On Being an Expatriate - Part 2: Some Cons

In my previous post about being an expatriate (expat), I discussed what an expat is and why some people choose such a life. I also got into some aspects of my own situation. The reasons why people become expats are interesting, of course, but another interesting aspect is to consider the pros and cons of living an expat life.

There are things that you expect to be good about it (or at least hope will be good), and these are the reasons you do it. And there are things you might understand from the outset will be difficult. But there are also things you discover along the way, things you never considered, that turn out to be either good or bad. Often, the judgment of whether it is a good or bad thing depends on the individual; what I consider a cool surprise, someone else might see as hardship.

So, some of my next posts will discuss the pros and cons of expat life as I have experienced it. I will try not to make it the “good and bad of Ukraine” – that will be a different post. What I want to look at here is what I have found to be good or bad about living like an expat, but I suspect there will be some necessary correlation with the pros and cons of Ukraine itself.

This first post will discuss some of the cons; next time I will focus on some of the pros. But neither post will be all-encompassing. I’ll return to the topic from time to time with more additions to the list on both sides.

So… here are a few of the cons:

Language difficulties:  This is anticipated, of course. Unless you spend months or years taking language courses before you go, you have to expect to have problems communicating when you drop yourself into a country with a completely different language. It’s been no different for me, except that, to be honest, I’ve not made enough effort myself to become fluent.

From the beginning, I had a grasp of the basics of Russian, and in those days before I made the permanent move, I did work on it. And I was not totally lost in the beginning, but it was hard. Understanding what others said was the hardest thing, especially when many people speak a dialect called Surzhik, which is sort of a combination of Russian and Ukrainian. For those who are unaware, Kharkiv is mostly a Russian-speaking city, as are most cities in eastern Ukraine.

After almost six years, my Russian is still embarrassingly poor. And my Ukrainian is nonexistent. But I am able to manage most things I need to deal with on a daily basis. I have no problem shopping, ordering taxis and dealing with other daily matters.

And I can communicate pretty well with the guys at the physical therapy clinic I go to twice a week. I’ve been learning more Russian, and they’ve been learning some English. Still, my ability to communicate on a more complex level is very poor, and this makes often life more difficult.

One of the reasons that I’ve learned slowly is that I am immersed in English almost constantly. My work is in English. My friends all speak English well, and they WANT to speak English with me; I represent a rare opportunity to practice with a native speaker. Plus, my friends are all intelligent, interesting people who like to have intelligent, interesting conversations. I excel at that in English, all modesty aside, but my Russian is on too low a level for anything but the simplest kinds of discussions.

So, I speak English a lot, and I practice Russian quite rarely. It seems ironic that my Russian should be so poor after living for so long in a Russian-speaking city, but there it is. I am actually quite ashamed of this.

But language difficulties are an issue for anyone who chooses to live in a different country with a different language. Some people learn faster than others. Maybe I’m just too old to fully acquire another language.

Having to Depend on Others:  Not completely, of course, but too much for my liking. It’s closely related to the language issue, but also involves having to navigate the nuances of another culture. In many cases, you just can’t do it successfully by yourself (at least not without it costing you a lot more money).

Perhaps the biggest example for me is with medical treatment. There are several layers of clinics and hospitals in Ukraine. Most people have to deal with the “free” state medical system which is not really free. The care is usually substandard, and there can be long waits. And if you can’t pay at all, you are in trouble. People usually have to supply their own supplies and pay doctors something directly to get reasonable care.

Pay attention, America – this is how socialized medicine works in reality!

But there are private clinics that operate much more like clinics in the USSA (though still not exactly). The prices are higher, but the quality and attention are far better. When I have needed to see a doctor, I have gone to such a clinic. The problem for me, however, has been that the vocabulary associated with visiting a doctor and getting explanations of the diagnosis and prescribed treatment is far more complex than I can handle, even today.

So I have always had to find someone to go to the doctor with me – someone who has time to spend helping me and whom I feel comfortable sharing my medical problems and other more personal stuff with. Someone I don’t feel squeamish taking off my shirt (or more) in front of. This has not always been easy.

There have been times when I’ve been able to find someone to help; during my first few years, I had a several people who worked with me in the company I was trying to establish, and one or another was usually available when I needed such help. Then for a few years, I had a very close person who was always ready to help. But that ended last year. Last summer, one of my private students was between jobs and had some time on her hands, and she was glad to help me with some visits for basic checkups and especially for the process of getting an MRI on my back. She was a Godsend!

But since then, there really has been no one who I have felt I could impose upon for the time required for this. Everyone has their work to do, along with their other life responsibilities and needs. So I prefer not to impose.

It’s my problem, and I ought to be able to deal with it on my own. After all, in the USSA, I would just jump in my truck, drive to the clinic and get my checkup, treatment, or whatever I needed – and I would not need anyone else. But here it just is not that simple. And because there has been no one to help, I’ve put off doctor visits. That, really, is not a good thing.

Another example is dealing with government agencies. On several occasions, I have had to deal with Ukrainian immigration authorities and the bureaucracy involved in getting permission to stay here. Again, I had to have a friend help me with it, not only due to language, but also because there are subtleties of dealing with these people – often involving a bit of bribery – that just don’t exist in American culture. 

But the problem with all of this runs deeper than just simple inconvenience. It’s an issue of feeling independent, of being able to take care of myself, of being a man. Although I have always been VERY grateful for the help, no matter who took the time for me, I still found it disconcerting to sit there, listening to someone else discuss my situation with a doctor and say, “Just hang on, I’ll tell you everything later.”  I want to interact directly with the doctor, to ask my own questions.

I don’t like feeling as though I am at anyone else’s mercy or control, in anything. My independence is critically important for me, and it has been for a long time. This is why I can’t work for some big corporation with stupid rules and office politics that reduce employees to obedient automatons. I cherish living life my own way and doing my own thing.

But I’ve learned here that I sometimes have to put that pride aside and let someone take the reins for my benefit. I appreciate those friends who have been willing to do this for me, but still, it’s hard. So… this issue of feeling a loss of independence has been a nagging problem for me here.

Dealing with a Lower Quality of Life:  I live in a small, two-room apartment in a fairly good area of Kharkiv. I’ve seen places that were better and many that were much worse. Overall, I consider my place to be pretty good for the conditions here. It’s a lot better than my first apartment here.

But at the moment, my toilet is not working: the tank will not refill. As a result, I have to flush by pouring water into the bowl from six-liter bottles. My landlady is on vacation, so it won’t get fixed until next week at least. It’s a bad situation, but it certainly could be a lot worse.

For most of the summer, I had no hot water. Hot water is supplied in a communal fashion by city heating plants, and they always suspend service for a month or so for maintenance and repairs. But this year, there were some other problems, so I had no hot water for more than 12 weeks. The owner of my place finally installed a water heater about three weeks ago, so that problem was solved.

Well, not quite. The water heater eats a lot of electric current. If I forget to unplug it before I turn on my water pot to make coffee or tea, the circuit breaker trips. Sometimes the circuit breaker trips just for fun. So I have to go out into the hallway to reset the breaker.

There are a number of other things about my standard of living here that would make most Americans question my sanity for staying here. I described a lot of them in a humorous old post entitled Substandards of Living. Ukraine is a country that is still struggling to improve its antiquated Soviet infrastructure, and it has a long way to go. Roads are often terrible, buses are a far cry from what one might expect in the USSA or Western Europe, electricity can be cut off, and because many houses receive their winter heat from communal heating plants, they can remain cold into November.

The list could go on, but that’s not the point. There are many places in the world where things are similar or even MUCH worse than in Ukraine. I’ve never lived in Africa, but I know people who have, and I admire their ability to live for long periods of time in much more primitive and difficult conditions.

And I’ve experienced a number of interesting conditions. One temporary house I had in northern Japan had just a single kerosene stove to heat the whole house, and one corner of the house was collapsing. My apartment in Lima, Peru, had no window screens and no heat. Insects were not really a problem in Lima (next to the ocean), so screens were not considered necessary… but there were pigeons. And Lima never gets really cold, so heat was not considered necessary. But there were times in winter (June to August) when the combination of temperature and humidity made it feel very chilly.

The point is that an expat from North America, Western Europe or a similar country has to expect and be able to tolerate conditions that would be considered intolerable in the native country. If you can’t laugh off the fact that the doors on your wardrobe are about to fall off, your stove has to be lit with matches, or you can hear your neighbors’ intimate conversations and arguments, then you probably should not be an expat.

Sometimes Feeling Very Alone:  This is a big one. Even if you are very outgoing, learn the language pretty well, and are able to adapt to the local life, you can still have moments that remind you that you ARE a stranger in a strange land. No matter how well you assimilate and fit in, and no matter how good a social network you develop, there will still be times when you feel isolated and very alone.

Of course a person can feel alone in his or her own country and culture. But I think that’s more about the person. When you are far away from family and friends (even if you make new ones in the foreign country), there is a different kind of aloneness that can hit you. Your friends have their own lives and families, and though you might be introduced or even included in a celebration or two, you are still not a part of that group – you can’t be. And very often, when everyone else has their plans, you have nowhere to turn but your own apartment, books or the Internet.

Holidays are a good example. Your national holidays generally mean nothing in the country in which you’re living. Meanwhile, their national holidays are usually celebrated by families or among friends whose common language and culture make the celebrations special. It’s not that you are rejected for being a foreigner, but you just are not part of a family unit, and many holidays are family-oriented.

I wrote about this kind of situation at the beginning of this year in my post, The Same Old New Year. In Ukraine, New Year is a good example of a holiday that has special family significance and which is very difficult for a foreigner to enjoy with friends.

This can be a really debilitating problem for someone who isn’t psychologically able to deal with occasionally feeling alone and isolated. But even for those who can normally take it in stride at home, the kind of isolation you can sometimes feel in a foreign land is unique and can get to you.

Not Being Able to Watch Favorite Sports:  I am not a sports nut who would sit for hours on a sofa watching any game on television, and I can’t say that this is something I miss terribly. But there are times when I would like to be able to watch a special game in real time and not just hope to catch a few fleeting highlights on the Internet a day later.

This came to a head for me last spring when the Colorado Avalanche was shocking the NHL en route to its first division championship in years. I really wanted to see some of the games, especially in the playoffs. But it wasn’t possible to do that from here.

I thought it would have been great to have been able to watch this year’s Super Bowl because the Denver Broncos were in the game. Considering the result, I guess it was a blessing that I was not able to see it. More recently, my alma mater, Colorado State University Rams, thoroughly defeated the despised University of Colorado Buffaloes in the annual Rocky Mountain Showdown game. That is a game I definitely would have liked to have seen!

But overall, missing out on these games is a small thing.


So... that's just a few of the cons of the expat lifestyle, or at least MY expat lifestyle. I'll come back soon with some of the pros. And in the future, I hope to toss in a few more of each as they occur to me.

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