 ExpatWomen's Interview with Robin
ExpatWomen: Robin, can you please tell our Expat Women a little bit about your background and your expat experience?
Robin: My husband was a diplomat in the Canadian Foreign Service for 15 years and we enjoyed four postings to Bangkok, Taipei, Beijing and Seoul, with repatriations to Canada in between. He left the service when our daughter began high school and we moved to Vancouver, the ‘permanent’ repatriation which formed the basis for my book Homeward Bound: A Spouse’s Guide to Repatriation. Since we moved ‘home’ I started ExpatExpert.com in 1998 and began traveling to expat communities around the world to speak and reporting on trends in global living, which has kept me current with new challenges and also has allowed me to meet expat families all over the world and learn what’s on their minds.
ExpatWomen: Robin, your name is legendary in expat circles, for writing the how-to books for expats, such as: “Culture Shock: A Wife’s Guide”; “Culture Shock: A Parent’s Guide”; “A Moveable Marriage”; and “Homeward Bound”. What made you started you and what keeps you writing books for expatriates?
Robin: I don’t feel like a legend… J I started writing my first book when our son was two and we were posted to Taipei without any support whatsoever. I realized that most information and books (this was pre-Internet!) didn’t really address the emotional side of moving abroad, especially challenges for the spouse like career and the parenting challenges of raising children while on posting. As a journalist (I’ve been one for 32 years!) I was not allowed to practice my trade on postings, so decided to turn to writing books. What keeps me writing? The challenges keep changing (even if so many stay the same!) so I wanted my work to stay current. Also, the Internet was so conveniently invented for me….so I could begin reaching a wider market through the net and amazon.com and, I could also start self-publishing my books. So starting Expatriate Press and becoming a publisher was a new challenge I initially embraced reluctantly, but have found it fascinating and keeps me on a learning curve.
ExpatWomen: Can you explain to us what Global Nomads are and why you chose this as the title of your book?
Robin: A global nomad is a term used interchangeably with ‘third culture kid’ and is basically children who spend their formative years abroad because of the professional choice of a parent. They have unique challenges (mobility and growing up in different cultures the top two) so I decided that it was time to write a new book about parenting as my previous Culture shock book on parenting was hopelessly out of date. I specifically chose the subtitle: Parenting Abroad in an On-Demand World to reflect the changes impacting on expat life, like globalization, digitalization and sadly, terrorism.
ExpatWomen: What made you write about this topic?
Robin: I found myself completing my ‘day job’ as a parent (my eldest is now working in her field of environmental activism and international development and my youngest heads to university in the fall) so it was a good time to look back and reflect on what I had learned as a parent in the first instance, but also to put to paper all the research I had done over the years for articles I have written about the expat experience in the 21st century.
ExpatWomen: Can you please give us a sneak peak of what is in Raising Global Nomads?
Robin: The excerpt should give you an idea, but basically I not only address culture shock in a digital world and the changing parenting styles which filter through to expat parents (over-parenting in particular) but also encourage parents to see their global nomads as global citizens and discuss ways to make that happen (as it doesn’t happen by accident!)
ExpatWomen: Your book talks about Digital Culture Shock. What is this please?
Robin: Digital culture shock, basically, is the impact of working your way through the stages of culture shock with the assistance (and often the hindrance) of technology which allows expats to keep in touch with home, but often, delays certain stages (such as the crisis stage) because expats (young and old) can easily sit at their computers all day and not get out and explore their new environments.
ExpatWomen: Your book also talks about Expat Work-Life Balance. Do you think 'balance' is possible for expats, who are often in high-stress positions?
Robin: Balance is bunk, or so said a wonderful article years ago in Fast Company magazine. I believe that’s true. But I do think that the realities of the 24/7 work world, working through multiple time zones, and different forms of assignment such as the short term one, have wreaked havoc with family dynamics. So instead of trying for balance, I encourage men in particular (who make up the largest group of expat employees) to figure out ways of achieving ‘harmony’ at home. Their absence due to work (on line or away from home on a business trip) is having a serious affect on the children and the life of the expat spouse who at times, feels helpless in stopping their husbands from working so much.
ExpatWomen: What would be your top 5 list of issues that are most important to parents raising Global Nomads?*
Robin: The top priority, in my opinion, is preparing children with the self-knowledge that they are, in fact, unique as global nomads. As one of my contributors put it, the more parents realize there is a ‘road map’ and learn to understand that they can give their children the words (“third culture kid among them) to understand their unique challenges and not have them come back to them later in life when they don’t understand how different they are! Parents have to be diligent in giving their children that self-knowledge so they can be launched into adulthood in a healthy way.
