Geopats Abroad : Chats with expats, immigrants, and locals

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Mo Sibyl, a Nigerian-born podcaster, pharmacist, researcher, and cultural commentator revisits Facebook posts and quotations from her first years abroad. Together, Mo and Stephanie explore language assumptions, homesickness, graduate school, friendship, boundaries, organ donation, mathematics, and the emotional work of rebuilding a life in another country.

What Mo Sibyl Shares About Moving From Nigeria to the United States

• Why strangers’ questions about her accent, clothing, and English became frustrating
• How she learned to separate genuine cultural curiosity from judgment
• Moving from a successful pharmacy career in Nigeria to a US graduate student stipend
• The loneliness of leaving friends behind and starting over socially
• Why relationships often change after migration
• English, Yoruba identity, and the linguistic diversity of Nigeria
• How the right teacher transformed her relationship with mathematics
• Why an organ donation question raised deeper questions about immigration and belonging
• Learning to set boundaries without becoming distrustful
• Why intention matters more than finding the perfect question to ask an immigrant

Why Nigerians Speak English and How Language Assumptions Affect Immigrants

Soon after arriving in the US, Mo noticed that strangers often expressed surprise that she and her husband spoke English. At the time, she responded with sarcasm. Looking back, she sees that some people were likely curious about the Nigerian clothing she wore and wanted to know more.

Today, she focuses on the intention behind the question. She doesn’t believe immigrants should accept every intrusive comment, but she also doesn’t want fear of saying the wrong thing to stop people from learning about one another.

The Financial and Emotional Reality of Starting Over Abroad

Before leaving Nigeria, Mo worked as a pharmacist and was financially established. Graduate school in the US meant living on a stipend, relying on buses, and adjusting to a lower standard of living. She also struggled with homesickness. At first, friends called regularly. Over time, time differences, work, and changing lives created distance.

Mo describes leaving Nigeria and rebuilding her life in her twenties as one of the bravest things she has done. Language, Education, and Identity Mo is Yoruba and explains that English is Nigeria’s official language, while Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo are among the country’s major Indigenous languages.

Although she later built a career around statistics and research, she was once afraid of mathematics. The right tutor helped her understand the logic behind it, changing both her confidence and academic path.

Immigration, Organ Donation, and Belonging

When Mo applied for a US driver’s license, she was unexpectedly asked whether she wanted to become an organ donor. The question made her think about belonging. She could be excluded from legal status and other parts of American life while still being asked to donate her organs.

She initially declined because she wanted more time to think. Her views have since changed, but she still believes the decision deserves more context than a checkbox at the DMV.

Friendship, Boundaries, and Cultural Curiosity

A painful betrayal taught Mo that kindness doesn’t require giving everyone unlimited access to her life. She now approaches both relationships and cultural questions with more patience and discernment.

There’s no perfect alternative to “Where are you from?” What matters is whether the question is asked with genuine interest, respect, and a willingness to listen.

About Mo Sibyl

Mo Sibyl is a Nigerian-born, US-educated, Korean-speaking pharmacist, researcher, podcaster, and cultural commentator.

Her work explores culture, identity, migration, and the lives of people who move between communities and countries.

Mo's podcast: https://www.mosibyl.com/

Original publication date: March 19, 2018

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

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Hannah came to Hangzhou because of a snake. While researching Chinese ghost stories for her college thesis in Iowa, she discovered the legend of Madam White Snake, a shape-shifting spirit whose story is tied to Hangzhou’s West Lake, Broken Bridge, and Leifeng Pagoda.

The legend helped draw Hannah to China after graduation. But when she arrived at 22, she found a modern city filled with factories, high-rise apartments, crowded buses, concrete walkways, shopping centres, escalators, and millions of people.

Years later, Hannah wrote In Search of White Snake, a creative nonfiction essay about Chinese mythology, culture shock, disillusionment, vulnerability, and the gap between the life we imagine abroad and the one we actually find.

What happens when the place that inspired your move doesn’t look anything like the story that brought you there?

