Expatriotical

Episode 13: What's Saving My Expat Life Right Now

• Chandra Alley • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Sometimes it's the little things in life... and that's what this episode focuses on. Chandra shares 11 things (plus a bonus) that are helping her to navigate life more easily right now. Some are more expat-centric and some are accessible to absolutely everyone!

Plus, listen in as Chandra shares her recent hilarious experience for this episode's "Chan Select". This episode is a must-listen and you can get it in, in under 20 minutes! Check it out!

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"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

Expatriotical- Episode 13: What’s Saving My Expat Life Right Now

 

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, travelling 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 in every episode!

 

Hey everyone! This is another episode that I am very excited about. And I’m going to be honest it’s kind of a copycat episode. I first heard this phrase or saying when I was listening to Kendra Adachi, on The Lazy Genius podcast. If you remember back to Episode 11: Chandra Answers Your Burning Questions, The Lazy Genius was my Chan Select for that episode.

 

Kendra, along with her fellow author and friend and podcaster, Emily P. Freeman, do a quarterly “What’s saving my life right now” episode, though that phrase originally was coined by Barbara Brown Taylor.

 

I love listening to these episodes, and I truly get practical tips from them as well. But as an expat, and honestly as a human, I think the practice of thinking about the things that are “Saving your life” is a really great exercise in gratitude. In fact I plan on doing a future episode and I’ll go back and tell you the things that were saving my life, my first time around as an expat, in Italy.

 

But today, I’m going to tell you 11 things, in no particular order, that are making my days or weeks better right now.

 

Number one is the tours I have with Xenia of The Choice of Paris. I mentioned Xenia as my “Chan Select” in Episode 4: Hospitalizations- Child Edition, so if you want to hear even more details about her tours check out that episode. But right now I just have to say they are something that I look forward to every single time. At most we have two tours a month. So it’s not a huge time commitment, but whether rain or shine, I always have a good time. Getting together with other moms I know, just other women I know, and sometimes there are some guys tagging along that are from the kids’ school or family friends of the parents of the kids’ and hearing fascinating details told with animation and passion about the city I live in, has just been such a huge blessing for me. And it’s something that I very much so look forward to when I see it on my calendar. And in fact my mom just got to join for a tour yesterday and she could see why it was so thrilling, so amazing and she is also a big fan now as well.

 

Number 2 is Tuesday after school activities. Now for clarification, I do not attend these activities, but all four of my children do. And this is the first time ever, where I have had all of four of my children stay after school and do an activity that they enjoy and I don’t have to go back to school to pick them up until 5 PM. It is truly a lifesaver for me. I’m able to get so much more done, including working on this podcast, or even simply prepping for dinner.

 

That extra hour and forty-five 45 minutes of not needing to go to school at 3:15, or go to school to pick up two or three of the kids 3:15, and then go back again at 5:00, has really been amazing!

 

The third thing that is saving my life right now are some candles that Chris got me this past Valentine’s Day. They are nothing crazy expensive or anything like that, they’re a box set of 12 that he got off of Amazon. The French version of Amazon by the way, so I will put the link for them and any other links, such as Xenia’s Instagram handle, in the show notes, but just so you know, it is not Amazon.com it’s Amazon.fr.

 

Anyway, each candle comes in a colorful and decorative metal container with a lid, they are only about 3 ounces big, can I say that? Or they contain 3 ounces. But they last a very long time and they smell amazing! They area  soy wax candle and when you translate their description- that Amazon gave them or the company that sells them gave to Amazon- Google translate, will say that they are A perfect gift for aromatherapy, a wedding, yoga, bath, a Mother’s Day gift, and a Valentine’s Day gift.

 

So I’m guessing that Chris simply typed in Valentine’s Day gift in the Amazon search engine and this popped up. And they’ve been such a lovely surprise! And I love walking into my office/our guestroom when I’m working on the podcast and I’ve had one burning and it just smells delightful.

 

Okay, moving onto number four and I sort of just mentioned it a second ago, it’s the Google Translate app. This one will definitely get a mention in the episode I plan to do about the things that saved my expat life in Italy, in the past. But let’s be honest, it’s still saving my life right now. Granted it’s not perfect, as I mentioned in Episode 9: Lost in Translation,  it kind of got me in a little bit of trouble there. But overall being able to use it, especially the photo or camera feature, is so incredibly helpful and useful! I even use it when my Spanish fails me, to speak to the young lady who is my fifth thing that saving my life right now, my expat life right now.

