Expatriate Reflections
While I was watching Conan O’Brien travel through India, I noticed something different about my reaction. I wasn’t judging what I saw against American norms or wondering whether it looked comfortable, efficient, or familiar. I am not sure I would have watched it that way before moving to Brazil.
Travel teaches you that other cultures exist. Expatriation teaches you that your own culture is also just a culture.
When we travel, we can appreciate differences while remaining safely anchored in the assumption that our way is normal. We observe, take pictures, eat something adventurous, and eventually go home. Living abroad is different. Slowly, the unfamiliar becomes ordinary, while the things you once considered universal begin to look distinctly cultural. You also discover how many of your assumptions arrived before you did.
Before I moved, people frequently asked whether Brazil was safe. Their concern was genuine, especially from family and friends who cared about me. But it was often based on a distant image of Brazil built from news reports, movies, and warnings—not daily life here.
Salvador is a major city, and I am careful. I pay attention to where I am, what I am carrying, and what is happening around me. But I would do the same in Detroit, Chicago, New York, or any other major American city. Safety matters, but it has not defined my experience in Brazil. What has defined it is the warmth of the people, extraordinary friendships, beautiful places, a sense of community, and a life that has been far more amazing than I could have anticipated.
My assumptions have been tested repeatedly. Less than a year after moving to Brazil, I became seriously ill and spent nearly a week in a hospital in Salvador. I had a fever, was exhausted, barely slept, and at one point found myself having an MRI at about one in the morning. Nothing makes you question your Portuguese progress quite like trying to understand medical instructions while sick, frightened, and dressed in a hospital gown.
It was one of the most vulnerable moments of my life abroad. It also challenged whatever lingering assumptions I may have had about receiving medical care outside the United States. The physicians were thorough and patient. The nurses, technicians, and support staff treated me with extraordinary professionalism and kindness. Friends called, visited, prayed, sat with me, and reminded me that I was not alone. At a moment when I was far from Michigan and the support network I had known most of my life, Brazil took care of me.
Experiences like that change you more than any vacation ever could.
I thought about this again recently while meeting with our building leaders for the second session of our Administrator Academy. Our topic was difficult conversations. As we worked through different situations, it became clear how profoundly cultural context shapes the way a conversation is heard.
The same words can land very differently depending on the relationship, tone, setting, and expectations each person brings into the room. Directness can sound refreshingly clear to one person and unnecessarily cold to another. An effort to preserve a relationship can seem thoughtful to one person and evasive to someone else. Add a language obstacle, and things become even more interesting. The message we send is not always the message someone else receives.
I experience this every day. As I spend more time immersed in Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language, I am beginning to understand more than the literal words. I hear more of the humor, emotion, and meaning underneath them. That growth is rewarding, but it requires an enormous amount of mental energy that other people cannot always see.
My mind is constantly listening, translating, interpreting, and preparing a response. Even when I understand every word, I may still be trying to understand what the speaker actually means. There are days when I can lead an international school and then be completely defeated by an unexpected question from a cashier.
People occasionally ask whether I am tired. The honest answer is yes. I am exhausted much of the time, but in the best possible way.
Total immersion is exhausting. It asks you to pay attention all the time. You cannot operate entirely on instinct because your instincts were formed somewhere else. You are constantly learning when to speak, when to listen, when to be direct, when to slow down, and when everyone is laughing because you accidentally said something very different from what you intended.
But this exhaustion is not the same as being depleted. In many ways, the experience has been restorative. Immersion has forced me to become comfortable with not knowing, to laugh at myself, and to rediscover a sense of curiosity. It is exhausting and rebuilding me at the same time. I may end many days emotionally spent, but I also feel more awake, engaged, and alive than I have in years.
I am especially thankful for someone very close to me who has patiently helped me understand far more than Portuguese. She has helped me understand the humor, traditions, relationships, and meaning behind the words. She has celebrated my progress, rescued me when necessary, and laughed with me through the mistakes—although I suspect she has occasionally laughed at me too, usually with good reason. Much of what I have come to understand and love about Brazil has been possible because she has shared it so generously with me.
Living abroad has not caused me to reject American culture or romanticize Brazil. Both places have strengths, frustrations, contradictions, and risks. The difference is that I am less likely now to treat one culture as the standard by which another should be measured.
Instead of asking, “Why don’t they do it the way we do?” I am more likely to ask, “What am I not yet understanding?” Increasingly, I find myself asking that same question about the country and culture I came from.
Perhaps that is expatriation’s greatest gift. You do not simply learn about another part of the world. You gain enough distance to see your own part of it more clearly—and enough humility to realize how much you still have to learn.
So yes, I am tired. But it is the fatigue that comes from paying attention, being stretched, and building a life large enough to hold more than one way of seeing the world.
I am exhausted in the best possible way.
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