Original publication date: November 26, 2018

Links:

Hannah: https://hannahlund.com/

In Search of White Snake https://www.shanghailiterary.com/tslr-online-collection/2018/12/31/in-search-of-white-snake

In this episode

• Hannah reads In Search of White Snake and explains how Chinese mythology drew her to Hangzhou
• Moving from Minnesota to China at 22 and discovering a modern city instead of the mystical place she imagined
• Visiting West Lake, Broken Bridge, Leifeng Pagoda, and Hangzhou Zoo in search of traces of Madam White Snake
• The gap between romanticizing a place and learning to live with its everyday reality
• How culture shock, mistakes, and asking for help changed Hannah’s idea of independence
• Learning Mandarin, misunderstanding strangers, and becoming more comfortable with embarrassment
• The pressure to “live the dream” abroad while friends built careers back home
• Recognizing Orientalist assumptions and the problem with treating China as one uniform culture
• How editing revealed the deeper coming-of-age story inside Hannah’s essay
• Moving from Hangzhou to Shanghai and building a life around writing, editing, translation, and literary community
• Chinese ghost stories, strange spirits, haunted writers, and the stories that still shape Hannah’s imagination

About Hannah

Hannah is originally from Minnesota in the United States. She studied at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where she researched Chinese mythology and ghost stories.

After graduating, she moved to Hangzhou in September 2012. She taught English and later completed graduate study at Zhejiang University in Chinese.

Hannah lived in Hangzhou on and off for approximately six years before moving to Shanghai, where she studied comparative literature, worked as an editor at Sixth Tone, and became involved in literary, poetry, writing, and translation communities.

Her essay In Search of White Snake was published in the Shanghai Literary Review’s special edition, Concrete.

From Mythical Hangzhou to Modern China

Before arriving, Hannah imagined Hangzhou as ancient, poetic, quiet, and mysterious. She pictured willow trees, pagodas, spirits, and traces of mythology around West Lake.

Instead, she moved to Xiasha, an industrial area filled with factories, apartment towers, shopping centres, and crowded streets.

Her visits to West Lake and Leifeng Pagoda challenged the version of Hangzhou she had created. The pagoda connected with Madam White Snake’s imprisonment had escalators, tourist displays, and reconstructed foundations beneath glass.

From a distance, it looked like part of a legend. Up close, it felt like a memorial.

Learning to Work With Failure

Hannah arrived in China seeing herself as fiercely independent. She believed she should solve problems alone, remain in control, and avoid appearing vulnerable.

Living abroad gradually changed that.

She got lost, misunderstood strangers, struggled through classes, and discovered that her Mandarin listening skills weren’t as strong as she believed.

In one memorable moment, a man tried to warn her about a crack in the pavement. Hannah assumed he was asking where she came from, answered “I’m American,” and then tripped over it.

She eventually began using the phrase “work with the failure.”

Instead of treating every mistake as evidence that she was incapable, she learned to laugh, ask for help, and accept that not every difficult experience needed to become a triumph or poetic lesson.

Writing, Transformation, and Madam White Snake

Hannah came to see a connection between herself and Madam White Snake.

Both left a familiar world, entered a place with different rules, and changed through the experience.

The transformation Hannah experienced wasn’t the glamorous adventure she had imagined at 22. It happened through buses, classrooms, mistakes, friendships, language learning, writing, and ordinary daily life.

The essay’s discarded snakeskin became a metaphor for the identity she had outgrown.

Hannah never found Madam White Snake in the form she expected. Instead, she found her throughout Hangzhou in stories, performances, postcards, tourism, public memory, and her own transformation.

The legend didn’t lead Hannah to the city she imagined.

It led her to the life she needed to live.

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

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When Pia moved from Finland to Shanghai with her husband and two daughters, she started a blog to document the family’s life abroad. In this episode, she reads a 2016 post in Finnish and English and looks back at the busy early months of learning Mandarin, exploring Shanghai, visiting Tongli water town, finding familiar food, and building a new life in China.

Pia also reflects on what the public blog left out, including loneliness and homesickness, why her honeymoon period in China lasted for her entire stay, and what surprised her about Shanghai’s safety, infrastructure, and optimism. She explains how living in North Carolina prepared her for China, why broad statements about Chinese culture can be misleading, and how living abroad changed her view of Europe, America, and the world.

