This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 106 Going Home How to Bring Your American Life With You with Kate Brubaker.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast where you'll finally get real native English conversation and fluency for business and life.
We believe in connection, not perfection when it comes to learning English.
Now here are your hosts.
Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Boston and New York City, USA.
It can be tough going home after being abroad.
Today you'll get three tips from Dr Brubaker to help your next transition and learn about some amazing tools to craft a global life, no matter where you end up.
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Hey, Michelle, how's it going today?
Hey, Lindsay.
Good, good.
How are you?
Oh, my gosh.
I'm excited to talk to you today because I know both of us have gone abroad and eventually we came home.
Right, Michelle?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, eventually we came home.
So in today's episode I'm so excited because we're going to be pulling in clips from a guest interview we did with Kate Brubaker, who specializes she's the creator of Small Planet Studio and she specializes in helping people cross cultures, especially readjusting to moving back home after living abroad.
So now Story time, Michelle.
Tell me about your first week after being abroad in London, your first week back home.
How did it go?
It's a very hard adjustment.
I don't like that adjustment.
I'll tell you the truth.
Towards the end of my time in London, I was starting to feel a little homesick.
Now I look back at that and I'm like, I want to slap myself.
Yeah.
Like, and so but then when I got home, it was hard for me.
Just like certain things.
I mean, I'm trying to think of very specific things when I'm having a hard time here.
But even, even I mean I know it sounds funny, but like, even like the money exchange, you know, you kind of get used to just like seeing how much things are and then you go home and it's like a different currency and you kind of Even though I'm so used to the dollar that's what I am my whole life you get used to, you know another form of currency and it gets a little confusing.
So, but just kind of this... you adapted to something else.
And you probably feel I mean, I feel really proud when I adapt to and spend time living abroad.
Because for me it was like something as a little girl.
I never thought that I'd like yeah, be brave enough to do so coming back and and adjusting.
And I think the sorry, now I'm going on and on.
But No problem.
Yeah, tell us.
The other thing that's hard.
Do you ever find that you really want to share with people and you're looking around and you're like these people, like you're like oh, no one wants to hear about it as much as i want to talk about it.
People are interested and they want to see things, but like you feel like you've had this enriching experience and like there's no way to kind of like release it out into the world in the fashion and that would feel good.
Does that make sense to you?
Yeah, for sure.
It's like the energy kind of gets trapped in there.
Right,
You've been around the world.
You've had this internal transition in a way and everything else feels like it stayed the same.
And your first night out with your friends back in your hometown.
You think you're going to be spending the whole time talking too fast because I'm getting too excited.
You think you're going to be spending the whole evening sharing your photos and telling your stories, but that's not what ends up happening.
Right.
Maybe they talk to you.
They ask you about it for the first five minutes and then on to what happened when you were gone.
Like who's dating whom?
And yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
That was my reality.
So you quickly realize that, you know.
Of course, we're the center of our own universe, but not the world.
But I think over time you can find ways to integrate it into, because it is changing who.
You are right.
You've changed who you are.
Absolutely.
You know, it's funny because, um, recently, okay, so side story.
Um, I went back to London um like uh, what was it like six, six years ago, i don't know.
Um and uh, i went with dan it was his first time ever going right and we were just watching the video of it.
Because the sad thing is, because of everything, like we're not really traveling right now.
Um, and i think my son would love to travel, and so sometimes he'll say i want to go to london, i want to go to london, although he calls it london, And so we, like showed him some of the London video the other day and he was so excited and we pretended that we were going on a plane and everything.
But what I was trying to get to was when I was watching that video, I realized how annoying I am being.
Because I'll be like do you ever feel like, if you know a place and you're going around with somebody that you'll like end up talking about your experience?
You'll be like, oh, this is the place that I did this.
Oh, this is the place that I did that.
And I was listening to myself doing that.
I'm like, stop it.
Yeah, it's because then that person can't have their own experience.
Yeah.
Like stop it, Michelle.
It's true.
It's so true.
So I mean, we have our own experiences and then, but I think the key is, we do end up being a different person.
But I would I want to go ahead and play Kate's tip, right.
So in this episode, Kate is going to offer us a series of tips guys, on how to deal with this when we've come back and we are kind of bummed out because we're having a hard time maybe readjusting to our home culture.
So I'm going to go ahead now and let's play Kate's clip, and then we'll kind of summarize it real quick.
Okay, Michelle?
All right.
All right.
Well, the first tip is about how you think about going home.
We often think that it's going abroad that's going to be challenging, and it is.
But going home is even more challenging and in ways that you would never expect.
