Expatriotical

Episode 39: Making Friends All Over the World

• Chandra Alley • Season 1 • Episode 39

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Making friends may not be easy, but as an expat it is SO essential! Today Chandra shares not only about why friendships have been so crucial for her (and her family) abroad, but also an important lesson she learned early on as an expat in Italy.

Plus she shares a fun exercise in gratitude and that stretches around the world! And stay tuned to hear about Chandra's favorite pizza place in Paris in this episode's "Chan Select". You don't want to miss it!


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"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

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 6 years, I’ve learned the arts of pivoting during pitfalls, traveling tastefully for less, and soaking in amazing new cultures without losing your own.


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


Hello my friends! So happy to have all of you join me today.  This episode we are going to talk about one of my favorite things. I have been planning to talk about this pretty much since the inception of Expatriotical. I actually keep a list of ideas or topics for episodes, one for solo episodes and one for interview episodes.


And this topic was the second subject I ever wrote down in the Notes app on my phone. What might that topic be you ask? Making friends! Originally I planned to specifically talk about “making the first move” as the new person, but now I want to expand on that and make the topic of “friendship” even more three dimensional or transcontinental, if you will.


But, I would like to start with making the first move. I know my introvert listeners might be cringing right now, but please hear me out…


This first bit is sort of a cautionary tale and I may have mentioned it- in part- in a previous episode, but I want to share it now- in full. Let’s go back almost 6 years, to me as a new expat in Italy, who after living in a hotel with my husband, Chris, and our three young children, had finally moved into our house just south of Milan and two days later went to the hospital to have my fourth child.


Once settled, after baby Caleb had arrived and my in-laws (who had graciously come to watch the other three kiddos during the birth of Caleb) had returned back to the United States, I started venturing out and exploring my surroundings. To paint a picture of where I lived, imagine an old farmstead surrounded by canals and acres and acres of Carnaroli rice fields- a rice used to make risotto. The farmstead had been walled off and all of the old haylofts and blacksmith buildings (yes- that’s how old it was), and livestock buildings had been turned into attached houses (that’s townhouses for my American listeners) and condos.


This farmstead or Cascina in Italian, was about 1/4 of a mile from the closest bus stop and playground and a mile and a half (or 2.4 kilometers) from the closest town with a market, gym, and local schools.


Seeing how we only had one car, which Chris needed to make the hour and 15 minute drive (one way) to work, whenever I wanted to go out and explore I would bundle up the boys (this was January and February 2019) and put them in my BOB double stroller (my daughter Lilliah was in school) and walk the distance to the park or the market or what have you.


One of the first times I ventured out was to the closest park and playground near the 230 bus stop. As I got closer to the park there were a couple of cars in the parking lot and as we entered the gate I saw other parents with young children that were playing. As my older boys ran off to explore I happened to hear something familiar. Two of the moms were speaking English, and one of them had a North American accent.


As I observed a bit, I realized that the mom with the North American accent also had four kids, but I couldn’t figure out their ages. Did she have quadruplets? No, one of them seemed to be older. Nevertheless, I shyly kept to myself, sitting on a bench watching my kiddos and wondering if one of the moms might notice I was speaking English to my kids and come say hello. I stayed awhile until the boys’ little noses and fingers were pink and then loaded them up into the BOB stroller and headed home.


I would see this mom with her four children off and on for the next year, but it wasn’t until after the Covid Italian Lockdown of 2020 that we would officially connect and our friendship would grow. You actually know this mom too, it’s my dear friend Mallory. You can listen to Episode 20: Learning to Pivot with Mallory Steinbach to get to know her a little bit more,if you haven’t already.


I learned something important through that experience. Just because I was the new kid on the block, didn’t mean that I couldn’t be the first one to “make a move”. In fact, not doing so cost me over a year’s worth of friendship with an absolutely incredible human being.


So now whether I am the new person or not, if I have the mental energy (because let’s be honest sometimes when you are in a new location you don’t), I try to introduce myself, without expectation. I may not end up being friends with someone, but at least the introduction has been made. And if I am the expat veteran I will even offer my phone number and encourage the newbie to reach out if they have any questions or need something.


I do encourage you to use discernment, discretion and caution though, if you don’t feel safe giving your number. But I can say that so far, I haven’t really had any problems giving my number to fellow expats, it’s as though there is an unspoken code of conduct that a fellow expat’s number should not be abused.


There are also instances of newbie expats helping each other out. Such is the case with me and my friend Sissi, whom I spoke with for my very first interview on Expatriotical. (Check out Episode 5: Language is Key with Sissi Arellano to hear more.)