In this episode

• Reading an expat blog post in Finnish and English
• Moving from Finland to Shanghai with children
• Learning Mandarin and adapting to daily life in China
• The private experiences left out of a public blog
• Why Pia’s honeymoon period in China lasted two years
• What surprised her about Shanghai’s safety and infrastructure
• The friends, culture, and optimism she missed after leaving
• How living in China changed her worldview

Pia's blog: https://pianshanghai.blogspot.com/

Original publication date: October 30, 2018

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

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When Jennifer left the United States, she didn’t expect living abroad to change her political beliefs, religious identity, family relationships, and sense of home so completely.

In this episode, she reads her poem “Daddy, Do You Still Believe That?” publicly for the first time. Written to her father, the poem questions the patriotic, political, and religious beliefs she grew up with and explores what happens when the identity you inherit no longer fits the life you’ve lived.

Jennifer shares how travel and life in Spain, Latin America, South Korea, Mexico, and China changed the way she understood the United States. She talks about growing up in a conservative Republican and Catholic family, watching her family struggle after the 2008 housing crisis, and finding greater financial stability abroad.

We also discuss expat guilt, political divisions within families, the hidden relationship cost of living overseas, and why returning home can feel harder than leaving. Jennifer explains how living abroad forces you to question your values, routines, relationships, and assumptions, often before you even realize how much you’ve changed.

This conversation is for anyone interested in living abroad, leaving the United States, expat identity, reverse culture shock, religious deconstruction, political differences within families, and the emotional cost of building a life far from home.

In this episode:

• Jennifer reads her poem publicly for the first time
• How living abroad changed her political and religious beliefs
• Why she addressed the poem directly to her father
• Growing up in a conservative Republican and Catholic family
• Adventure, economic opportunity, and leaving the United States
• Expat guilt and the relationship cost of living overseas
• Why people back home often misunderstand expat life
• The difference between traveling and living in another country
• Losing friendships after changing abroad
• Why returning home can be harder than leaving
• Finding identity, community, and love outside your home country
• Why the challenges of living abroad were still worth it

Original publication date: October 15, 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

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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 patterned bed sheets, books, quiet places and more.

Traveling Mailbox: https://travelingmailbox.com/?ref=3422

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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🔥Chase Sapphire Credit Card: annual fee, NO currency conversion fee. Used this in many countries globally.
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--------------------

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and

Key Frame Audio , https://keyframeaudio.com/

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When Shannon Martin moved to Shanghai in 2012, everyday life in China immediately gave her a long list of things to notice: official red stamps, bicycles, relentless commerce, noise, laundry hanging everywhere, and an abundance of extremely cute things.

Nearly six years later, Shannon revisits one of the first blog posts she wrote about living in China and asks which of those early observations still hold up, what has changed, and what once felt strange but eventually became normal.

What happens to our observations about a place once we’ve lived there long enough?

Many of the things that caught Shannon’s attention during her first few months in Shanghai still existed six years later, but often in very different forms. Paperwork became more digital, private bicycles gave way to bike-sharing systems, mobile payments transformed shopping and bargaining, car horns became less common and laundry became less visible in some neighborhoods.

The culture hadn’t simply disappeared or stayed the same. It kept evolving around her.

In this episode

• Shannon’s first impressions of living in Shanghai in 2012
• Why official red stamps and paperwork were such a visible part of life in China
• How digital payments and electronic receipts changed everyday bureaucracy
• What happened to Shanghai’s bicycles after bike-sharing arrived
• How electric scooters and delivery drivers changed the city’s streets
• When Shanghai became noticeably quieter after restrictions on car horns
• Bargaining, shopping, and the feeling of “winning” a negotiation
• How mobile payments changed traditional bargaining strategies
• Why laundry hanging outside became less visible in parts of Shanghai
• Unexpected similarities Shannon noticed between Spain and China
• Personal space and how ideas about politeness change across cultures
• Why Shannon stopped blogging regularly even though she still valued long-form reflection
• Downsizing, living abroad, and how our relationship with possessions changes
• Books and travel writing that helped Shannon understand China
• What outsiders often misunderstand about everyday life in modern China
• How quickly Shanghai changed during Shannon’s six years there
• Why she wishes she had studied more Chinese
• The difference between experiencing Shanghai during the first year and after living there for years

Who this episode is for

This episode is for people interested in living in Shanghai, moving to China, culture shock, expat life, long-term travel, digital life in China, cultural differences, and how our understanding of a place changes after the novelty of the first year wears off.