After that, the priorities can’t really be placed in any specific order but among them I would list: doing their homework about schools is critical since schools are the centerpiece of a child’s life; keeping them healthy and safe; not over-protecting them so that they don’t know how to make decisions on their own; and of course, preparing them for the day they repatriate to their home cultures whether for university or to work.
ExpatWomen: Thank you very much Robin and we wish you all the very best for your new book, Raising Global Nomads!
Robin: Thank you, and good luck with your new website. I believe the more information that is put out there, the better expats will be prepared for the wonderful life ahead.
Excerpt from the Book
Moving through Culture Shock
“Mom, does flying on an airplane make a dog go bald?”
Jay, seven years old at the time, was taking a momentary breather from sobbing at the sight of our almost hairless family pet Sandy, a handsome young Shetland sheepdog, to pose this intriguing question.
Sandy looked even worse than I did after our eleven-hour flight over the Pacific to our new home in Seoul. That’s saying a lot, considering the state of my own wild, curly hair, but at least mine was still attached to my head. Sandy was lying on his gold and white coat. Cowering inside his travel cage, he was skinny, thirsty-looking and obviously shell-shocked.
Lilly’s eyes had been welled up with distress for most of the endless journey. She was fretting that her beloved dog had been relegated to the cold cargo hold of the 747. Seeing Sandy’s empty water dish, still attached to the cage but upside down and dry as a bone, completely undid her after we deplaned. We had lovingly placed ice cubes in his bowl before our departure from Vancouver airport, following the sensible advice given to us by people who specialize in transporting expat pets abroad. The ice, we were told, would melt en route and keep Sandy supplied with cool refreshment. No one had bothered to mention that if the dish were to tip over (which it obviously had done), all the liquid would be gone. Our pooch had also boarded drug free, to avoid having him wake up somewhere over the ocean and wonder if he were in doggie hell. By the look of him, his canine radar was telling him now that he had not landed in heaven.
Even pets experience culture shock
Rodney and I were mostly grateful to have finally found Sandy after a byzantine late- night arrival that was enough to make anyone’s stress levels go off the chart. Sandy, it had certainly seemed at first, was destined to become a piece of lost luggage.
We had circled endlessly around the airport searching for our dog. Our official Canadian embassy greeter told us Sandy would be brought to us outside the luggage hall. We exited only to discover we actually needed to be back inside. But once we were there, Sandy was nowhere to be found. Rodney fumed, the children cried, and I tried to figure out a way to sneak a cigarette, even though I had just quit smoking again. I was embarrassed that Rodney made no effort to disguise his irritation, which he expressed at the top of his lungs, to everyone from the Air Canada staff to the Korean airport officials. So much for diplomatic aplomb. Up and down the airport we charged, our luggage carts overflowing, looking like a crazy family in a bad Steve Martin movie. Like complete idiots, we started calling Sandy’s name, as if the dog would hear us and, Houdini-like, manage to escape from his traveling cage. Fortunately, the airport had emptied out, so there was no audience for our lunacy. But we still didn’t have our dog.
And then, by some miracle, Sandy was found. That was the good news. The bad news, as noted by our son, was that our dog’s hair had fallen out. And the news got worse: South Korean rules dictated that Sandy go into quarantine for ten days. My children would not rest until they had personally inspected the place where their dog would be housed during that time. So off we went to the quarantine facility, which happened to be in a direction that took us toward the infamous Demilitarized Zone (the highly dangerous and heavily guarded DMZ, at a time when saber rattling between North and South Korea had been making ominous headlines.) We watched our lovely pet stare back at us from between the bars of a military truck driving directly in front of us. It could not have been more surreal. If Sandy could have spoken, I’m sure he would have demanded to know why the hell he wasn’t in our van with the rest of us.
Kids remember the glitches
As parents, we always want things to go smoothly. What sticks out in a child’s mind—whether related to travel, a new home or school, or the huge fight that Mommy and Daddy had—is everything that’s gone wrong. Years later, our entire family well remembers this story about Sandy, especially as it ended with the four of us sharing a giant bed in the presidential suite of the Seoul Grand Hyatt Hotel because we had arrived too late from the quarantine facility to claim the rooms we had reserved.
Despite all the tears at the time, the retelling of our crazy first night in Seoul always produces tons of laughter. And that’s something positive to keep in mind: there is an upside to life seemingly turning upside down. Your children will remember these stories forever.
Excerpt used with permission from Robin Pascoe.
You can visit Robin's web site at: |
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