You Remember You’re a Repat When . . .

Repatriation—to borrow a phrase from John Denver—is coming home to a place you’ve never been before.

In the hallowed tradition of “You Know You’re an Expat / Third Culture Kid / Missionary when . . .” lists, I offer my own version for repats. This is for the times when you’re reminded that your plug doesn’t always fit the outlet.

I wrote this list in my first year of blogging, with 91 things that remind repats that they’ve been out of the country for a while. As time goes by, more and more of them are happening less and less for me. But some will never go away.

Since I’m a former missionary to Asia who’s repatriated back to the US, much of my list leans in that direction, but I hope there’s something here for repats of every stripe (or voltage, as it were).

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You remember you’re a repat when . . .

  1. Your passport is your preferred form of ID.
  2. You comment on how cheap gas is in the US.
  3. You ask your friends who they’re picking to win the World Cup.
  4. Your CNN web page is set on “International.”
  5. You ask the clerk at the convenience store if you can pay your electric bill there.
  6. You don’t know how to fill out taxes without Form 2555.
  7. You accidentally try to pay for something with the strange coins from the top of your dresser.
  8. You find out that living overseas is not the top qualification employers are looking for.
  9. You don’t trust your friends when they say they’ve found a “good” Italian restaurant.
  10. You think Americans are loud.
  11. You talk about Americans overseas and call them “foreigners.”
  12. You learn to stop talking about the nanny and groundskeeper you used to employ.
  13. You have to ask how to write a check.
  14. You forgot how many numbers to dial for a local phone call.
  15. You tell your toddler, “No seaweed until you finish all your hamburger.”
  16. You try to order fried chicken at Burger King.
  17. You check prices by converting from what a similar item cost overseas.
  18. People say, “football,” and you ask, “Which kind?”
  19. You don’t know how to respond when people say, “I bet you’re glad to be back home.”
  20. You prefer to hear news reports from someone with a British accent.
  21. You wonder why all the commentators on TV are yelling.
  22. You wish you’d brought back ten of your favorite kitchen utensil because you didn’t know it’s not sold in the States.
  23. You realize international students are your kind of people.
  24. You ask where you can get a late-model, low-mileage Toyota for around $2000.
  25. You turn on the subtitles on an English movie because you don’t want to miss anything.
  26. You ask the clerk at the video store if they have VCDs.
  27. You wonder if “organization” should be spelled with an s.
  28. You load up your suitcase and you try not to “pack like an American.”
  29. You stock up on Mountain Dew because you never know when it won’t be available again, and you check the expiration dates.
  30. Even though you own a house, you still catch yourself turning the music down so you won’t “bother the neighbors downstairs.”
  31. You stop bringing your bi-lingual Bible to church.
  32. You just smile at people who say, “So I guess you’re all settled in now.”
  33. You think the public schools are great because the teachers are all proficient in English.
  34. You read all your junk mail because it looks important.
  35. You don’t hang pictures on the wall in case you’ll be moving again soon.
  36. You still have unopened boxes shipped from overseas, and you don’t have a clue what’s inside them.
  37. For Christmas, you open up one of those boxes.
  38. You give up trying to decide which shampoo to buy.
  39. You’re invited to a bar-b-que and your first thought is “I hope they don’t give me the fatty part of the goat’s tail.”
  40. You hand the cashier at Wal-Mart your credit card instead of swiping it yourself.
  41. You put your hand lotion in 3 oz. containers just to drive to visit grandma.
  42. You’re frustrated that you have to ask for chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant.
  43. You have to ask what’s the right amount to spend on a wedding gift.
  44. You ask your friends to take off their shoes when they enter your home.
  45. People ask where you’re from and you just answer with the name of the city where you live now.
  46. You skip reading the Facebook posts of your former coworkers overseas because it’s just too hard.
  47. You just smile at people who say, “So I guess you’re all settled in now.”
  48. You stop telling stories about your old host country because people stop asking for them.
  49. Now that you’ve returned, your family members can tell you they didn’t know why you went over there in the first place.
  50. You go to the hospital for surgery and you take your own towels and gauze.
  51. Your high schooler is pulled over for a routine traffic stop and gets out of the car before the policeman approaches.
  52. You question the waitress’s math skills until you remember she simply added tax.
  53. You realize that Taco Bell isn’t quite as good as you remembered it.
  54. Your daughter calls herself an “African American” because she was born in Africa.
  55. You look forward to mowing the lawn, because you have a lawn.
  56. You say “here” and you mean the US, not the town you’re in.
  57. You take an umbrella outside when the sun is shining.
  58. “Made in Taiwan” labels fill you with nostalgia.
  59. People correct you when you pronounce foreign names the way they’re supposed to sound.
  60. You describe a city as “small” because it has only a million residents.
  61. You hear yourself saying at the dinner table, “Where’s the garlic?”
  62. You pull out the winter coats when the temperature gets below 70 degrees; or you pull out the shorts when it gets above 40.
  63. People who knew you before you left ask if you’ve “gotten that out of your system.”
  64. You get a bill from the doctor and you call to see whose clerical error made the amount so high.
  65. Glade’s “Ocean Breeze” scent isn’t any substitute for the real thing.
  66. You assume everyplace in the US has WiFi, just like in the city you used to live in.
  67. Wearing your traditional ethnic shirt isn’t as much fun now that you’re not going back again.
  68. You ask at the grocery store if they have KLIM powdered milk. When they say “No,” you ask when they expect it to be in.
  69. You buy three cartons of Hagen Dazs ice cream because it’s one third of the price of Hagen Dazs in your old host country. When you get home, your spouse reminds you it’s still too expensive.
  70. You reset your new computer’s clock to military time.
  71. You need to convert to the metric system to make sure of distances and temperatures.
  72. You get fully dressed to sit in your living room because someone may be peeking in the window.
  73. Airports feel like home.
  74. The thought of moving again sends you into a panic attack. But your spouse feels the same way about staying put.
  75. Your college-age children resent that you took away their opportunity to go “home” for the summer.
  76. You can’t remember why anyone would like pineapple from a can, the same for orange juice from concentrate.
  77. You understand why the restrooms in LAX have signs saying, “Do not stand on the toilets.”
  78. A friend sends funds to a scammer who sent out an e-mail saying he’s you, stranded abroad, and your friend believes it because, hey, you travel all the time and you’re always needing money.
  79. You shed a tear after finally eating the last package of dried fruit that you brought back with you.
  80. You do your happy dance when you find another package of dried fruit in the outside pocket of your carry-on bag a year later.
  81. You don’t know what to buy your parents for Christmas now that you can’t give them souvenirs.
  82. You cringe because you hear someone say she’s “starving to death.”
  83. You realize that all the documents on your computer are formatted for A4 paper.
  84. You tell your waiter, “I’d like my water with ice . . . if you have any.”
  85. You get nervous about buying tickets at the movie theater, because you forgot what the “rules” are.
  86. You still can’t drink water straight from the faucet.
  87. Your children are happy to see that the US has Costcos, too.
  88. You miss the familiar sound of the daily call to prayer . . . or a rooster crowing . . . or late-night traffic . . . or the song the trash truck plays.
  89. You show up at a party 2 hours late because you don’t want to be the first one there.
  90. You put your favorite DVD in the player and it says, “Region Unsupported.”
  91. You understand that some things just take a lot of time.