About Shannon

Shannon Martin is originally from the United States and had been living in Shanghai for almost six years when we recorded this conversation. 

Before moving to China, Shannon and her husband left Florida and began traveling while she worked location independently. They spent time living in Spain before eventually deciding to move to Shanghai.

Shannon started her travel blog, Two Who Travel, as a way to document their travels, observations, and experiences for friends and family. One of her early Shanghai posts captured six things that seemed especially noticeable during her first months in China: official red stamps, bikes, commerce, noise, laundry, and cuteness.

In this episode, she revisits those observations years later.

What changed in Shanghai between 2012 and 2018?

One of the most interesting things about Shannon’s original post is that very little had completely disappeared. Instead, the form of everyday life had changed.

Official paperwork and red stamps still mattered, but more processes were becoming electronic. Receipts could be issued digitally. Payments increasingly happened through phones rather than cash or cards.

Bicycles were still everywhere, but bike-sharing companies had transformed what the streets looked like. Even noise changed. Shannon had once written that Shanghai’s constant car horns seemed impossible to control. Years later, regulations and significant fines had dramatically reduced them.

Looking back showed her how quickly a city can change while still remaining recognizably itself.

What happened to all the bikes in China?

In Shannon’s original 2012 post, bicycles and scooters were everywhere. She even considered buying a bike herself but never did. Within a few years, bike-sharing companies such as Mobike and Ofo appeared across Shanghai, making it possible to use shared bicycles instead of owning one.

At the same time, scooters became even more visible as food delivery services expanded. The quiet electric scooters created another challenge: pedestrians often couldn’t hear them approaching. Both Steph and Shannon remember having to develop a kind of instinct for scooters moving quickly along sidewalks.

Sometimes technological improvements solve one problem while creating another.

What do Spain and China have in common?

At first glance, Spain and China may seem like very different places. After living in both, Shannon noticed some surprising similarities. Family relationships can play a central role in both cultures. Group belonging and social relationships can also feel especially important.

She noticed similarities in outdoor public life too: walking, exercising outside, people gathering in parks, and outdoor exercise equipment used particularly by older residents. There were also similarities around laundry, noise, and personal space. Those comparisons are one of the recurring lessons of living in several countries.

Places that seem completely different from the outside can sometimes feel unexpectedly familiar once you live inside them.

What does living abroad do to our relationship with our material things?

Before moving abroad, Shannon and her husband gradually reduced the possessions they had left behind in the United States. Like many people who start living internationally, they discovered that objects that once seemed essential often became much less important after months without them.

Steph had experienced something similar when she moved across the United States years earlier. She shipped several large boxes of possessions to herself months after moving, only to discover that she barely wanted anything inside them anymore. Living abroad can create distance not only from a home country, but also from the possessions that once represented home.

For Shannon, photographs increasingly became enough to preserve many memories that she once kept through physical objects.

What books helped Shannon understand China?

Shannon has always used books as a way to understand the places where she lives and travels. She recommends Peter Hessler’s writing about China, including River Town and Country Driving, as useful ways to explore the country through long-form observation. She also mentions Stateless in Shanghai, a memoir that offered her an unusual perspective on Shanghai’s history and the experience of a person born in China to non-Chinese parents. 

When traveling somewhere new, Shannon often looks for books, memoirs, podcasts, and authors connected to that place. Reading while physically being somewhere creates a different relationship with the story.

You can look up from the page and realize that the history you’re reading happened in the place around you.

What do outsiders misunderstand about modern China?

When Steph asks what people who haven’t visited China misunderstand most, Shannon’s immediate answer is simple: Everything. She especially points to everyday safety and the gap between international perceptions of China and ordinary daily life.

Visitors often arrive with ideas shaped by political news, government coverage, and isolated headlines. Then they encounter a daily reality filled with mobile payments, delivery services, cafes, public transportation, busy neighborhoods, and ordinary human routines that don’t fit neatly into those expectations.

That doesn’t mean the political or social issues people hear about aren’t real. The problem is that they’re incomplete.

Understanding a country through headlines alone is very different from understanding what it feels like to buy groceries, commute, find an apartment, meet friends, solve a broken door lock, or walk home late at night.