Bear with me if you’ve heard a bit of this story before, but Sissi and I were both new to Paris, though I had arrived in July and she was super fresh and in her first week when we met at a Parent Coffee at our kids' school. When she introduced herself she mentioned that they were still on the hunt for an apartment, so later that day I found her number in a classroom WhatsApp chat and messaged her that there was an apartment in our building available and also that I knew of a website called seloger.com where she could search for apartments.


A week or so later we ran into each other at a local market and she encouraged me to look into the possibility of Caleb (who had also been at said school coffee event) being able to go to school with his siblings due to the fact that in France school is obligatory at age 3- so maybe Chris’ company would pay for it? I did so, and voila, Sissi was right and her encouragement allowed me to have an unexpected gift on my 39th birthday, of Caleb going to his first day of school with his siblings instead of me having to run him to a different school.


These little things, sharing new discoveries and helping out where we could, going to park play dates with our kids, and even giving popcorn, paper towels, and hand-me-down clothes to one another; were the first building blocks of our friendship. One that has grown and led to celebrating birthdays together, going to Disneyland together as families, and even collaborating on a presentation for new families at our kids’ school; which awoke my love of helping expats and led me here to this podcast.


These little things, little acts of kindness or of giving a helping hand are easy, authentic ways of building a friendship, that anyone can do. I have even heard it said in multiple publications that even asking for help (when you honestly need it) is a great way to get to know someone, because most people truly desire to be helpful when they can.


A time in our expat lives that my family and I were in great need of help was when my oldest son, Carson, was 4 years old. One month into his first year of school he became very I’ll and was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease. I won’t go into all of those details, but if you want to hear more you can listen to Episode 4: Hospitalizations-  Child Edition. The reason I mention this ordeal though, is the fact that during the first 10 days of Carson’s hospitalization, my neighbors and friends came to our aid.


My husband, Chris, stayed by Carson’s side the whole time. Working remotely and sleeping in a reclining chair by Carson’s side, but since he wasn’t a patient, no food was provided for him. So everyday, a friend would come and stay with my two youngest children (Caleb who was 10 months old and still breastfeeding and Isaiah who was 2 1/2), while they napped. I would have already pumped a bottle and prepared and packed two meals for Chris and some fresh clothes.


I would drive to the hospital and give Chris his food and clothes, pack up any dirty clothes or Tupperware and snuggle and visit with Carson, then by a certain time in the afternoon I would leave the hospital to try to make it back before Lilliah got home from school. We could not have made this whole arrangement work without our friends and neighbors. One of those neighbors became one of my very dearest friends in Italy whom I make an effort to still see every year. I had a deep and great need and people stepped up to fill it, creating deep and wonderful and lasting friendships.


And many of these friendships go forward with you in time. And as expats do, when those friends move your network, if you will, expands and you start to find that you literally have friends all over the world. So I kind of want to paint a picture and show you how amazing this is.


First I’ll start by going back to my friend Mallory. It came to my attention, in our last year in Italy, that Mallory and her family were at the end of their time in Milan and were moving back to Paris, as they had lived there for several years before moving to Italy. At that point, Chris and I didn’t know where we would be moving to. Tokyo, Japan- Atlanta, Georgia- Moscow, Russia- and Paris, France all being part of around 20 or so locations that were a possibility.


We found out in February, that we had been assigned to Paris and I was so elated, as it was the first move EVER where I would actually have a friend there already. And not just any friend, but someone who already had lived there and knew the ins and outs of the city. Mallory gave me books to read through, doctors to contact and once we were in Paris she even sat down and helped me to create accounts for my kids’ transportation passes which literally saves me hundreds of euros each year.


Mal’s husband even drove my daughter Lilliah’s hamster, Mendy was her name, all the way from Milan to Paris , when our relocation company suddenly told us that they couldn’t find rental cars for us to drive to Paris and we would have to fly. But Mendy was not permitted by the airline to do so also, so she was chauffeured all the way to Paris. Now if that’s not friendship, I don’t know what is.


And though we only got to spend just under a year with Mallory and her family in Paris, we are ever so grateful and now we have friends that we can visit in Dubai or friends that can help us get established if we move there, which could be possible at some point.


To continue in this exercise of seeing where our, or my in this instance, network has spread, imagine a map of the world. Put a red pin in the middle of the top part of the boot of Italy. That’s Milan, now, take some imaginary red yarn and stretch it to Paris, which is actually also in the top middle of the squiggly pentagon shape that France looks like, and put a new pin there. Then continue to stretch the yarn southeast, all the way down across the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and once you cross the Persian gulf, put a new pin in Dubai. From Italy to Paris to Dubai, that’s my Mallory string.