Originally published here in August 2012, edited for A Life Overseas.

ctCraig Thompson and his wife Karen, along with their five children, served as missionaries in Taipei, Taiwan, for ten years before returning to southwest Missouri. His experiences, as well as conversations with other cross-cultural workers, have made him more and more interested in member care and the process of transitioning between cultures. Craig blogs at ClearingCustoms.net.

Real Housewives of Cochabamba

In Americana pop culture annals our time in history will be marked by the exposé-esque entertainment of: the reality tv show. Amidst the hundreds of shows about “real” people doing “real” stuff you will find a group with the prefix ‘Real Housewives of…”. We have a little joke in the missionary wife community here in my city that when we tell our crazy stories they would be great episodes of the fictitious tv series ‘Real Housewives of Cochabamba’. Granted, I have never seen an episode of any Housewives shows, I can only refer to the cliché. No, all that drama is not my style; I have enough personal drama.

Confession: I love the reality tv show Survivor. Oh the joy of being able to vote people off the island… whoops, too judgey? You’ve never wanted to kick out a few tribe members? It’s only a game, folks! Okay, okay. Yes, we love everybody because Jesus loves everybody. Yes. Sometimes, though, I just love people at a distance. You know what I mean?

About clichés, I feel I must clarify lest anyone get the wrong impression about the reference to the Housewives of Cochabamba in this here article. Sadly, the term Housewife in some contexts carries a derogatory slur towards a married woman as a lazy lady who sits around the house eating bon-bons all day “just” taking care of her home. Nuh-uh! Not these ladies! Also, the cliché of the Housewives tv show franchise insinuates jobless women who are shallow, vapid, materialistic, bored gossips. No way! This is not the case in my town!

