your situation and experiences, friendships with fellow expats are easy to forge and develop pretty quickly, and there is even the notion that the group you hang around with become your second family. This makes it weird when you are presented with another typical aspect of expat life, whereby the carousel of people coming and going constantly has people hopping on and off. It requires a lot of flexibility from those who still remain, as they have to push themselves to make new friendships whilst accepting the fact that a good mate who you go down to the pub with every week after work could be packing up and leaving at the drop of a hat. Some are better accustomed to it than others, and it certainly takes a good few heartfelt goodbyes to become used to the pattern.

It's a fun ride y'all!!

After 3 years living abroad and dealing with the sporadic departures of good friends over long periods of time, this summer sees a large flux of those near and dear to me either heading home to study, work, or get married. As someone who at 25 is considered relatively young when looking at the average age of long term expats I guess it’s pretty normal for me to experience this. Obviously, there’s the comforting thought of having decent friends from all the corners of the globe, though I guess this ever changing environment is what I bargained for when I chose to up sticks and find myself a home in a strange place. It’s funny when a large make up of your apparently stable social life for the past 2 years disappears, but change is a key element to life, and I’ll keep trotting on as long as theirs interesting people to meet - such as a music video maker who has worked with Dr. Dre and 50 Cent at the bar last night. Apparently Dre is a bit of a philosopher.