Geopats Abroad : Chats with expats, immigrants, and locals

Geopats Abroad : Chats with expats, immigrants, and locals

By Stephanie Fuccio | Expat of 20+ yearsSociety & CultureEducationPersonal JournalsPlaces & TravelLanguage Learning
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Geopats Abroad : Chats with expats, immigrants, and locals episodes

  • Creatively Complicated: Boxing in Creativity

    Swedish cheese, Chinese fiction and letting go dance a pretty mean tango in this episode. Yes, most tangos are done with only two people but this two person tango idea you just had is exactly the kind of boxing in that we are addressing in this conversation. A flashback to the book “Shanghai Baby” starts off our rant about the tolerance people have of boxing in creativity and creative people.

    On the positive side of this box, Summer got a wave of letting go of a project relief after seeing her Swedish cheese article in print. Conversely, Steph is still grieving over the death of the original project that was the basis for her Virtual Expats podcast nearly a year after that segment was discontinued. How do we know when to let go of a project?

    Does stopping before reaching whatever we originally thought was the project goal make any of these efforts a complete loss? Why don’t we have a word like “sunk cost” for creative project’ss changing and often temperamental lifespan?       

     Rabbit Holes:

    -Blogging Breakthroughs with Faith Mariah (Podcast):

    https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/blogging-breakthroughs-with-faith-mariah-oZ_h49SlgJG/

    -Kolache (food): https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/kolache/

     

    Creative terminology/ideas to emerge from this episode:

    -podhole: a podcast listening rabbit hole

    -creative self pressure

    -creatively constipated: not able to get the creativity out 

     

    Links

    -Shanghai Baby by Zhou Weihui (book)

     -Summer’s cheese article in Culture Magazine, “Discovering Cheese and Tradition in the Swedish North”

    -Stockholm Cheese Festival; https://eatsomethinggosomewhere.com/blog/swedish-cheese-festival

    - sunk cost; https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sunkcost.asp

     

    QUOTES:

    “When we start something we don’t necessarily know where it’s going or how long it’s going to take to get there.” -Summer

    “Creating goals is not the bad thing, making ourselves stick to all of them is probably where the downfall is.” -Stephanie

    “It’s hard to avoid feeling like its a failure to wa

    www.stephfuccio.com

    Producer, Host, Editor: Stephanie Fuccio: https://www.stephfuccio.com/contact.html

    questions for audio creatives newsletter: https://stephfuccio.ghost.io/

    Geopats YouTube channel: under construction

    This podcast was created with (affiliate links):

    • Streamyard for recording, going live, and distributing FULL videos to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube: https://streamyard.com?pal=5673660346007552
    • Buzzsprout for podcast hosting: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1907332
    • Acon Digital's DeVerberate to reduce echo: https://a.paddle.com/v2/click/11427/147398?link=3691
    • Tube Buddy to optimize YouTube: https://www.tubebuddy.com/globalpodcasteditors



    37 min
  • “The Global Soul” by Pico Iyer With Two Podcasting Expats
    The Global Soul by Pico Iyer is a seminal geopat book. Stephanie and Summer (Steph’s Co-Host on the new podcast https://creativelycomplicated.libsyn.com/website/2019 (Creatively Complicated)) dig into this book in a very big way. This is not a regular episode because Steph is not interviewing Summer about her reading story but instead they are discussing both of their reactions to this book. Summer read this book for the first time recently thanks (or no thanks, lol) to Steph’s persistent recommendation and Steph tried to reread it for the first time since she fell in love with it in 2002.
    More info: https://www.stephfuccio.com/geopatsbookshow/theglobalsoul (https://www.stephfuccio.com/geopatsbookshow/)4
    1 hr 36 min
  • From Hunan Dialect in China to U.S. Grad School: Learning English with Patience: S3E3

    Send us Fan Mail

    Ziwei is originally from China’s. He's hands down one of the most intelligent, motivated, and hard working people I have ever known. We met in a Natural Language Processing class (taught by Sowmya, guest on the Virtual Expat Podcast in Iowa State University’s PhD in Applied Linguistics and Technology Program.​ In this conversation we talk about his experiences learning Mandarin Chinese and English as a child.