Now get some imaginary blue yarn, attach it to the pin in Italy and run it to London, put in a pin, continue to the island of Aero in Denmark and put in a pin, and then stretch it all the way down to the equator into the country of Uganda. That’s the Vielliard/Jorgensen string. Dear friends whom we met in Italy, whose lives and have taken them from Italy to all of these places, but whom we have had the joy of going to see or having them come to see us almost twice a year for the past 3 years, until now, and we are aching to see them in their new home in Uganda. From Italy, to London, to Denmark, to Uganda, that is the Vielliard/Jorgensen string.


Eika, another dear friend that I met in Milan, moved to Singapore just weeks before we moved to Paris. We both shared voice notes on WhatsApp about our moves and transitions and life in our respective cities and as we got settled we just talked about life, our children, our husbands, and now Eika has moved again, this time to Melbourne, Australia. Go back to your mental map and get some purple yarn, wrap it around the Milan pin and then stretch southeast across Europe, the Middle East, India, and Southern Asia, and put a pin in Singapore. Wrap the purple yarn around the Singapore pin and trace it southeast again over Indonesia, the Indian Ocean and most of the continent of Australia and put a pin in Melbourne. Italy to Singapore to Australia, that’s my Eika String.


There could be many more of these, some stretching to Japan, more to London and Australia, another recent one to Saudi Arabia, and ironically many of these imaginary strings seem to stretch to Houston, which is actually a city in Texas that I have never been to (even though I lived in Texas two times).


All of these strings represent friendship and love and community. A network, once again, of wisdom and experience to be shared not only with direct friends, but with the friends of friends. Sort of like 6 degrees of separation.


AND another huge bonus, is that if you get to travel to those places and see those friends, you get some of the best experiences ever! You get to see and taste the culture more like a local and it makes the experience even more memorable.


But all of this starts with small steps and sometimes making the first move. So don’t be afraid if YOU are the one to do that. I know for many of us, it doesn’t come naturally, but the risk nearly always pays off with reward beyond belief, because as a paraphrase of what my college bestie and former expat herself, Jen, recently said to me, “Friends become family when you’re abroad”.


I agree so wholeheartedly that I’ve chosen that as our quote of the day. “Friends become family when you’re abroad.” And I, personally, am so thankful they do.


I hope this episode has been helpful or encouraging to you as you settle in or continue to settle in and grow roots in your new country. Maybe taking a bit of the fear away of making acquaintances and giving you a bit of hope for what your future friendships might be. I encourage you to make your own mental or actual, friendship map as a wonderful practice of gratitude for the amazing people you have had the chance to meet.


Now moving on to our “Chan Select” of the week! Since we took a mental trip back to Italy today, I want to share with you, my favorite pizza place, so far, in Paris, I discovered it last year around this time at the end of one of my tours with Xenia of The Choice of Paris.


For this tour Xenia had taken us through the Covered Passages of Paris and at the end of one of them we exited near a restaurant called Daroco. And Xenia mentioned that it was really good food. So Sissi, yes the same friend I mentioned earlier, and I decided to go there and have a celebratory lunch for my 40th birthday. The pizza I had was a gift in and of itself, it was the closest thing I have had in France to the amazing pizzas that I had regularly in Italy.


The crust is perfectly authentic, the ingredients fresh, and the atmosphere is hip and chic. Most recently I ate there for a going away lunch for a dear friend that moved to Australia and toasting her a bon voyage as we munched on crispy rosemary and Parmesan focaccia and marinated vegetables with Thyme and eggplant caviar, seemed to warm our hearts as we said goodbye to our friend, widening that friendship network even more.


And like our friendship networks, Daroco has spread to more than one location internationally. I will be sure to include their website and instagram handle in the show notes and as always, I am not an affiliate, just a fan.


Speaking of fans, if you are a fan of this episode would you please share it with a friend?! It doesn’t even have to be an expat friend, but maybe someone who is new in their city or finding that life has thrown a curveball and they feel like they are at square one again making friends. Thank you so much, you all! I really ruly appreciate your support and help in growing our community here at Expatriotical. Also, if you are new here, thank you so much for being here and if you haven’t done so already would you please hit follow or subscribe before you exit your podcast app. That would be so kind. 


That’s it for today everyone! I can’t wait to meet you back here again next week where I will be sharing all about the recent discovery of my favorite place here in France. Until then, this is Chandra Alley reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical.