je manque...

Being an expat can be wonderful. Over the past two years, I've fallen in love with so many aspects of the lifestyle--the excitement, constantly being challenged and stimulated, the interesting places and people, and so much more. I often feel hypersensitive to the world around me--more aware than I might need to be in a familiar, comfortable environment. Every part of me is straining to understand what's around me, grasping for clues that can help me move through situations where I don't fully understand the language, social cues, traditions, religious beliefs, and gender roles that color the human interactions going on around me.

Accomplishing day-to-day tasks within a foreign environment, even things as small as going to the bank or post office, leave me with a sense of  achievement. And bigger things I've done--like finding and renting an apartment, taking the initiative to meet people and begin friendships, or developing curriculum for preschool yoga classes in a cross-cultural, ESL setting--really make me see how being here has pushed me in a lot of good ways.

However, in the same way that the highs are higher, the lows are also lower. While small things can make me feel accomplished, other small things can totally exhaust/frustrate/infuriate me. Things just take a lot more energy.

All this--both the good and the bad--inevitably wears a person out from time to time! It's when I'm feeling a lot of this extreme up and and down that I feel the most "homesick." Wikipedia says:

Homesickness is the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from the specific home environment or attachment objects. The term is in origin a loan translation of nostalgia, a learned term coined in Baroque Period medicine. The Oxford English Dictionary describes homesickness as a feeling one has when missing home. Feelings of longing are often accompanied by anxiety and depression. These symptoms may range from mild to severe. Homesickness frequently occurs when one travels and may be exacerbated by unfamiliar environments or foreign cultural contexts. 

Over time, I've come to be able to notice when I'm coming down with a bout of the homesickies, and also have found what cures work best for me when I'm missing my family/home/friends/Iowa/Chicago/the USA/Western Civilization.  So here are my very scientific, tested and guaranteed-to-help... 

TOP FIVE HOMESICKNESS REMEDIES 

in no particular order

1. Books. I spent hours on Saturday wandering around a huge bookstore in Taipei that has the most English books I've seen in place anywhere in Taiwan. I read titles, look at covers, browse pages, and inhale the scent of ink and paper. I float happily from Magazines to Classics to History to Religion to Arts to Health and Fitness to Languages, accumulating a stack in my arms of the books I realize I can't live without. Saturday I left with three books and three magazines. Financially, I justify these purchases as necessary for preserving both my sanity and my intellectual well-being (my day-to-day life does not expose me to higher thought in properly spoken English).

2. Animals. Specifically now, my precious kitten, Olive. However, even before she came to live with me, I loved visiting pet shops or having friendly interaction with other people's pets. Animals are just easier than humans... there's no language barrier or cultural misunderstanding. Animals trustingly invite us into their space and accept us with playfulness, inquisitiveness and sweetness--not seeing what color we are or judging our cultural baggage. I've been delighted by cats for as long as I can remember, and they make familiar companions for me, reminding me of all the pet cats I've had since I was a toddler. I love their mannerisms, the way they move with grace and intention, their independence. Adopting Olive made my house here a home. She follows me around, greets me with sleepy meows when I get home from work, and even does her cat-stretches next to me on my mat while I'm practicing yoga.

3. Yoga. Having had a physical practice for most of my life--whether ballet, running, pilates or yoga--movement and breathing and getting into my body makes me feel more at home than almost anything else. With traveling and moving as much as I have in the past ten years, I've learned to make a nurturing yoga practice a constant. Living out of suitcases--a year here, a year there--doesn't give me a sense of "home base," so I achieve that groundedness by making my body my home. Whether I find myself in the concrete jungle of a city in Taiwan, the frozen prairies of Iowa, or a quiet Costa Rican beach, as I begin to breathe through the fluid movements of my body, I am home.

4. Starbucks. Yes, I know that they are corporate and cliche and everything, and when I'm in the US I go to locally owned, unique coffeeshops. Unfortunately, Taiwan's coffee culture is not quite there yet and there are no other options unless I want to drink something that tastes like cabbage-water. (I will give Taiwan its full deserved glory for having incredible tea, which they grow and produce themselves--they are masters! But I want coffee.) When I go into a Starbuck's, I know what I'm going to get and what it will taste like, and sitting in a Starbuck's anywhere in the world is pretty much a homogenous experience, so I can lose myself in a book and a latte listening to Miles Davis under soft lighting and not have any idea whether I'm in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago or Seoul or Taipei.

5. Skype/Facebook/Email/Blogs/Internet in General. This is an obvious one... I don't know how expats did it 20 years ago before all of this stuff was invented! I love knowing that I'm a few clicks away from communication with my friends and family, news from home, pictures, and anything I'm missing about my culture--from catching up on trashy celebrity gossip to being able to listen to lectures given by professors at my alma mater. I even "shop" at Target(.com) sometimes!

So... are you ever homesick? Even if you live at "home," you can always be nostalgic for another time in your life or other places you've left bits of your heart, or loved ones who are far away. What are your cures?