    original publication date:  November 17, 2018

     🌍 Tools & resources for living, traveling, and working abroad: https://geopatsabroad.substack.com/p/living-abroad-resources

    🛍️ Geopats Abroad Stationary Store: https://geopatsabroad-shop.fourthwall.com/en-eur?utm_source=buzzsprout&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=geopats_shop&utm_content=episode_description

    🛠️ Podcast & creator tools I use: https://podcaststeph.substack.com/p/podcast-tools-i-use

    📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geopatsabroad/

    🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnfWdoMjmqpcbULZw-hVgew


    1 hr 1 min
  • An Italian in the Venice of China (Suzhou) with Author of Parsley & Coriander, Antonella Moretti
    Antonella Moretti is the Author of Parsley and Coriander, a fictional book about an Italian expat community in Suzhou, China. Antonella has lived in Suzhou for many years herself and draws upon her personal expat experience for this narrative. In this episode we asked Antonella about her two bookish hats: expat reader AND expat Writer. We discuss her love of reading books about China, what led her to write this book on an expat experience in China and about the publication and translation process.
    Full show notes available here: https://www.stephfuccio.com/geopatsbookshow/53-antonella-an-italian-in-the-venice-of-china-suzhou-parsley-coriander (https://www.stephfuccio.com/geopatsbookshow/)3
    1 hr 21 min
  • Growing up speaking the Songjiang dialect and Chinese: A Native Speaker’s Story from Shanghai: S3E2

    Send us Fan Mail

    Lucy grew up in Shanghai, China speaking both Standard Mandarin Chinese and a local Songjiang dialect. She later learned other languages both as a child and an adult. Her descriptions of both the Chinese and foreign language classrooms in China are fascinating. She is now working in an English language workplace in Shanghai in the Social Media arena of a local publication, 

    original publication date: September 16, 2018

     🌍 Tools & resources for living, traveling, and working abroad: https://geopatsabroad.substack.com/p/living-abroad-resources

    🛍️ Geopats Abroad Stationary Store: https://geopatsabroad-shop.fourthwall.com/en-eur?utm_source=buzzsprout&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=geopats_shop&utm_content=episode_description

    🛠️ Podcast & creator tools I use: https://podcaststeph.substack.com/p/podcast-tools-i-use

    📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geopatsabroad/

    🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnfWdoMjmqpcbULZw-hVgew


    1 hr 12 min
  • Creatively Complicated: The Mundane Window

     Welcome to the Creatively Complicated podcast, where we dive into the messiness of our creativity. Summer and Stephanie are two Americans living abroad in two different countries: Germany and China. We met via podcasting so it made sense for us to start a podcast to talk through our creative ponderings. This podcast is about as far as one can go from an advice podcast, it is more of a process through the deep, murky waters of our own creative struggles. 

     

    In this episode we take a step back and try to notice patterns in our own creative struggles, uncovering both disturbing and comforting truths about our creativity. For both of us, the creative juices flow when we are doing mundane tasks not related to our own passion projects. What is wrong with us? Is it the lack of creative pressure or the act of being productive that makes this happen? Summer questions why she can’t replicate this mundanity to create artificial deadlines for her blog. Burnt out 3 podcast producing Steph wonders why 90 minute interviews do not exhaust her but writing a 4 sentence summary in the podcast show notes takes over an hour to write. And collectively we struggle to put copying, stealing and completely new creating something on a cline. And more so, we wonder why we need to map this out at all. Maybe it’s something like this:

     

    __I______________I_________________I_________________I_________________I_______

     

    Steal               mostly copied             partly copied               inspired by                       100% original

      

    Creative terminology/ideas to emerge from this episode:

    “The creative window” (Steph)

    “You were my root vegetable” (Steph)

     

    LINKS

     Stephen King’s book: “On Writing” : https://amzn.to/2LlqmgK

     Summer’s local park photo from IG: http://bit.ly/2LhKuAq

     “Steal Like An Artist” : http://bit.ly/2Vjx5g5

     “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert : https://nyti.ms/2Y1NQck

