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Two Americans who barely traveled before the Peace Corps ended up mastering Albanian, building lives in tiny towns, and falling for a place that completely changed how they see themselves. Their stories about learning Albanian in real Albanian villages, picking up slang and dialects, switching between Albanian and Greek, and figuring out daily expat life through immersion and community are wild, and honestly it reminded me how much language is tied to belonging. If you want to hear what fluency looks like when it grows out of real life in Albania, not textbooks, and how learning a language can change who you are, listen to the full episode.

Diane's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/life__of__di/

Original publication date: March 21, 2021

 🛍️ Shop Life, Lived Here: https://life-lived-here-geopats-abroad-shop.fourthwall.com/

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

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📬 Weekly podcast discoverability tips:  https://podcaststeph.substack.com/

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Language can be a lens into culture, a way to share our experiences and a tool to help others.  These are some of the aspects of language that we discuss with guest Elizabeth Gowing. She worked in primary education in inner London before moving to the Balkans in 2006. From then until very recently she split her time between Kosovo, Albania and the UK. During her time in the Balkans she immersed herself in many of the languages used there and shares the cultural insights that she learned. One of these experiences while she was in Kosovo was co-founding The Ideas Partnership non-profit. She is also the owner of the Sapune social enterprise, offering employment to village and minority community women and support to the education of their children. Elizabeth is also an author of five travel books and has translated two books from Albanian. 

Original publication date: March 5, 2021

Elizabeth's website: https://www.elizabethgowing.com/

 🛍️ Shop Life, Lived Here: https://life-lived-here-geopats-abroad-shop.fourthwall.com/

💰Best credit card for Americans living or traveling outside the U.S. Chase Sapphire: https://accounts.chase.com/raf/share/1805579379

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

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

🎙️Start your own podcast. Get a bonus when you upgrade with this link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2022201

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If you've ever wondered what it's like to live and do linguistic research in Kathmandu, Nepal, this episode is for you! Big & White, their podcasting nicknames, are two American Linguists who, until very recently were living in Nepal and creating a rather hilarious audio account of their daily lives on their podcast (the https://bigwhitepodcast.libsyn.com/website (Big & White podcast). Their connection and how they bounce off each other is so much fun to listen to. This is the main reason I became a fan of The Big & White Podcast in the first place and definitely why I asked to interview them for the show. This episode is a part of a podcast pair. How apt. 

Original publication date: February 9, 2021

 🛍️ Shop Life, Lived Here: https://life-lived-here-geopats-abroad-shop.fourthwall.com/

💰Best credit card for Americans living or traveling outside the U.S. Chase Sapphire: https://accounts.chase.com/raf/share/1805579379

📬 Traveling Mailbox gives you a permanent US mailing address you can access from anywhere: https://travelingmailbox.com/geopats/?ref=3422

💰Global bank account with multiple currencies: https://wise.com/invite/dic/debrad107

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

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

🎙️Start your own podcast. Get a bonus when you upgrade with this link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2022201

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On September 30, 2020 I was thrilled to lead a language learning Podcasters panel for International Podcast Day. You can watch the video of this panel on YouTube, https://youtu.be/hR8fr0Hapo0, OR you can listen to this on this episode. Thank you to Dave and Steve, the geniuses behind IPD, for holding yet another amazing year's sessions of Podcasters from around the world. And for allowing us to use the audio versions of our panel on our podcasts. Since you are language lovers, you may want to check out the other IPD sessions on YouTube IN other languages. 

• Steph Fuccio (USA, Germany): https://www.coffeelikemedia.com/
• Chenelle Patrice Hancock (USA): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chenelles-language-learning-journey-podcast/id1379919326
• Kerstin Cable (United Kingdom): https://www.kerstincable.com/
• Azren the Language Nerd (Canada): https://www.youtube.com/c/azrenthelanguagenerd

Original publication date: October 13, 2020

 🛍️ Shop Life, Lived Here: https://life-lived-here-geopats-abroad-shop.fourthwall.com/

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

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

🎙️Start your own podcast. Get a bonus when you upgrade with this link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2022201

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In this episode, Steph Cook of Transcontinental Overload is kind enough to ponder 3 aspects of German that strike me (Geopats Steph) as strange. Her insights and humo(u)r about these differences is a sheer delight. You will never hear the German language in the same way again. 