 

And her name is Karen. Karen only speaks Spanish, though she’s learning French. And my Spanish is very rusty, and that’s probably being extremely generous. But Karen comes once a week for two hours and helps me with cleaning the house. That may sound really bougie, have a housekeeper even though I now have all of my kids in school, but cleaning the house gives me a lot of anxiety. There past history there as to why it causes me so much anxiety, but I’m not going to share that right now (maybe some day in the future.) So spending €30 a week to have that anxiety removed, is actually priceless to me!

 

She does a great job, I enjoy talking to her, even though my Spanish is really lacking, and it just takes a huge mental load off knowing that if the house is dirty, it’s going to be cleaned that week. Granted, two hours a week is not that much, I know. So I still do some cleaning, and I’m also trying to teach my kids to clean, they help me with dusting, which if I’m honest we don’t do very often, and I’m constantly still sweeping and vacuuming and stuff like that. But having her come and clean the bathrooms once a week or sweeping and mopping the next week, just makes everything so much easier. So a big “Gracias” to Karen for being number five on my list!

 

Number six on my list is a French store called Picard. That’s spelled p-i-c-a-r-d and you don’t really say the “d”. So Picard is how I say it with my American accent. The way I like to describe it to Americans is imagine Trader Joe’s, but it’s mainly just all of their amazing yummy delicious frozen things. Actually, truthfully, I usually do that in reverse. To try to describe Trader Joe’s to people that are not American, but live here in Paris. I describe Picard and then say that it’s not just frozen stuff though, you get so many other things. But you get the point.

 

The quality of their food is so good and I don’t have to read labels, because the regulations in France are much more strict about what can be put in the food anyway, but nonetheless their food is delicious. Some of my favorite things to buy there that make my life way easier are there pre-minced frozen garlic, which smells like heaven every time it hits hot olive oil in the pan, and saves me a lot of time peeling and chopping garlic.

 

And during the fall, winter, and early spring buying their premade puréed soups has also been an absolute lifesaver! It’s creamy and delicious and all I have to do is turn the pan on medium heat on my stove top and dump those precious Beautiful frozen rectangles of soup into the pan. And then I stir it occasionally, and serve them with some of Picard’s baguette that I have heated in the oven with butter. Which is my favorite food here, in all of France! Butter! I’m serious the butter here is mind blowing! My mouth is watering just thinking of it.

 

Okay moving on to number seven. Listening to books on Audible.  If, again,  I’m honest I’m kind of a fickle Audible user. And I only have a subscription when I can get it for a deal. Currently I have three months for $1.99 per month per credit. The reason why this is a lifesaver right now is because even though I love podcasts, or maybe because of my love for podcasts, I go through episodes pretty quickly. I run out of things to listen to, so it’s been nice to have a book to listen to instead.

 

Recently I finished listening to Spare, by Prince Harry, in preparation for a book club get together that will be held at the end of this month.

 

And currently I restarted listening to a memoir called From Scratch, by Tembi Locke. Which I first heard about after watching the miniseries, by the same name, that was released over a year ago or so on Netflix. It’s just nice to have something to listen to that can kind of blockout the dinnertime chaos that tends to happen in my house when all four children are home and hungry and fighting, and trying to do homework, and I think you get the picture!

 

Arriving at number 9 we have WhatsApp voice messages. I know that some people are not big fans of these, but I LOVE them! It’s a great way, when you are on different schedules than your friends or family OR as an expat live in a different time zone to say hi, hear the person’s voice, and even have on-going conversations.

 

For me, it helps to feel connected or closer to friends here in Paris that are busy and it’s hard to see them, or to friends that have moved away or to friends whom, I used to have the time to have extensive conversations with, but now due to time and distance and maybe even each others’ stage of life, those phone calls are way more few and far between.

 

Obviously, there are many apps that allow this feature, but since most expats, I have found, use WhatsApp to communicate, I like this feature on this particular app the best.

 

Number 10 is a completely ridiculous and silly one and it’s very female oriented, but it’s saving my life and making me feel more human, nonetheless, and that thing is mascara. Yes, you heard right! The things on this list, a list if you make it for yourself, can be that small and that personal. My makeup routine during the week has been the same for years. After washing my face and putting on moisturizer with SPF, I put on eyeliner. That’s it. That’s all that I have wanted for years, but as time has gone on and the melasma, which is dark spots, on my face have worsened after four pregnancies, I have become more, I don’t want to call it self-conscious, but maybe aware that just the eyeliner is not cutting it anymore.

