The Expat Hunger Games

One of the strangest things about moving abroad is that nobody warns you that at some point you will become a forty-year-old woman desperately trying to get another grown woman to like you enough to exchange phone numbers.

It is basically secondary school.

But with better handbags and more expensive coffee.

Building a new village from scratch is a strange process. It is a bit like a spider building a web on a bedroom window, fully aware that somebody is going to come along with a cloth and destroy it at some point.

And yet the spider does it anyway.

Again.

And again.

That is the life of an expat.

You land in a new country and immediately your second full-time job begins:

Socialising.

You meet people at school drop-offs, extracurricular activities, Pilates classes, dog walks and coffee shops.

You smile.

You laugh at jokes that are not actually funny.

You pretend to be fascinated by somebody's detailed explanation of their kitchen renovation.

And if the interaction goes particularly well, you casually suggest exchanging numbers while trying not to look like a lonely person searching for a friend on the internet.

The desperation is especially real in your forties.

At twenty, you can walk into a bar and leave with ten new friends.

At forty, making a new friend feels more like applying for a mortgage.

There are forms.

There are interviews.

There is a long waiting period to see if you have been approved.

I once spoke to a mother whose family had lived in Portugal for five years.

She said to me:

“Ah yes, you are still in the early stages. Right now you have to laugh at silly jokes and pretend you are interested in everyone's life. Don't worry. After a few years you know where everything is, how everything works and you have your people.”

I laughed because she was absolutely right.

As a newcomer, I was still in survival mode.

The overly enthusiastic version of myself was working overtime.

Which brings me to the three phases of making friends as an expat.

Phase One: The Polite Headless Chicken

This is when you run around meeting absolutely everyone.

School mums.

Neighbours.

The woman you accidentally made eye contact with at the supermarket.

Everyone is a potential friend.

Phase Two: The Spider and the Fly

You have finally found a few people who responded positively.

Now you carefully spin your web around them.

Playdates.

Coffee.

Walks.

Messages.

Recommendations for plumbers, dentists and where to buy decent bread.

You are trying to determine whether this person could become part of your new village.

Or whether they will mysteriously disappear after one coffee and never reply to your message again.

Phase Three: The Final Selection

Congratulations.

You have collected enough humans to stop behaving like a desperate social salesperson.

Now comes the real test.

Who makes you laugh?

Who calls when things go wrong?

Who will look after your dog when you travel?

Who will tell you that your new haircut is a mistake before your husband sees it?

These are the people you keep.

The people who become your family away from family.

The truth is, most people will never experience this.

If they stay in the town where they grew up, their village arrives naturally over decades.

But for expats and professional starter-overs like me, we have to build our webs over and over again.

Sometimes they break.

Sometimes people move away.

Sometimes they are wiped away by life.

But we keep building them.

Because eventually, if we are lucky, one of those little webs becomes a home.

Until next time,

Kasia Plattner