Original publication date: July 17, 2020

Get The Boots (rebranded Transcontinental Overload): https://pod.link/1501120374

 🛍️ Shop Life, Lived Here: https://life-lived-here-geopats-abroad-shop.fourthwall.com/

💰Best credit card for Americans living or traveling outside the U.S. Chase Sapphire: https://accounts.chase.com/raf/share/1805579379

📬 Traveling Mailbox gives you a permanent US mailing address you can access from anywhere: https://travelingmailbox.com/geopats/?ref=3422

💰Global bank account with multiple currencies: https://wise.com/invite/dic/debrad107

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

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

🎙️Start your own podcast. Get a bonus when you upgrade with this link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2022201

📬 Weekly podcast discoverability tips:  https://podcaststeph.substack.com/

Back in November I participated in National Podcast Posting Month (NaPodPoMo), where crazy Podcasters like myself published an episode a day for a month. For this experiment I invited previous guests from all of the Geopats Podcast Network to come back on the podcast. I asked them to relisten to their original episode and record 2 things: an update on what’s changed for them since that episode and their impressions of that episode (most of which were a couple of years old). 

Most guests sent about 10-20 minutes of thoughts to me for this project but Von sent 50 minutes. Oh, this was all so interesting to hear. But for NaPodPoMo, I was only publishing mini episodes that were about 10 minutes long. So I used the “brain burn” clip of Von’s conversation that was about this length for NaPodPoMo and saved the rest of his language thoughts for later. Welcome to later.    

During this episode he shares:
 -how some people overthink learning Mandarin Chinese tones 
-how language learning as an adult can be easier than learning languages as a child
 -how Mandarin Chinese gets more difficult the more you learn it (exponentially so) 
-how he got his Chinese name through rather nefarious methods 

🤸🏽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.
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🔥Chase Sapphire Credit Card: annual fee, NO currency conversion fee. Used this in many countries globally.
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​As a  writer and playright,  words are what Jeremy Tiang uses to share his ideas about the world and all of its ambiguity. 

In his prose he addresses issues of identity, culture, and the boundaries of what we think these things mean. His upbringing in Singapore was multicultural and yet it was not. So much so that when asked what his first language is he replies, “It is complicated” and it is easy to see why.​ Singapore, very much like Jeremy and very much like most curious, discerning people such as yourself (yes, listeners, I am talking about you), is in a state of constant change. This change includes how it shares itself with the world and Jeremy plays a part in how we see both Singapore and its people, especially, if I understand it right, those who are not often portrayed in the national narrative. 

original publication date: October 9, 2018

Jeremy Tiang's website: https://www.jeremytiang.com/

 🛍️ Shop Life, Lived Here: https://life-lived-here-geopats-abroad-shop.fourthwall.com/

💰Best credit card for Americans living or traveling outside the U.S. Chase Sapphire: https://accounts.chase.com/raf/share/1805579379

📬 Traveling Mailbox gives you a permanent US mailing address you can access from anywhere: https://travelingmailbox.com/geopats/?ref=3422

💰Global bank account with multiple currencies: https://wise.com/invite/dic/debrad107

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

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

🎙️Start your own podcast. Get a bonus when you upgrade with this link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2022201

📬 Weekly podcast discoverability tips:  https://podcaststeph.substack.com/

How do you balance the millions of decisions that need to be made that first year of podcasting? 

In this conversation we discuss these decisions with Mete Yurtsever of the Değer Yaratmanın Formülü podcast. Mete is from and in Turkey now but that hasn't always been the case. He has over 25 years of experience in Marketing and 13 of those years he was working and living in 5 different countries: Romania, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine & Moldova. Now he’s an Independent Consultant helping companies create value through design thinking, facilitating workshops and providing training.  

In this conversation we chat about:

• what types of podcasts are popular in Turkey
• what languages and apps are the most commonly used in Turkey
• why he started his own podcast & what the goals are for it
• what he learned after doing a listener survey for his business podcast
• how to prioritize the many podcasting decisions like sound treatment, transcripts, marketing and social media
• his advice to new Podcasters in Turkey

English episodes of his podcast: https://www.meteyurtsever.com/dyf-podcast/dyf-en-podcast/

The unedited YouTube video of this conversation can be seen here: https://youtu.be/pd1z5gMtfDw

All of the links for that episode and everything else we mention in this conversation will be in your podcast app for this episode and at https://www.stephfuccio.com/geopatspodcasting

Lastly, I’d love to hear from you! Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn & you can even leave a voice message on Speakpipe. 

• April Global Women Podcast Editor Panels: ​www.stephfuccio.com/geopatspodcasting/live-global-women-podcast-editor-panels-april-2021
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