Episode 1: Who I am & How I Started My Crazy Expat Life

In this inaugural episode of Expatriotical, host Chandra Alley, shares who she is and how she came to live her crazy beautiful expat life. Get to know Chandra, her trial by fire initiation into being an expat, and what her first take on the new country she had moved to was. (Spoiler Alert: there was initial disappointment with the dream destination.)

• Inspirational Quote: The Irish Blessing

• This episode's "Chan Select": Ristorante Borgo di Vione

• Follow on Instagram @expatriotical

"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

Transcript

Bienvenue, Benvenuti, and Welcome to Expatriotical, the podcast for expats, travelers, and other adventurous souls. I’m Chandra Alley and after living as an expat with my husband and 4 children in two different countries for almost 6 years, I’ve learned the arts of pivoting during pitfalls, traveling tastefully for less, and soaking in amazing new cultures without loosing your own.

Join me, as we dive into the joys and challenges of travel and the expat life every episode!

In this, the very first episode, I am going to share with you a little part of my story. The part where I actually became an expat, but it may benefit us all for me to share a bit of my backstory before that fateful move.

Sidenote here, originally I was going to do this episode in a slightly different manner, but after I had actually recorded the first take, I got a call from an expat friend who had just walked through a slightly traumatic experience and I shared the story of how I had gone through something very similar myself, shortly after becoming an expat.

At the end of our conversation she told me “thank you”, and she said that she felt so much better and she now had hope. That triggered a thought in me to slightly shift the way I approach all of this. I may get personal sometimes, and if that occasionally sounds like complaining, it certainly is not meant to, at least that way (for the most part), but the fact of the matter is, that life as an expat can be rough and I want this to be a safe shared place for you to feel seen as you walk through the delights and sometimes devastations that come uniquely to expats.

Ok, with that, I will now tell you who I am.

I was raised, for the most of my childhood in small town Colorado, in a beautiful little mountain valley town called Beulah. Half way through 8th grade we moved to Baca County, Colorado; which is in the plains. Imagine, Kansas, but you’re still in Colorado.

I also grew up pretty poor, I know that a lot of people don’t like that word, but that was just how life was for us. Our vacations where usually fishing trips up to Blue Mesa Lake, near Gunnison, Colorado. The most exotic destination we ever went to was a trip to Branson, Missouri, in the dead of winter. Places like London, Rome, and Paris where all little dots on the map that I could only ever dream of visiting.

After high school, I moved to the Panhandle of Texas and attended a small university there called West Texas A&M University (go Buffs!)! And even though I loved it there, eventually my childhood dream of becoming an actress called me west and I moved to California.

There are a lot of stories I could tell you there, but suffice it to say that after 5 ½ years of pursuing an acting and eventually getting my degree in Theatre, I moved back to Colorado after college graduation and became a radio dj.

After about a year of living in Colorado, I reconnected with Chris, my now husband, who was ironically my first boyfriend ever, thus the reconnection. We dated for 6 months, got engaged, and then about 7 months later got married in August of 2011.

Due to Chris taking a job for an aerospace company 2 months before we got married, our honeymoon was the drive from Colorado to Seattle, Washington.

I will spare you all of the details of our four years in the Seattle area, but I will say we made some incredible friends there and also welcomed two new members into our family; our daughter, Lilliah, and then our first son, Carson.

When Carson was 5 months old we moved to Flowermound, Texas, which is just outside of Dallas. This was due to Chris’ new position in the company, which is the same position that has taken us overseas.

Basically we move every 3-5 years, depending on the desires of the company and their clients and on countries allowances for length of visas, etc…

Anyway, we welcomed our third child, Isaiah, into our family in March of 2017 and not much over a year later we were not only expecting our fourth child, but we had also heard about a couple of positions coming available in Europe. One in Italy and one in Belgium. Italy, especially was a super attractive option, but me being pregnant through a curve ball into the whole situation, so we sat down and started researching, because I am not going to tell you that I didn’t have any anxiety over the thought of giving birth in another country. Even though this was my 4th baby, experience helped but it didn’t trump all my fears.

Research however did and put a lot of them to rest. Most of the chats and articles that I read about women giving birth in Italy expressed positive experiences, and there was one that I will never forget, which was a woman proclaiming it was the best hospital food she had ever had. (I can now attest, that to be delightfully true!)

Moving on in the story, Chris and I prayed about the decision and felt peace about at least putting our name in the hat, trusting that if it wasn’t God’s will for us to go, then the company would pass. So, while we were on vacation in South Carolina (this is back when we could afford a vacation only every other year, so we weren’t going to cancel it) Chris interviewed for the position in our hotel room.

Shortly after returning to Texas, he got the call that he had gotten the job! And then things started to get REAL.