So the first tip is to not think about reentry in a negative way.
It's usually described as an illness with lots of symptoms.
Yeah.
I don't like thinking about it that way because who wants to be sick?
So reentry becomes something you want to avoid.
Absolutely.
That makes a lot of sense.
Instead of thinking about it in a negative way, being afraid of it or thinking about it as an illness, think about it as an opportunity.
It's the opportunity to take a step back, reflect on what's important to you, what you really enjoyed about being abroad, and then create a global life that works for you.
Okay, so that was the first piece of advice.
And I like what I like about what Kate said, Michelle, is that she's saying don't talk about it.
Don't think about it as being like an illness, right?
Or a negative thing.
We try to be positive about it.
What do you think about that?
I think that's good.
I think I could have used that advice.
Yeah, being positive instead of being sad about the past.
Being happy that you had the experiences that you had and that did did change you and enjoy those changes.
I mean, Lindsay, do you have any, any, like, I feel like I just spoke the whole time.
I got so excited.
Like do you have any specific stories about your times living abroad, that that kind of walk with this?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's true.
I think we well, what I'm glad about is that I no one can ever take that away from me.
Right.
I spent a year and a half living in Tokyo and I still can picture myself getting off the train.
Walking to my apartment, living my life.
I loved my life in Japan.
There were times I felt lonely, but I loved it.
And no one can take that away from me.
So when we talk about implementing Kate's advice, I would spend my time thinking about how much I love raw fish now, how much respect I have for sushi and Japanese food and how much I understand kind of the aesthetic aspect in Japan and how so much respect is paid to kind of presentation there, as opposed to here in the US where we just throw gifts in a box and here you go.
In Japan, it's like this beautiful presentation of plates and And boxes and gifts.
And that brings joy to me even now.
So I think that's kind of what Kate's talking about.
Right, right, right.
Exactly.
So it sounds like you took some positive steps to create your new life.
I mean, I think that...
One of the fun things that you can do is you can kind of feel like now you're like an ambassador to this place.
Yeah.
You know, trying to tell people they should travel there.
Like for me, I mean, well, first of all, a question for you.
I mean, can you experience reverse culture shock unless you've been living like?
How long does it take?
Like what's the difference between just missing vacation and having reverse culture shock?
How long do you have to have spent in a place?
I don't know if it's a time period.
I think it depends on the depth of your immersion.
Yeah, because you could live somewhere for a month and literally live with local people and be more immersed than someone was for two years with American roommates.
Right?
Yeah, 100%.
So I don't think it's about the amount of time you're living in a place.
I think it's about what you're doing every day and where you're living, who you're eating dinner, with what language you're speaking you know in the everyday life, that kind of thing.
But Michelle, did you kind of, well, first of all, I want to play Kate's next clip, right?
The second clip.
And then we're going to talk about seeing things a little differently when we come back with new eyes.
So here we go.
Well, the second one when you go home, you're experiencing a lot of changes and you're seeing the world differently.
You're seeing yourself differently.
You're seeing your community, your home, your family, your friends.
You're seeing everything. with new eyes.
And so that causes us to feel a lot of feelings.
And oftentimes those feelings are mixed or conflicted and that's totally okay.
So my tip here is to allow yourself to feel however you feel and don't ignore your feelings.
Okay.
So when you came back from London Michelle, did you feel more conflicted, I guess, about life in the US?
Did you see life in the US differently?
Um, I, I think that like one of the big differences is like the, the gun culture.
And to me that was you know that like even you know now, when you hear about things in the news and like you're like, you know that other countries don't necessarily have the same problems.
Right, right.
Yeah.
So those things kind of hit me.
Just one example.
What about you?
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, I think...
In a way, it's interesting because traveling is like a blessing and a curse.
It really is a blessing.
It's a blessing to be able to go and see different perspectives and ways of life.
But it does make your life a little more complicated, because when you never leave home, when you're only exposed to, let's say, living in one town, one set of friends, one mindset, things are kind of simpler.
But I still am blessed to be able to travel.
But yeah, I think my feelings about the US became a lot more complicated and a lot more nuanced.
But it has led to better conversations, better connections, especially with people who have also been abroad, right.
Yeah.
Right, right, right, right.
Like I feel like we can connect because we both spent time abroad and like sharing.
You know we both lived in different places.
So it's interesting to connect over that as well.
And just that feeling in general.
Exactly.
And do you think that we can?
Kind of well, first of all, let me go ahead.
Keep on jumping the gun here.
Oh my gosh, there's a gun expression.
Guys we've talked about in other episodes on All Ears English.
