Today my Dutch roommate told me that he doesn’t like living with expats.
“At home I’m special,” he explained. “But here, no one cares that I used to live in Curacao,” naming the Caribbean island he lived on for five months before moving to Guatemala.
It’s true. I live in a house with mostly other foreigners who work for an NGO here in Xela. Before Guatemala, they’d lived all over the world. The British guy taught English in Korea and Thailand. The Belgian artists lived in London and volunteered in Nicaragua.
But that’s precisely what I like about it. I love that I can say that I used to live in Japan or Germany and no one even bats an eye. And if they say anything at all, it’s to ask me if the snow festival in Sapporo was as good as it was when they went there.
Some people live abroad so that they can feel different or special. I live abroad because it’s the only place I feel normal.
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