ExpatWomen: Can you quickly summarize how you both first met and why you decided to collaborate on writing "The Expert Expat"?
Melissa and Patricia: Our story is an unusual one -- although I'm sure it is becoming more common now than it was in 1999. We "met" at that time in cyberspace, while Melissa was living in Ukraine and Patricia in Germany. We were both active participants in an online support group for the U.S. Foreign Service community, and we were impressed by each other's writing styles and supportive, sensible advice to Foreign Service newcomers. We made contact by e-mail, and Melissa proposed collaborating on a guidebook for first-time expatriates. We did not actually meet in person until the book was already complete, and we both traveled to the offices of Intercultural Press to meet our editor and the rest of the staff.
ExpatWomen: Your book is really helpful for people about to move or who have just arrived in a new location-each chapter full of great tips. How long did it take you to research and write this book?
Melissa and Patricia: You might say that it took over 30 years, because that is the combined amount of time the two of us have lived abroad! The actual writing of the book took approximately a year. After deciding on an outline for the book, we divided up the chapters. Each month, we'd draft one of our chapters and then send it to the other writer for edits and additions. Patricia's online writing group, the SUNwriters, also provided invaluable help with editing. In addition, we networked with English-speaking expats all over the world to gather personal anecdotes illustrating the points we were trying to make, from the accompanying husband who constantly had to defend his chosen lifestyle, to the woman in a small Brazilian city who finally found English-speaking friends at a church -- even though it was a different religion from hers. These anecdotes provided some of the book's most interesting and popular content, and we gathered plenty of new ones for the new edition.
ExpatWomen: Congratulations on the recently edited version released in October, 2007. What made you think that now was the time to update the book? What chapters did you update for the second edition and why?
Melissa and Patricia: We had always known that updates would be necessary, since expat life is constantly changing and evolving. Since our first edition came out in 2002, the areasof security and technology have changed especially rapidly. For the new edition, we added a new chapter focusing on security, health and safety for expats, topics which we had covered more briefly within other chapters in the previous book.
We also rewrote the chapter on children, since we learned quite a bit more about effective ways to support "third-culture kids" in the years between our editions, thanks to Patricia's teenagers, the experiences of our friends and contacts, and some outstanding recent books, such as Ngaire Jehle-Caitcheon's "Parenting Abroad" (unfortunately now out of print) and Robin Pascoe's "Raising Global Nomads: Parenting Abroad in an On-Demand World."
To prepare the new edition, we also went over every paragraph of the book, deciding where we could make updates or improvements. This could have been a terribly boring chore, except that we had an unexpected source of help: an expat in Mexico, Meg Sondey, volunteered on her own initiative to go through every single chapter, making comments and suggestions for updating and expanding the content. She told us that our book had been extremely helpful during her move to Mexico, and now that she had a few years of experience, she had some ideas about making the book even more useful for new expats. Needless to say, we took her up on the offer and were very grateful for her help.
ExpatWomen: Patricia, you are working with Tales from a Small Planet (http://www.talesmag.com)
and Melissa, with Foreign Service Lifelines (http://www.aafsw.or). How do you think this helps you understand what Expat Women need in terms of successfully relocating abroad?
Melissa and Patricia: Patricia's work with the non-profit website Tales from a Small Planet has kept her in constant contact with English-speaking expats all over the world. Even the staff is scattered around the globe: the people Patricia works most closely with are currently in El Salvador, Canada and Slovakia. Talesmag also regularly publishes essays by expat women about their struggles and triumphs during the adjustment process, especially in its "Covered Wagons" section. Some all-time reader favorites have been "Dislocation, Dislocation, Dislocation" by Peg Clement, about a single mom's adjustment in Zimbabwe, and "The Great Game: Flying with Kids or Taking Control of Central Asia (Whichever is Easiest)" by Grace Delobel.
Melissa was the founder of Foreign Service Lifelines and continues to be very active in supporting the Foreign Service community. Recently, Melissa, Patricia and Marlene Monfiletto Nice edited a new volume of the book series called "Realities of Foreign Service Life," aimed at helping newcomers to the U.S. Foreign Service, with royalties going to AAFSW, the support group for Foreign Service families.
Melissa's current employment is with the State Department's training division, where she designs programs focused on security issues abroad and travels all over the world to help implement them. Of course, her experience there was extremely helpful as we updated the book with regard to worldwide security issues.
ExpatWomen: From both your research and personal experiences, what would you say are the key challenges for women moving abroad for the first time?
Melissa and Patricia: In our view, the obvious challenges of moving your belongings, finding housing, etc. fall well behind the emotional upheavals involved in moving to another country and culture. You may get on an airplane as a competent person with a strong sense of identity, but step off as an awkward foreigner who is clearly out of place in the new environment, has little or no support network, offends people without knowing why, and struggles with the language like a toddler. If you happen to be a woman accompanying your partner for his job, you may also face a crisis for that reason, feeling that you lack a sense of meaning and identity in your new life. We've been through all this ourselves, and we've put together every good idea we've ever heard to try to help get you through it.
Fortunately, we have found that there are great rewards to be gained on the other side -- learning a new language and becoming expert in a new culture can be the equivalent of earning a master's degree; you'll find that your ways of thinking and your personal resources have been stretched and expanded; and there are highly rewarding ways to "find meaning in your life" abroad, from volunteering where it is most needed to building a portable career.
ExpatWomen: What has been your most rewarding experience since writing The Expert Expat?
Melissa and Patricia: When people meet us or write to us and say that our book helped their international move go more smoothly and helped them get more out of living abroad, it makes all of the work worthwhile.
ExpatWomen: What are your plans for the future?
Melissa and Patricia: Patricia is currently in the Washington DC area but will be moving abroad again with her husband and two sons in summer 2008. She plans to keep working with Talesmag and to continue her other freelance work via Internet, which includes writing, editing and translating. Melissa is continuing her work with training and security issues abroad and is working on an idea for her next book project.
ExpatWomen: Melissa and Patricia, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with other expatriate women. We wish you all the best!
Melissa and Patricia: Thank you, and keep up the great work with your website!