The toil of living in a foreign land is anything but those clichés. Any wife living outside their passport country works hard, even if she has no title beyond housewife. Some days just getting food can be an arduous task.

Our joke refers to the shared nature of the absurd drama these shows portray and the craziness we encounter just living our daily lives.

Real Housewives of Cochabamba

My friend went to the shoe stand in the market of hundreds of stands and thousands of shoes. She picked up a few sandals she liked. The lady at the stand said, “Pick your favorite one.” So she chose. She tried it on and didn’t like it that much so asked to try on another pair. The vender said, “No. I told you to pick your favorite one. You picked one. That is the only one.

Another friend went to a local beauty parlor to get a manicure and a pedicure. The manicure went fine. Then came the petrifying pedicure. The gal brought out a cheese grater and a razor in order to work off the calluses. Ouch!

I got my long hair cut to a short style. The stylist tied it back with a rubber band before she chopped off the chunk of straight golden strands. The other stylist saw what she had done. She asked if she could have my hair that had just been cut. I let her take it. Next thing I know she is pinning the dismembered ponytail to the tuft of black hair at the nape of her own neck. She spent the rest of the time I was in the busy salon flipping and flaunting her new blond hair for all to see.

How about that time we went to the movies and wanted to buy popcorn? The movie had already started so they told us at the counter, “We can’t sell you this popcorn because it is to sell to the people who come for the next movie.”

Or the one with the fries? My friend only wanted fries. The place didn’t sell just fries. “Okay, so what if I pay you full price for the meal but you don’t give me the chicken, you only give me the fries?” Answer was, “No, you must take your chicken.

Or the time with the apples? Friends were not allowed to purchase all the apples at the stand, as they had requested, in the event that some other people would come by who also wanted to buy apples.

I am sure an anthropologist or social sciences genius could explain to me the undercurrents of logical reasoning below the surface of each of these encounters. These are moments of culture shock between people from different backgrounds with different value systems. Analysis would bring enlightenment. Blah, blah, blah. But at the moment? Hilariousness!

Shoes, beauty parlors, nail salons, movie snacks, and other funny food fumbles make up a sizable chunk of our lives. Not every second is spent visiting the homeless, sharing the gospel message at bible study, or wiping the snot off the precious little noses of orphans. As they say in these here parts, our halo is a little crooked on our horns. Meaning, not every moments is brimming with holiness and celestial good works. We live our lives, and sometimes they get a little crazy.

Maybe we should work on a pitch to some Hollywood producer. People would watch this stuff; I’m tellin’ ya’, they really would. Nah. Now that I think about it, I don’t want a camera crew following me around all day. Although, it would be great publicity for the ministries, right? Nope. Just no.

I want to hear your crazy stories of the Real Housewives of _________ (your city). Make me laugh. I need to laugh. We all need to laugh.

*The photo for our fictitious tv show logo was taken at this year’s Christmas party. Love these ladies!

*The Real Housewives trademark is copyrighted and does not belong to me. Duh. {smile} Okaythanksbye.

An Airport Encounter With Grace

Folks, I’m a bit in survival mode here at the moment. I’ve been without a car all week. We have an uncharacteristically grumpy, teething baby. We have a feverish two year old who only wants Mama… all the time. We have a Daddy who is leaving on Sunday for a week. And we have two very tired parents, because what we don’t have is nearly enough sleep.

Yesterday, however, I decided that when people here ask me how I am, I’m going to try to avoid giving them the shell-shocked stare of someone under siege and then launching straight into a disjointed account of my biggest problem of the moment. That goes for this blog, too. So this month I’m not going to write a post exploring how to cope with epic toddler tantrums (although if you’d like to see me write on that at some stage, let me know). Instead, I’m going to post something more light-hearted that I wrote four years ago. It’s about grace that I experienced in – of all places – an airport.

Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net (artur84)
Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net (artur84)

Until this morning I had thought that perhaps my capacity to invent new and stupid things to do in airports had finally been exhausted. After all, it’s been almost two years since I’ve done something dumb on an epic scale.