    (Creativity comes in seasons idea)

     Summer: 

    Blog: https://eatsomethinggosomewhere.com/

    Stephanie:

    Newsletter: https://podcasteditingplus.substack.com/

    Website https

    www.stephfuccio.com

    Producer, Host, Editor: Stephanie Fuccio: https://www.stephfuccio.com/contact.html

    questions for audio creatives newsletter: https://stephfuccio.ghost.io/

    Geopats YouTube channel: under construction

    This podcast was created with (affiliate links):

    • Streamyard for recording, going live, and distributing FULL videos to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube: https://streamyard.com?pal=5673660346007552
    • Buzzsprout for podcast hosting: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1907332
    • Acon Digital's DeVerberate to reduce echo: https://a.paddle.com/v2/click/11427/147398?link=3691
    • Tube Buddy to optimize YouTube: https://www.tubebuddy.com/globalpodcasteditors



    30 min
  • Creatively Complicated: Creative Ideal Farsickness

    Welcome to the Creatively Complicated podcast, where we dive into the messiness of our creativity. Summer and Stephanie are two Americans living abroad in two different countries: Germany and China.

     In this episode we get very creatively meta. Rabbit holes take us down a technology and terminology time warp then Ira Glass sheds light on what makes the beginning of a creative project difficult. Spoiler: it is the gap between what your taste wants of the project and what you can actually do at the beginning. Then we start agonizing on how we know when we are getting better at something, if we should apologize for our known initial shortcomings and if it's better to dive into a project or take it slow and methodical. All kinds of comparisons to language learning, writing and communication methods gets involved in this discussion.

     Terms:

    "Farsickness" - fernweh in German

    "Discovery writer"

     Links:

    -The Creative Gap (Ira Glass): http://bit.ly/2WpbNKf

    -Better Podcasting, a podcast on podcasting that rocks Steph's world

    -Ignorance is Bliss Podcast, as raw and honest as a podcast can get. Kate, you are truly amazing!

     Quotes:

    "....it's trying to be good."

    -Ira Glass (its referring to the creative project)

     

    "If you're a good, curious creator, you want to continue to learn and improve."

    -Summer


     "Academia is my bitch."

    -Steph (and yes, she knows full well she will regret highlighting this later.)

     

    CONTACT US:

     Summer (in Germany): 

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/summeroutside/

    Blog: https://eatsomethinggosomewhere.com/

     

    Stephanie: (in China):

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephfuccio/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephfuccio

    Website (3 other podcasts cause I am a crazy person!): https://stephfuccio.com/ 



    Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/geopats/donations

    Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    www.stephfuccio.com

    Producer, Host, Editor: Stephanie Fuccio: https://www.stephfuccio.com/contact.html

    questions for audio creatives newsletter: https://stephfuccio.ghost.io/

    Geopats YouTube channel: under construction

    This podcast was created with (affiliate links):

    • Streamyard for recording, going live, and distributing FULL videos to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube: https://streamyard.com?pal=5673660346007552
    • Buzzsprout for podcast hosting: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1907332
    • Acon Digital's DeVerberate to reduce echo: https://a.paddle.com/v2/click/11427/147398?link=3691
    • Tube Buddy to optimize YouTube: https://www.tubebuddy.com/globalpodcasteditors



    45 min
  • Chetan Bhagat’s Books with Tatjana of Craving Expat Life, A German Expat in India
    In the podcast episode we chat with https://www.instagram.com/craving_expat_life/ (Tatjana), in her words “a German married to an Indian-Chinese - or Chinese-Indian depending on the mood of the day”. Tatjana grew up wanting to live in different countries, so she went into Hospitality in order to do so. Of course, at the same time she read voraciously. In fact, while living in Dubai, one of the six cities she has called home thus far, she met her husband. Just before she moved to India to be with him she started reading the works of Indian Author http://www.chetanbhagat.com/ (Chetan Bhagat). And thus began her bookjucation of India and Indian culture. I was fortunate enough to sit down with Tatjana in my home in Shanghai and chat about some of Chetan’s books that had an impact on her life in India. We also dig into her bookology, her favorite books and places to read them and so much more.
    More info:
    https://www.stephfuccio.com/geopatsbookshow/49-books-tatjana-a-german-expat-bookweaving-through-india-via-chetan-bhagats-books (https://www.stephfuccio.com/geopatsbookshow/)2
    1 hr 33 min
  • Creatively Complicated: What Are We Doing?

