Remember last week when I was a guest blogger over at City Girl Lifestyle? Well, the City Girl is repaying the favor and I’m honored to have her guest post for you today at My Bella Vita.
 
I first “met” the City Girl via our mutual appreciation of each other’s blogs, then-like most friendship’s do-our relationship gradually grew into more. She has been an invaluable source of inspiration for me through the difficult opening months of 2009 and like she says in her post today … I, like many people forget that she, too, is an expat.
 
 So, without further ado … I present to you, my friend The City Girl!
  
—
 
Life as an Expat in the U.S.
 
It is such an honor to guest blog here on My Bella Vita today.  Cherrye and I have often chatted over email about being an expat in the last year, so, when we were discussing potential guest blogging topics, writing about the expat experience just made sense. 
 
I know – when you look at my blog, you see a lot about life in Washington, DC (and my time living in New York), indie shopping and food – but as I mentioned here, along with 99 other things about me, I came to the U.S. from Switzerland to attend college.  Through my parents, I have dual Hungarian and Swiss citizenship.  And being an expat is very much part of who I am. 
 
As I come up on my 15th anniversary of life as an expat, I have been thinking a lot more about what it means to be a long-term expat.   Here are three things I wish I had known sooner about being a long-term expat:
 
-People may not recognize you as an expat – That one hit me hard at the time.  My first five years in the U.S., I still had enough of an accent when speaking English that people would realize pretty fast I was likely an expat, though over time my accent faded so much that most people couldn’t quite place where I was from.  Sometime around year six or seven, though, the accent all but disappeared.   Now, mind you – this is not necessarily a bad thing, because running an errand to the drugstore without having to explain where you are from is, well, nice.  Yet, that’s when it hit me how much a foreign accent can be a proxy for people realizing you are an expat.  Around the same time as my accent disappeared, I met a large number of newly arrived expats who did not recognize me as an expat. That was a complete identity crisis for me.
 
-Expat identity is personal – This goes hand-in-hand with the above. After a couple of weeks of being horrified that people did not realize I was an expat, I realized that my identity as an expat remained unchanged and got used to people assuming I was not an expat. This lesson of self-acceptance and not defining myself by others’ perceptions was very helpful in all aspects of my life.  Oddly, several years later when I was working in New York at a large multinational bank, people started recognizing me as an expat again, likely because many were current or former expats themselves. 
 
-Being an expat is part of who you are, no matter how long it’s been – Yes, the culture shock wears off, but there will always be some things that surprise you.  For me, it’s the sheer size of things here and the number of choices.  Oh, and the fact that Ziploc bags actually zip and stay closed.  I know you are probably laughing at the last one but sometimes it’s the little things that remind you that you are an expat.
 
A friend told me recently I lead a “not-so-coincidental European lifestyle” – to me it’s just life in a big city, with lots of walking and a tiny apartment, but she has a good point.  You can read more at City Girl Lifestyle or grab the RSS feed here.
 
—
 
And if I were you, I’d take her up on that suggestion to grab her feed or read up on her blog! You won’t be disappointed!
 

Related posts:

1. Interview with Expat in Italy Business Owner Danielle Russo, of When in Rome Tours Over the last year I’ve interviewed other expat...
2. Interview with Expat-in-Italy Business Owner, Judy Witts of Divina Cucina One of my favorite things about meeting other...
3. Travel Tip Tuesday: Italy Expat Travel Writing You might have heard about a little blogging...
4. Bella Vita Italia: An Expat-Owned Travel Concierge in Romantic Liguria Anyone who has read more than three posts...
5. Expat in Italy Highlight: Judith Greenwood Calabria in 2006 was a lonely place to...