Expats

Expatriates are a unique breed of people and consistently prove to be more interesting than the general population. There is some extraordinary grit in the expat soul, some insatiable restlessness that pushes them along to greater adventures. They straddle the border of madness and eccentricity, living lives outside of the cultural box that they were born in. They can’t really be said to belong to any nation, to be bound to any country, culture, or people. They are global citizens, so to speak, as they hop from country to country and continent-to-continent, living and working.
This quirkiness usually makes for an altogether charming and friendly person. The Americans and Western Europeans who I have met here in Kiev and also in Russia, Estonia, and Ghana are like characters out of books.
Living in a foreign country, you are part audience and part actor. You spend a lot of time observing the locals and marveling at the strange ways in which they conduct their daily lives. It’s like being Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas present: you can watch the people and see how they live, but cannot interact. At first you are caught off guard, especially when they start babbling at you in their foreign tongues and you have no clue what it is they are intending to communicate. It feels like being on a different planet at first. But then you start to notice that when the locals interact with one another they are dropping recognizable emotional cues. Whatever that guy just said to that girl, she is obviously smitten; whatever happened today, the woman on the metro is just ready to get home. You can see things in people’s faces that language need not express.
With time, the strange scenes take on a feeling of normalcy and you start to notice yourself assimilating. Of course, you never become like the locals, but the strange babble they speak starts to take on meaning and you are even able to babble back. You start to feel like you are an actor in the drama and another one of the people making the city operate.
I am studying at a language school here in Kiev called NovaMova and it attracts people from all over the world trying to learn Russian.
People come to NovaMova for a few weeks at a time or a few months, as in my case. Most people come here alone, so everyone is always very open to making friends. I always make sure to talk to the newcomers (although, I am a newcomer myself) and make them feel welcome by inviting them to lunch or something. In this way, we have made a giant entourage that always goes out together to bars and other social activities.
Everyone has some story to tell. I met one British guy who lives in Geneva working for the United Nations. He had been sent as a translator to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which, for those who don’t know, is one of the worst places to ever go on the whole planet. He was sent as a translator to document war crimes and human rights violations.
Another guy here is a professional wind-surfer/sailor and extreme sportsmen. He works 4 months out of the year during the summer season, and spends the other 8 months travelling and learning languages. He was a GreenPeace activist and was shot at with tear-gas canisters while protesting in the West Bank.
Then there is another guy who is a professional traveller as far as I can tell. He is French but lives in Singapore, and has been to almost every far-flung region of the earth. He was telling me about sailing around Antarctica, hiking through the Himalayas in winter, trekking through the wild mountains of Tajikistan (at the border of Afghanistan), riding over snowy peaks on an old Soviet helicopter in Kazakhstan, sightseeing in Yemen and Eritrea, and crossing the Sahara on foot from Senegal through Chad, Sudan, and Ethiopia. He also toured North Korea and Madagascar.
One of our good friends from Switzerland, Lorraine, just left with her boyfriend, Paddi, to take the Trans-Siberian railway. They will be heading from Kiev to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and then across the vast Russian wilderness past the Ural Mountains and through Siberia. At Lake Baikal they will catch a southbound train and go through Mongolia into China. The train ends at Beijing, and from there I think they will probably travel around Southeast Asia.
Several of my good friends here have studied in Central Asia- in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan- and that has really fueled my desire to visit. So, if it works out, next stop Kyrgyzstan!
There are a lot of good folks here and I am really enjoying myself.