    Welcome to the Creatively Complicated podcast, where we dive into the messiness of our creativity. Summer and Stephanie are two Americans living abroad in two different countries: Germany and China. We met via podcasting so it made sense for us to start a podcast to talk through our creative ponderings. This podcast is about as far as one can go from an advice podcast, it is more of a process through the deep, murky waters of our own creative struggles. 

     In this episode, we do a 100% brain dump of how this podcast started. We left a ridiculous amount of What’s App voice messages to each other for over a month digging into the assumptions, pressures, organization and balancing act of “creativity”. We also are actively trying to grok the difference between “creativity” and “sharitivity” (yes, we made up the word “sharitivity” & we encourage frequent usage of said word) because to us creativity has a strong element of not found anywhere else newness to it but sharitivity has a curious, playful reviewing or reenvisioning instead. To dig into these ideas we even delve far back into our childhoods: be very afraid.

     Creative terminology/ideas to emerge from this episode:

    -“Recreational creativity” (Summer)

    -“So Called Creativity” (Summer)

    -“This is where our brains go when we are together” (Summer)

     Summer: 

    Blog: https://eatsomethinggosomewhere.com/

    Stephanie:

    Newsletter: https://podcasteditingplus.substack.com/

    Website https://stephfuccio.weebly.com/

     

     

     



    Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/geopats/donations

    Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    www.stephfuccio.com

    Producer, Host, Editor: Stephanie Fuccio: https://www.stephfuccio.com/contact.html

    questions for audio creatives newsletter: https://stephfuccio.ghost.io/

    Geopats YouTube channel: under construction

    This podcast was created with (affiliate links):

    • Streamyard for recording, going live, and distributing FULL videos to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube: https://streamyard.com?pal=5673660346007552
    • Buzzsprout for podcast hosting: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1907332
    • Acon Digital's DeVerberate to reduce echo: https://a.paddle.com/v2/click/11427/147398?link=3691
    • Tube Buddy to optimize YouTube: https://www.tubebuddy.com/globalpodcasteditors



    35 min
  • Creatively Complicated: We Like Chips: About Us

    As if we don’t share enough about our ICL (in creative life) non-ICL lives, here is an entire episode to fill in the gaps about who we are and what we do with our time outside of podcasting and wrestling with our creative existence.

     LINKS

    -Normal People by Sally Rooney , https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41057294-normal-people

    -Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, Eric Klinenberg, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23453112-modern-romance

    Summer: 

    Blog: https://eatsomethinggosomewhere.com/

    Stephanie:

    Newsletter: https://podcasteditingplus.substack.com/

    Website https://stephfuccio.weebly.com/

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     



    Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/geopats/donations

    Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    www.stephfuccio.com

    Producer, Host, Editor: Stephanie Fuccio: https://www.stephfuccio.com/contact.html

    questions for audio creatives newsletter: https://stephfuccio.ghost.io/

    Geopats YouTube channel: under construction

    This podcast was created with (affiliate links):

    • Streamyard for recording, going live, and distributing FULL videos to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube: https://streamyard.com?pal=5673660346007552
    • Buzzsprout for podcast hosting: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1907332
    • Acon Digital's DeVerberate to reduce echo: https://a.paddle.com/v2/click/11427/147398?link=3691
    • Tube Buddy to optimize YouTube: https://www.tubebuddy.com/globalpodcasteditors



    21 min

About Geopats Abroad : Chats with expats, immigrants, and locals

From the publisher's feed

Geopats Abroad is about what helps us feel grounded while in our life abroad. 


For eight years of my serial expat life, I interviewed people about…