Given my track record, two years is a pretty long time to go without a major self-inflicted airport disaster. In two years I have not left my wallet at home and gone to Colorado without any money or credit cards. I have not neglected to get a visa for Czech Republic and been stranded in Germany. I have not sat, content, at the wrong gate in Chicago airport until a mere twenty-seven minutes before my flight to London left from an entirely different terminal. I have not shown up at the airport for a flight to Washington only to be informed that I was supposed to be on that flight all right, just a week earlier. I have not misread a flight itinerary for a trip to Ghana as leaving on Tuesday, not to realize until Monday at 9am that it actually left on Monday at 4pm. I have not lost my bank card and then had to hastily borrow a thousand dollars in cash from church friends before a Sunday departure for two weeks in Kenya. I have not illegally entered home country number one as a tourist on the passport of home country number two after realizing, on the day of departure, the implications of the fact that my passport for home country number one had expired.

And, in a particular triumph, I have not been rude to any incompetent immigration officials, in any country.

In other words, I’ve been good these past two years. Really, really, good.

So good, I thought that maybe these days of tragi-comedy airport disasters were over. I truly hoped so. Because, contrary to what some of my nearest and dearest may believe, I don’t do these sorts of things on purpose. These sorts of situations are in no way fun while they’re unfolding. They make my palms sweat, my heart race, and my general stress levels spike (which, given that most of them have occurred during my travels as a stress management trainer, is a particularly aggravating irony). They are a serious assault on my image of myself as smart, competent, organized, and independent.

I am not quite sure why, but a disproportionate number of these incidents seem to involve airports. And so it was this morning.

This morning I got to Grand Rapids airport in Michigan an absurdly safe two hours early for my domestic flight. I spotted my gate number – B1, found a nice chair in the sun, rejoiced over the free wireless, and paid no attention to the surrounding chaos until I heard the words “final boarding opportunity” and “Chicago” right after one another.

I slammed the laptop shut and jumped up, wondering how it had gotten so late, only to turn around and see that between me and gate B1 stood… security screening.

Security screening, which I had completely forgotten I had not yet passed through. Which, in fact, I had completely forgotten even existed.

And there was a very long line of people stretching away from it down the terminal, past where I stood.

So I want to say a very sincere thank you to the woman at the head of the line who let me go in front of her when I showed up panicked and begging. And to the half a dozen people behind her who came to my defense and said it was alright for me to totally disregard my rightful duty to the line, “they didn’t mind at all”, when the security people accosted me with a belligerant “ma’am” and demanded to know if I had waited my turn.

Not only were these people in line kind, they were nice about it too. They smiled at me, which I totally did not deserve.

It was, in a pure form, grace.

Hours later it all still leaves me drenched in shame and shaky gratitude and determined to treat gently those who cross my path very flustered after just having done something unbelievably silly. Perhaps even to treat gently those who are doing something unbelievably silly but aren’t the least bit flustered or regretful.

And to smile at them.

Have you experienced grace from strangers lately? Do share the tale…

10 Reasons Not To Become a Missionary

1. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Think You Are Going to Change the World. First, high expectations doom to disappoint, but, also, maybe your desire to change the world is trumping your desire to serve. Ask yourself if you would be happy moving overseas to a much harsher environment in order to quietly help a local, while getting no recognition and seeing no fruit in the process.  If you can answer honestly yes, then maybe you’re still in the running. {Don’t worry, we thought we would’ve answered yes, but found out that we really had some unhealthy saviour-complexes to begin with. You can read about that here: On Living a Good Story and Not Trying So Hard and The Guy in the Orange Shirt .}

2. Don’t Become a Missionary to Make Yourself Better. My first mission trip was as a middle schooler to Jamaica. I’m not really sure how much good we actually did, but I do remember one of the missionaries we worked with. His name was Craig, and he had some of the biggest glasses I’d ever seen. And the dude talked to everybody about Jesus. Everyone– the pot-smoking Rastafarian in the line, the tourists at the store, the check-out guy at the food stand. And I remember turning one time to another missionary who worked with him and asked what made him so “good” at evangelizing.  The older missionary said, “Craig?  Oh, he didn’t come to Jamaica and become like that. He was already like that in the States.”

And I think Craig with the big glasses dispels the lie that if you move overseas, then you will magically become a superhero Christian. Um, false. What you are here, you’ll be there. And while it’s true that the change of environment can spark growth, it doesn’t mean you’ll go from luke-warm average Christian to Rob-Bell-Cool-On-Fire-Mother-Theresa just because you suddenly find yourself on another continent. Pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.

3. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Think You Have the Answers and the Nationals Don’t. Westerners have clunky shoes.  This is just true. We are loud and obnoxious and, good Lord, arrogant. Our DNA has us descending on other cultures and dictating ways they can “fix” themselves, while throwing money at their problems. I think I’ve learned that every good missionary LISTENS, first. And listens, a lot. {Don’t worry, I suck at this still. You can read about that here, Rich Guy with the Crappy Car or Quiet Heroes.}

4. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Can’t Hack Transition. We’ve been overseas now for less than two years, and we have moved houses three times, taken two major trips, and have gotten close to and then had to say goodbye to over 15 good family friends. People come and go on the mission field. Terms are up and governments change the visa laws. You find a deal on a house or the house you are in has rats. When you sign up for missions, like it or not, realize it or not, you are signing up for a transient lifestyle. {On Moving House, Like A Lot and New Girl both speak to this reality.}

5. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Think You Are Really Pretty Great, Spiritually-Speaking. There’s nothing like moving to a foreign country to reveal all the crap that’s in your heart.  Seriously. I have cussed more, cried more, been more angry, had less faith, been more cynical and, generally speaking, have become in many ways a worser person during my last two years of serving in Asia. Call it culture-shock if you will, but I tend to think the stress of an overseas move thrusts the junk that was conveniently- covered before out into the blazing-hot-open.

6. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Think Living on Support is Cake. It might look easy, but it is most definitelynot– this monthly process of holding your breath and praying that you get a full paycheck , while knowing that even thatpaycheck is based on the kindness of your parents or your friends or the lady you know hardly has two pennies to rub together anyway. And then, when you do have a little money, you stress about how you should spend it —  Should I treat myself to a coffee? Do the kids really need to go to the pool today? Should I buy the more reliable scooter or the used one that will {probably?} be just fine?

And then, and then, shudder, there’s that awkward process of asking for it in the first place and feeling like you are annoying-the-heck out of the same people, who happen to be the only people you know  — like that pushy lady selling Tupperware down the street.

The whole thing might be great for your faith, but it can sure be a killer on your . . .  heart, finances, sense of self-worth, savings, relationships, budget, fun, and freedom.

7. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Aren’t Willing to Change. Flexibility is more important than I ever thought it would be in an overseas life. So is humility, actually. Unfortunately, neither of these qualities is naturally at the top of my Character-I.Q. However, I have learned that the more determined you are to stick to your original plan– regarding ministry or living situation or friendships or organizations or personal growth– the more painful it is when that plan changes, and change it most definitely will. It’s the ones who humbly hold things loosely that I think can go the distance with far less collateral damage.

8. Don’t Become a Missionary at the Last Minute, on a Spiritual-Whim, Spontaneously. And yes, my Charismatic friends may disagree a bit here, but moving overseas, especially with a family and especially in any kind of committed-capacity, is not something to be taken lightly. It’s not necessarily a move that should be felt at a tent-meeting on Friday and plane tickets bought for the the next Monday. Training is important. Spiritual, emotional and cultural preparation has immense value. Turning your heart to a new place often takes time to fully root. So, give it a little time. Don’t be afraid to put the brakes on a bit, and heaven’s sake, don’t think that you’re more godly if you decide, pack and go in record time. This is not the Olympics, and sloppy leaving can take more time to clean up than you realize.

  1.  Don’t Become a Missionary to Fix Your Kids. Jerking a rebellious teenager from liberal American society and sticking them in an African hut so they can “find God,” is not a valid parenting technique. Family and personal problems will follow you overseas, in fact, they may be amplified. It’s important not to buy into the lie that forcing your kids to be missionaries will supernaturally make them love Jesus. That might happen, but moving a rebellious teen might also royally backfire on you, and should never, ever, ever be the primary reason a family takes up missions.

10. Don’t Become a Missionary to Find Cool Friends. Now, I’m not saying you won’t find amazing friends– maybe the best in your life– but there is no denying that the mission field can draw some pretty odd ducks. {Of which, I, of course, am not one. See #7 regarding my natural humility.} Don’t be surprised, though, if you find yourself in a church service with ladies wearing clothes from the 80?s singing praise songs from your middle-school years like Awesome God, but without even the drums. Don’t be surprised, too, if your social interactions are awkward at best with many of your fellow mission-souls. Living out the in jungles for twenty years might do wonders for your character and strength and important things, like, oh, the translation of the Bible into another language, but it can sure do a number on a person’s ability to shoot the breeze in a church lobby somewhere.

But, there, again, maybe there’s a necessary shifting that has to happen to your definition of cool, anyway.

– Revised and Extended from LauraParkerBlog‘s original list, posted Jan 2012

Laura Parker, former missionary in SE Asia.

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What would you add to the list?  Bring it. Even if you are not a missionary, pretend and add to the list.