{Brief Pause}

Our life trajectories pretty much changed from that moment, we un-enrolled our daughter Lilliah from the kindergarten right down the street and began the search for a school in Milan that would have an equivalent curriculum to that used in most schools in the States, as our next move could have always been (and honestly could still be) back to the United States.

Thankfully, finding the school was easy. The American School of Milan was a standout to us. But filling out all of the applications and sending in all of the paperwork was daunting. I little tidbit about me is that I despise filling out applications for pretty much anything, it is the bain of my existence, but as many expats know, paperwork, official documents, proof of vaccinations, translations of documents are all part of the game and so you just grit your teeth and power through and that’s what I did, at least for the school.

Chris on the other hand dealt with getting the immigrations company and his employer all of the documentation they needed to start the visa application. We got our children passports, which only recently expired and whose pictures are so precious and brought back such dear memories when I retired them to our safe.

So just 8 short weeks after finding out that Chris had gotten the job, a moving truck pulled up in front of our house in Texas and began packing and loading our life up to be shipped across the ocean.

We said goodbye to not only to our dear family and friends, but also Chris’ beloved 2001 Ford Explorer, which had been with him since he had first went off to college and had enough miles to have driven to the moon. It was an emotional time. Like seriously, I’m not joking.

It was also really stressful, because the movers announced to us on the first day of packing that they had miscalculated and would need an extra day, which sent poor Chris into a flurry of cancelling our flights and coordinating to get 5 airplane tickets that were actually seated next to one another for the next day.

But by God’s grace it all worked out, the movers got an extra day, and so did we to say goodbye. And as I tucked my kids into their beds at the Residence Inn by the DFW airport that last night in Texas, the surrealism of all of it came over me. There was also bit of sadness mixed with, hope, excitement and uncertainty, but I did feel ready.

The next day was exciting and we got to experience new things even before landing in Europe, like an airline lounge, which was like being a kid in a candy store, to all of us (except for trying to keep our three small children quite, in said lounge.)

The flight from Dallas to Frankfurt was the longest flight the kids and I had ever taken, Chris had traveled farther than that for business, but for the rest of us it was quite and adventure. I’m going to be honest and tell you that traveling with an 18-month-old on a 10-hour flight is rough.

All that little Isaiah wanted to do was run up and down the aisle back and forth between Chris and I. He was deliriously tired a few hours in and I didn’t have much room on my lap, with my pregnant belly, so the burden of wrestling Zay (that’s Isaiah’s nickname) to sleep, fell on Chris.

After very little sleep, we awoke to landing in Frankfurt. We stepped out into an airport full of signs in German (and thankfully also in English) and started trying to find some breakfast. This is the first time we learned that most of Europe does breakfast differently than a typical hot American breakfast.

I’m more used to that now and have learned to adapt, but initially, paying 45 Euros for a couple of yogurts parfait cups, some fruit and a few croissants, was hard for me to swallow.

After we ate breakfast I wanted all of us to brush our teeth (because apparently we hadn’t done that on the airplane) and doing that with a deliriously tired and cranky 5-year-old, 3-year-old, and 18-month-old in an airport bathroom where other people are also trying to take care of business, will be a standout memory and experience, probably always.

Saying all of this out loud, makes me sound maybe like I am a bit of a baby or a premadonna, but when you fly overseas for the first time ever, being 6 ½ months pregnant, with your kids, everyone is sleep deprived and you know this isn’t just a vacation, it can be a lot to take in.

Anyway, we took our connecting flight to Milan and I think that that is where the real language overwhelm sunk in, as there were definitely less signs in English in the airport and I definitely heard less English being spoken.

But we made our way to the car rental place, with all 3 kids, 10 suitcases, 3 car seats, and a Bob Double Jogging stroller, all of which, again by the grace of God, I was able to pack into a Ford Galaxy (which was SO much smaller that our Hondo Odyssey minivan, so it was literally like a miracle that we got it all in).

Then Chris proceeded to drive us (because the thought of driving in Italy, even though we had learned that they drove on the same side of the road as we did in America- that thought was terrifying to me), so Chris drove us the 1 hour into the city from Malpensa Airport.

To be totally transparent, I was disappointed when we first left the Airport. It was August, but that day you could tell that it had rained earlier and all you could see were gray skies and gray concrete walls and that surrounded the autostrada, which is the Italiain word for highway or freeway. I thought, “Where are the sun-kissed lanes lined with brightly colored houses full of character and topped with terracotta tiles?” There were none to be seen.

And I was talking to Chris the other day and he remembered thinking the same thing too, but thankfully, once we got off of the autostrada those charming buildings and that colorful culture started coming into view.

There is so much more that I could and will eventually share with you about those first few days and months in Milan, but I think that these next two points are crucial to share now.