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

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When Evan moved from New York City to Jiaxing, China, in 2006, one of the cultural differences that caught his attention was dogs. He noticed street dogs in less wealthy areas, purebred dogs in richer cities, and very different attitudes toward pet ownership than the ones he knew from the United States.

More than a decade later, living in Shanghai with his own rescue dog, Evan revisits a blog post he wrote during his first months in China and reflects on how dog culture, rescue communities, and his own understanding of China have changed. As we’re having this conversation one of his dogs is in the room with us. It was super cute. 

What can dogs tell us about a culture?

The way people keep, value, rescue, and interact with dogs can reflect broader differences in wealth, lifestyle, urban development, and cultural attitudes toward animals. Are they a companion or a status symbol or a part of the family?

In 2006, Evan saw a sharp contrast between the street dogs he encountered in Jiaxing and the purebred pets he saw in wealthier Shenzhen. Years later, he says that picture became more complicated as dog rescue communities grew and pet ownership became increasingly visible in cities like Shanghai.

In this episode

• Moving from New York City to Jiaxing, China, to teach English
• What Evan noticed about dogs during his first months living in China
• The differences he saw between pet ownership in Jiaxing and Shenzhen
• How dog culture in Shanghai changed between 2006 and 2018
• The growth of dog rescue and adoption communities in Shanghai
• Why expat mobility can create challenges for pet adoption
• How people in Shanghai react differently to dogs and dog owners
• What living abroad taught Evan and Steph about cultural assumptions
• Revisiting observations about wealth, status, and purebred dogs
• How Evan’s own culture shock changed during his first year in China

Who this episode is for

This episode is for people interested in living in China, expat life in Shanghai, pet culture across countries, dog rescue and adoption, and the ways everyday observations can reveal deeper cultural differences.

About Evan

Evan Pinto moved from New York City to Jiaxing, China, in 2006 to teach English for a year after studying Asian Studies and Chinese as an undergraduate.

Soon after arriving, he started a blog called Pinto Bean and Rice about his experiences adjusting to life in China. One early post, “You Can Tell a Lot About a Place From Its Dogs,” compared the dogs he saw in Jiaxing, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong and explored what those differences might say about wealth and urban life.

By the time of this conversation, Evan had spent years living in Shanghai and had become part of the local dog rescue community himself. His rescue dog Buddy even joins us for part of the conversation.

How has dog culture changed in Shanghai?

One of the biggest changes Evan noticed was the growth of dog rescue and adoption communities. He remembers seeing many more loose and homeless dogs during his earlier years in China. By the time of this conversation, he says street dogs had become far less common in Shanghai, while rescue organizations and adoption networks had grown significantly.

Evan also talks about the role Shanghai’s international community played in developing some of these rescue networks, as well as a recurring challenge in expat communities: people may adopt pets while living abroad, then struggle to take them along when jobs, visas, or international moves suddenly change.

Do wealth and dog ownership still connect?

In his original 2006 blog post, Evan argued that wealthier cities seemed to have more purebred dogs, while less affluent places had more mixed-breed and street dogs.

Looking back 12 years later, he says that observation still reflected something he had genuinely seen at the time, but the reality had become more complicated.

Rescue adoption had grown, especially within Shanghai’s expat community, while purebred dogs continued to be popular among some local pet owners. The shift reminded him that cultural observations can be true in a particular moment without remaining fixed forever.

What living abroad teaches us about assumptions

The conversation eventually moves beyond dogs into a broader question: what happens when living abroad exposes assumptions we didn’t know we had?

Both Evan and Steph reflect on moments when they interpreted something as uniquely Chinese, Taiwanese, or American, only to realize later that some behaviors were more universal than they first assumed.

Evan also describes becoming aware of assumptions he carried from growing up in New York, including how race, appearance, and occupation had become linked in ways he hadn’t consciously noticed before moving abroad.

Living in a different cultural environment forced him to see some of those patterns more clearly.

Evan’s first year of culture shock in China

Evan also looks back at the culture shock of moving from New York to Jiaxing.

His first month felt exciting and new, but the adjustment became harder as the year continued. He remembers struggling with language, food, isolation, holidays away from home, and the everyday exhaustion of trying to function in an unfamiliar environment.

Even simple interactions, like ordering spinach at a restaurant, could become frustrating when pronunciation and context didn’t work the way he expected.

Looking back, those experiences became part of a much longer process of learning how to live across cultures and questioning the assumptions he brought with him.

Original publication date: June 1, 2018

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

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Phil's journey learning Mandarin Chinese is nothing less than impressive. But he is humble and shares not only his experiences but very practical tips and resources that he has found along the way. Phil and I initially did this interview for the Changing Scripts YouTube channel but it felt like too long of an experience for a video. It felt like a podcast. So here we are.

🤸🏽Music from
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and
Key Frame Audio (more recent eps) :https://keyframeaudio.com/

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries (mostly for Americans): Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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🔥Chase Sapphire Credit Card: annual fee, NO currency conversion fee. Used this in many countries globally.
https://www.referyourchasecard.com/19Q/MDNYO68N38

🔥 Stackry: Shop in the U.S. and have the items shipped internationally.
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Xing moved from China to Edinburgh, Scotland, for graduate school and initially experienced the city as a kind of wonderland, as he put it. Years later, he looks back at how studying abroad, culture shock, international friendships, and eventually leaving the international student bubble changed the way he understood Scotland and himself.

In this episode of Geopats Abroad, Xing revisits a story he wrote in 2005 about his first months living in Edinburgh and reflects on what that younger version of himself didn’t yet understand.

What is the international student bubble?

The international student bubble can make moving abroad feel exciting and culturally diverse while still keeping someone somewhat separated from the local culture around them. Xing describes how spending his first year mainly with international friends helped him adjust to Western culture broadly, but his deeper understanding of Scottish culture came later, when he began working and interacting more with locals. 

In this episode

• Moving from China to Scotland as an international student
• Experiencing Edinburgh as a cultural “wonderland”
• How international friendships shaped Xing’s first year abroad
• The difference between adapting to Western culture & adapting to Scottish culture
• What happened when Xing’s international student bubble began to disappear
• Writing about life abroad in both English and Chinese
• How language can change the way we express different parts of ourselves
• Looking back at studying abroad with more life experience
• Xing’s advice for international students adjusting to life in another country
• Why Edinburgh still feels like a spiritual home years later

Who this episode is for

This episode is for international students, people preparing to study abroad, expats adjusting to a new culture, and anyone interested in how our understanding of a place can change years after we leave it.

About Xing

Xing Zhao moved from China to Edinburgh, Scotland, to complete a postgraduate degree in cultural studies at the University of Edinburgh. During his time abroad, he wrote blogs in both Chinese and English about what he was seeing, learning, and experiencing. In this conversation, he revisits a piece he wrote during his first year in Edinburgh and reflects on the difference between the exciting international world he first entered and the more complicated reality of building a life there after graduation.

Years later, Edinburgh still holds a powerful place in his life. Looking back, he describes it as a place connected not only to studying abroad, but to becoming an adult, finding his place in the world, and developing a sense of home across cultures.

A different version of yourself abroad

One of the most interesting parts of Xing’s story is how differently he expressed himself depending on the language he was using. He describes his English writing as funnier and his Chinese writing as more sentimental. Writing two blogs allowed him to stay connected with people in China while also documenting the new English-speaking world he was living in.

His experience raises a bigger question many people who live across cultures recognize: does speaking or writing in another language bring out a different version of who we are?

Advice for international students living abroad

Looking back at his own experience, Xing shares advice that still applies to many people studying in another country: don’t stay only within your own cultural community, spend time with both international and local people, keep an open mind, travel when you can, and give yourself permission to experience the culture you actually moved there to experience.

He also reflects on the importance of becoming independent and accepting that studying abroad isn’t always the idealized experience people imagine before they arrive.

Original publication date

May 14, 2018

Xing’s website: https://kapazhao.com/

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​This week we expat chat with Xing Zhao, a Chinese Writer, Translator and former expat 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 this blog as advice to other international students. As someone who has taught international students both in Asia and in my passport country of the U.S, this was interesting insight to get first hand indeed.  

A special thank you goes out to Rebeca Kanthor, who introduced Xing and I.

Xing’s Info:
Website: https://kapazhao.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kapazhao/

Show Links:
-The Festival (movie), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468736/

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