Foreign Cultures and Customs

As foreigners in alien lands we often come across cultural customs, habits and behaviors that baffle us, charm us, annoy us, or creep us out altogether. Generally we like to adjust and participate, be good sports, and feel enriched for the experience. Expat children have to make cultural adjustments too, of course.

Expat life can be boring at times. You live in an exotic country in Africa or maybe Asia where they’ve got scrumptious food, interesting customs and fabulous festivals, and what do you do? You wake up in the morning and you eat your cornflakes, you go shopping for light bulbs, you go to the gym. Really, how exotic is that?

Is your globetrotting life full of little incidents, insights, views, colors, smells and other bits and pieces that don’t stand alone as a big adventure or an amusing story, but…

You’re an expat living in a far-away country and you’re supposed to have a sense of humor about the trials and tribulations that are involved in living abroad. Sometimes that…

Many people enjoy living the expat life in the Middle East, but Ramallah, Palestine, is not generally known to be an expat haven. However, an American foreign aid project brought…