You know we do have this culture of gun use and gun possession in the US.
And as a result, we do have guns in our language.
It's so interesting.
And what I just said, jump the gun basically means I'm jumping ahead in what I'm presenting.
Right.
That's really interesting, Michelle.
But anyways, I did want to play Kate's next clip and then we'll reflect on it real quick.
Are you ready?
All right, let's do it.
Sometimes we feel like, if we go home and we feel bad, that we did something wrong, that maybe we didn't do our experience abroad right, or we failed or we're ungrateful for our experience.
Sometimes we don't want to share those things and we think other people only want to hear about the good stuff.
So here, Michelle, Kate is talking about creating a global life.
Did you manage to kind of bring in elements of England or of London maybe into your new life back in the US?
?
Well, there were some expressions that I ended up taking back home and just having fun like sharing the expressions and things like that.
So like what?
For example, you got to be specific.
My favorite, my favorite, my absolute favorite is I can't be bothered.
I think I may.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
That was my favorite because I remember when somebody said it to me like oh, I can't be bothered to do this.
I was like, what?
Like, I thought it was so... rude like and and then i learned that no it's actually just like oh no like i'm like it's it's not meant in that way and when i when i learned that i actually really loved it but then then the thing is you start to use these things and then you're like well it doesn't really work you know that i mean because if i thought it was rude then if i start using it then other people right it doesn't work out of context of british culture is what you mean Right, right, right.
Interesting.
Okay yeah, my best friend growing up is British, like she was born in England and her parents are.
You know, have the thick accents and but her brother was born in the US.
So it's kind of interesting.
And so she's always said that through when we were growing up, I can't be bothered, right?
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
She always said that.
And it's not meant to be rude.
Yeah, no, no, no.
I never really saw it as rude.
But the one that confuses me still and I was just hanging out with her a few weeks ago, she says, when we were trying to decide where to choose to go to lunch, she said I don't mind.
But to me I don't mind kind of means like if something bad has happened that you can tolerate, that it's okay.
But for her, I don't mind is I don't care.
Like I don't care where we eat lunch.
Oh, I don't mind.
Oh, yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
So so I could see how you kind of so you tried to bring back phrases from England.
It didn't always work right in the context of American English.
Was there anything else that you brought back in terms of lifestyle?
Oh, man, I can't remember.
Lindsay, you must have something from one of your experiences.
Yeah, I mean, I think honestly what I brought back from Tokyo was the decision to never live in a small town again.
So I moved straight from Tokyo to New York because I was like, where else am I going to go now?
I've just lived in a massive city and I loved it.
I can't go back to little old Keene, New Hampshire.
I don't want to go to Boston because at that time I didn't.
It felt too small.
So New York was my destination.
You know, so it's like a mentality that I brought back.
Exactly.
Okay.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Do we have any more Kate clips?
Well, I think we want to wrap it up with Kate and I want to give a chance to play a clip so Kate can introduce kind of where her website is and so that you guys can go online and find her to get more advice and information from her about how to really readjust to life.
You know, don't underestimate it.
I think a big part of this is also preparing for this even before we leave for the new country, to know when we come back.
We're going to be different, things might be different, right.
So let's go ahead and play Kate's final clip.
Okay.
Okay.
Many people feel like their life was way more exciting when they were abroad.
Yeah.
Their life back at home.
Right.
You get home and you really discover how much you've changed.
And a lot of people feel like, oh, my God, it's so boring here.
Yeah.
So my tip is to think about what you found so exciting about being abroad.
Maybe it was the daily challenge of speaking a different language.
Maybe it was trying new foods, or maybe it was meeting lots of new people and coming into contact with different perspectives, or visiting, traveling a lot, visiting lots of new places.
Yeah.
So think about what made the experience of being abroad so exciting for you.
And you can call these ingredients and you can use those ingredients to create a recipe for what you want in your global life.
Okay.
So now you guys know exactly where to find Kate.
We want to recommend that you go ahead and go there.
It sounds good.
I want to go visit that site as well.
And guys, tell us your re-entry story, right?
What can they do, Michelle?
Where can they come back to, to tell us their story?
Okay, well, go to this blog post, right?
So and leave a comment on our blog.
Good stuff.
Thanks for sharing your stories.
This has been great to hear from Kate here on how to handle this.
And then our own personal stories on kind of readjusting.
So interesting.
This was fun.
This was fun.
Thank you to Kate and thanks, Lindsay.
Yeah, good stuff.
Guys, hit follow on this podcast if you want more all ears English.
Talk soon, Michelle.
Bye.
Bye.
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