 

So, I decided to start adding mascara and man that has made a world of difference, without adding a bunch of time to my already extremely stressful morning of getting 4 children fed, dressed, and out the door. So this simple pivot and change has made me feel more put together and dare I say prettier. The mascara I use is nothing special, it’s just Yves-Rocher Volume Mascara, and in looking to see the type I even noticed that there are tooth marks on the lid, definitely a sign that my five-year-old was trying to open it, AGAIN, and uh, did I mention I have crazy mornings?!?

 

Anyway, changing my morning routine and feeling and looking more awake when I leave the house is really saving my life right now.

 

And for my 11th and final choice, I have to say my mattress. Once again, it’s nothing special, it’s an Amazon Basics mattress, and it’s honestly not even new. But after sleeping on a pretty hard mattress on a recent trip during spring break just a couple of weeks back, and coming home and crawling into our bed, it felt so good and made me realize the value of getting a good night’s sleep. Again that’s not completely truthful, I realized the value of getting a good night’s sleep when my now 11-year-old Lilliah, it’s her birthday today, Happy Birthday Lil, was 5 months old and I hadn’t had sleep for 5 months. I realized it then. But anyway…

 

Now there are other things that may mess up my sleep, like my body’s new found intolerance for red wine, curse you perimenopause, or possibly a bit of snoring from the person whom I share my bed with, sorry babe! But gone are the days of not being able to sleep because the mattress hurts my back. Hallelujah! Sleep is such a key to physical and mental health and in my opinion being able to better manage, emotionally tough times that we experience in general, but especially as expats, having the sleep to do that is so important.

 

So investing in a “good mattress” is key, in my opinion! Once again I will put links for the purchasable things in the show notes, but don’t worry, none of them are affiliate links!

 

I’m going to add one more thing. I’m not listing it as number 12, but it probably should be. And it has been saving my life for months now and it’s this podcast you guys. It has brought so much joy. I’m so thankful to get to send out these words, hopefully encourage or inspire you all. And sometimes I get some feedback saying, “Yes, this is helping me so much!” It is just, it has been a life changer, not only a lifesaver, but a life changer and a game changer and I am so thankful for it.

 

Ok guys, I feel like I have given us a bunch of Chan Selects already this episode, but because I had such a great experience this week, celebrating my friend Kim’s birthday. We went to see a comedy show and I feel silly admitting it, but it was my first time ever seeing a comedy show!

 

And I was absolutely delighted by the hilarious wit and physicality of comedienne Julie Collas! Her energy is incredible and the way she transitions between joking about her native Parisians and the Non-parisians or tourists that are in Paris will split your sides with laughter! And it may sound weird, but you kind of sort of feel “seen” by the things that she jokes about that we deal with in everyday Parisian life! It’s great!

 

Granted, this is a show for adults, as there is a bit of language, but since I don’t speak French very well, it doesn’t really bother me because most of the “bad words” are in French, while the vast majority of the show is in English. Also, as a side note, I learned (before the show) that that is why English speakers- and I don’t mean right before the show, I mean months ago- but that is why English speakers when they cuss might say, excuse my French, because swearing is a very normal way to speak in France.

 

If you live in Paris or are even visiting on a Friday or Saturday night you should check her new show out! You can book her show at Julie-collas (that’s c-o-l-l-a-s) .com and you can follow her on Instagram. Her handle is @julie_collas_the_parisienne. Check out the show notes for that, because it will be too confusing for me to spell it all out.

 

Alright, now for our quote of the day. It comes from a man who most Americans learn about in grade school, but I figure the French do as well. It’s world renowned chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. We know him as being the inventor of the process of pasteurization, but Pasteur was also renowned for his discoveries of the principals of vaccination and microbial fermentation.

 

Pasteur was born to a poor French family in 1822. He was dyslexic and also dysgraphic, but we didn’t let that stop him. His achievements were astounding, but so was his work ethic and I think his quote is one that we can all apply to life. He said, “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.” And I think that is a virtue that really can help us as expats. Tenacity. When times get tough we just keep going. Keep living. Keep growing.

 

That’s it for today. Wow, that felt kind of heavy! I hope you have enjoyed this episode and maybe it has inspired you to think about the things that are “saving your life right now”.

 

Thanks for listening and don’t forget to share this episode of Expatriotical (or any other episode really) with a friend that might find it useful! And if you haven’t done so already, please rate and review Expatriotical, as that helps to push us up in the algorithm’s formula so more people can find us here!

 

Have a fantastic rest of your week everyone and I’ll catch you back here next Wednesday. Until then this is Chandra Alley reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical.