Story time: expat edition

I moved to New York from Australia in 2008, confident to the point of cockiness in my ability to slot right into a fabulous life here. After all, I am half-American: my Mum was raised in New Jersey and was living nearby in midtown 30 years ago, when she met my Dad and moved to Sydney. I'd been coming here on vacation to see her family even before the limits of my memory. Everyone in a city as big as New York certainly speaks English, enjoys the same globalised Western culture as I do, and has probably met countless Australian travellers in the past.  Fool.

Barnard has an impressive looking entrance to a campus that only takes up a few city blocks

Sometime during the first week of my freshman year at Barnard College, I was suddenly overcome with the realisation that I was, in fact, living in a different country. Outside of the comfort zone of family, in which I was by far the youngest, I began to notice that I knew absolutely nothing of how to be a college kid in the United States. The Blank Stare - from myself, and everyone else - quickly became the theme of the year, in all its varieties. There was a stare for every occasion: 
“I'm sorry, could you please repeat that a little slower?”
“Is that really a word?”
“No, I'm afraid I don‟t know any Spanish. I speak a little Indonesian?”
and my favourite, “how on earth could you possibly mistake me for a British person?! No, it is most certainly not the same thing!”

My broad accent and foreign mannerisms quickly became a source of self-consciousness, as I came to consider it too much of a mark of difference from my fellow students. I put away most of my Australian phrases and did my best to weaken my accent in an attempt to fit in. I researched the precise spelling differences between British and American English, so as to not betray myself in my school papers. I started spending my small allocation of television time catching up on Gossip Girl, putting aside my well-loved Summer Heights High DVD. Finally, I stowed my giant jar of Vegemite in my bottom desk drawer, away from potentially judging eyes, to be taken out only in moments of acute homesickness.

It was only after going back to Australia for my first winter break that I realised how wrong I had been. The minute I opened my mouth in Sydney, my friends from home erupted into laughter at the sound of my “American” accent. I realised that, although I was back in my country, I was once again the foreigner. It also dawned on me that, despite the anxious homesick desire to get back to Sydney I had experienced throughout my first semester, even here I felt something missing. As I thought back on the friends I had already made in New York, the places in which I was already a part of the scenery, and the home away from home I had already made there, I realised that I was doomed. In an instant, I understood the way my mother must have felt for the last thirty years: miserable. I was, and would forever be, a child of two places.  No matter where I was, I would always find myself missing loved ones on the other side of the globe.

As I explained the unexpected details of life in the States to my old friends, I realised how, as both an Australian and an American, I would always be different. More importantly, I realised that this difference was a strength, not a weakness. Being completely of neither country, my experience could almost always provide me with a unique view on both. I look at both countries with the affection of a native, but the discerning eye of an outsider. Once I understood that every student has her own quirks to make her unique, I embraced the confusion of cross-cultural communication and, as a result, found the ability to make a home wherever I am in the world.

Just don't call me British.

I like to think it all worked out quite well.

When have you turned a weakness into a strength?  Are you an expat, trying to make sense of life somewhere new?