One is that we arrived on a Friday afternoon and my daughter started school on Monday. I think that can a lot of times be an accurate description of many peoples experience as expats. You just hit the ground running. You don’t have time to stop or think or even breath. You just do. You just get through and get to a point where you can start to let up (maybe a little) and look around and assess. So if you are going through that right now, please know, everything you are feeling or experiencing is completely normal. And this too, shall pass.

The second thing I wanted to share is that when we arrived at the beautiful Hotel Sheraton Diana Majestic and where greeted by its amazing and kind staff, we had NO IDEA that this was going to be “home” for our family of five for the next 10 weeks.

Even though we were staying in a lovely suite, there was no kitchen, not even a hot plate, so other than the lovely breakfast that was at the hotel, we (or really I- because Chris was working) had to go out and search for places to eat. That might seem like no big deal, but another thing I learned was that Italians don’t eat dinner until, late. I mean, like many restaurants near us didn’t even open until 7:30, which was 30 minutes before my kids went to bed.

Also, the Italian, and European in general I believe, dining experience is more laid back and they do not rush to take your order, bring you your food or anything, NOW I really appreciate that, because I don’t like being rushed out the door so that the restaurant can turn the table, but since this was my first immersion into this experience with three small children, I remember not loving that part.

So in other words, it was a lot effort to find places to feed my family every night.

The other part of the hotel being our home that was stressful, was that as each week passed, my due date grew closer and closer. And I remember praying and begging God, to not have to bring my newborn son “home”, to a hotel. Thankfully, we did not have to, but the old adage of God never being late and always being on time, almost fell through. Because we moved out of the hotel and into our house on a Wednesday, on Thursday we picked Chris’ parents up from the airport (as they were going to stay with the kids when we were at the hospital), and on Friday when I went into my routine appointment; my doctor told me that I had to go to the hospital immediately, to be induced.

There are a lot of other details behind that and I will share that experience in another episode, but suffice it to say, that we got into our house by the skin of our teeth.

I kind of even feel like after retelling this story right now, I need to take a breath. It was A LOT you guys. It was a whirlwind, it was overwhelming, we had SO many challenges and technically difficulties to overcome. I mean I couldn’t even find peanut butter in the grocery store for goodness sake! How on earth was I supposed to make my kids a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on occasion so that we didn’t have to go out to a restaurant for lunch with my toddlers?!??

The point of sharing these things is that, if you are hearing this and you’re like, “yep, I’ve been there.” Or “Oh my goodness, that is my life right now!” Please know, I feel you! I’ve been there and it’s hard and it’s tough and your friends and family back home may not understand, but you are going to get through this. One day at a time. One step at a time, you can do this! And you are stronger than you realize.

And I am here for you. Hopefully offering words to comfort, encourage, and inspire you as you continue on this journey of being an expat.

So, in a minute I am going to do my first “Chan Select” where I will share with you either a great restaurant I’ve eaten at, hotel I’ve stayed at, experience or museum I’ve been to, so that if you ever get a chance to be in that part of the world, you can try it for yourself.

But first, I want to share one of my favorite quotes or poems, if you will, about traveling, which you can also relate to just life in general. It’s The Irish Blessing and here it is:

“May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand”

{Break}

Okay, let’s jump into the “Chan Select” for this episode, which is Ristorante Borgo di Vione. Ristorante mean restaurant in Italian, which is probably a no brainer and “borgo” means village and I’m pretty sure Vione is just a name. But, I chose this particular restaurant because since in this inaugural episode I talked about becoming an expat by moving to Italy, I had to share my favorite Italian restaurant with you.

A fun and special fact about this restaurant is that it is attached to the community that my family and I lived in for the almost 4 years we lived in Italy (subtracting the initial 10 weeks we lived in the hotel, etc…).

The owner, Marco, is the sweetest kindest man, who has created an environment that is classy, but yet relaxed enough to eat at with your (or my really) 4 wild and zany children. The staff makes you feel welcome and like you are a part of the family, BUT the food! Oh my goodness, the food is phenomenal! The pizza was by far our favorite in all of Milano, the pasta was perfect, the wine was excellent, and they served the best steak in Italy and one of the best steaks Chris and I had ever had, and that saying a lot coming from two kids that were raised on home grown beef.

Ristorante Borgo di Vione is located just 30 minutes south of Milan, and you can access it by public transportation, though I would recommend renting a car instead, as it is quite inexpensive to do in Italy and way more convenient. There will be a link to their website in the show notes and, for those that are wondering, no I am not an affiliate nor am I getting paid for this (at least at the time of recording this episode). I just simply love Ristorante Borgo di Vione and would love for anyone that is listening and wants to, to be able to discover the culinary delight that waits for them there.

So, that’s it for today!

You guys, thank you so much for listening and letting me join you on your journey today. I would be so grateful if you would take the time to hit subscribe in your podcast app and if you are feeling really generous to leave me a rating or even a kind review.

Thank you, I’ll meet you back here next week! And remember to “Live and Travel In the Know with Expatriotical”.