Geopats Abroad : Chats with expats, immigrants, and locals

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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

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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

 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

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/ 

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

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/

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

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/

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

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This is our first group chat about Simplified Mandarin Chinese. In this episode we have Yifei, a Chinese college student in Shanghai and Phil from episode 2 fame (he's British), who is a Master's student and also works in Shanghai. They share their own language learning stories, their successes and challenges in an open, blunt and friendly group conversation. 

Original recording date: June 29, 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

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 In this episode we chat with Lotta, a Finnish college student who lived in Shanghai, China between High School and University. During part of that time she took intensive Chinese language courses. Lotta has continued with her Chinese language learning even after returning to Finland by using TV shows and other media until she can take more language classes at her university.

Original publication date: May 7, 2019

 🌍 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

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This episode is about half of a conversation that Matthew Boyle of Legendary Language Learner YouTube channel and I had about language teaching, content creation and the intersection between the two.

Original publication date: March 24, 2022

 🌍 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

In this episode, we talk to Taylor, an American Marketing Professional who grew up with a strong language learning curiosity. Mandarin Chinese was one of her first language loves and one that she has kept in contact with. I am using people analogies because Taylor used them in the interview and it is simply a brilliant way to see the time, energy and commitment that it takes not only to learn a language but to maintain it over the years as well.

🤸🏽Music from
Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo.com/
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.

🔥 Traveling Mailbox: scan/forward postal service for Americans. It's saved me time, money and headaches.
https://travelingmailbox.com/geopats/?ref=3422

🔥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.
https://www.stackry.com/register?referral=7118738