Expatriotical

Episode 56: A Year in Review & My Favorite Episodes

• Chandra Alley • Season 1 • Episode 56

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Tune in to today's episode where Chandra shares some highs and lows and behind the scenes details from the first year of Expatriotical. Plus listen in to her favorite episodes of the year and take a minute to share yours as well!

Keep listening to discover this week's "Chan Select", which is throwback to the 1930s and an absolute gem!


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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!


Hey everybody! So if you read the title of this episode, A Year in Review and My Favorite Episodes, you might be thinking, “Chandra why are you doing this episode now instead of for the one year anniversary episode or maybe the episode afterwards?”


And that is honestly a really good question. And the simplest answer is, I honestly didn't think about it. Especially for the episode after the one year celebration. I remember not having much energy and just kind of wanting to be chill, and doing a “favorite episodes in review” episode seems to be a little bit more heightened. Maybe, maybe not? Like I actually am a little bit embarrassed because I am not a person that likes to pat myself on the back in front of people, but this is just more so to share with you which episodes I feel like where some of the funnest for me to do or the ones I hope were the most helpful or informative for you.


And I would honestly like to hear what you feel like have been the most helpful episodes. So if they are some of the same episodes that I mention, great, let me know! Or if you think I missed one, also let me know. You can do that by emailing me at hello@expatriotical.com. Hearing from you, in general, is amazing! But hearing what episodes or which episodes you've liked the most can help me come up with more content that is similar or can be equally or even more helpful!


But before I get into my favorite episodes, I kinda want to take a look back and talk about what this year has looked like for me. First of all, I kind of kicked things off before I had anticipated I would. My hosting company which is called Buzzsprout, and which I highly recommend if ever you think you would like to start a podcast, they have an entire free online course, which is thorough and super informative and fantastic and I've even had to contact them and their customer support is wonderful!


But anyway, when I was watching the courses on how to start a podcast, they said not to wait around just to kind of dive into it. Because they found that a lot of people when they were trying to make everything perfect and planned for the perfect day, they ended up delaying 6 months or more and not even ever publishing an episode. And since I am a recovering perfectionist this resonated with me. So after I made the trailer for the podcast, which I published on January 23rd of 2024. I got an episode made and then I just kind of did it. And then I decided or had decided that I wanted to publish an episode every week and so then I kind of had to keep doing it.


Don't get me wrong, I was enjoying it, and still am, but none of my other daily life things went away. I still had (and still have) four kids ages 5 to 10 at the time, now 6 to 11 to take care of, I still have a house to run, bills to pay, school things to help with, you get it. So learning how to manage all of that plus this new venture that was taking up 6 to 9 hours of my time a week (and sometimes quite a bit more than that), was definitely a juggling act.


And it still can be at times, if I need to produce extra episodes to go on vacation, since my kids are out of school for two weeks, every six weeks, that can be challenging, or with the work that I was doing with the website that just launched, but overall, I really enjoy it and it brings me a lot of joy and I really really hope it's helping all of you!


But yeah, there were definitely obstacles over the year, for example, the first time that I discovered that one of my microphones, which had so sweetly been given to me by a friend of mine for my 40th birthday, because she knew I was interested in starting a podcast so she got it for me as an encouragement, and it really did prompt me to dive in, so thank you Maha!


But I discovered that it did not connect with my recording interface which I had purchased for doing in-person interviews. And I discovered that on the day of my very first interview, which I did with my friend Sissi. And I know it sounds like I was procrastinating, but I really wasn’t. I had opened up the box, I looked at everything and I just kind of missed that. And I also discovered the fact that my interface didn’t talk with my computer ‘cause my computer was so old. And I hadn’t figured out why, but anyways long story short… But you can listen to Episode 5: Language is Key with Sissi Arellano, to hear more. And when you do you'll kind of hear the fact that we ended up having to do a Zoom call in my house (with her in one room and me in the other). Which pulled or took up too much bandwidth from the wifi for both of us being on a zoom call in the same house and caused her audio, especially, to cut out here and there and be kind of tinny and pixelated.


There was also construction happening in the apartment above me at the time, so it was kind of a mess. But Sissi was such a great sport and such a great support and it all worked out fine.


Another big challenge was to figure out what I would do once we got to the summertime and my family, and I went to America. Thankfully, I feel like God hit me with a brainstorm idea and I decided to do an interview series. So I did a bunch of interviews before the summer and got them all edited. And I was able to release them while we were gone and even when we were back in France, but were in Lyon for an Olympic soccer game.


And in the fall, the next big thing came was when I decided that it was time to have a full-blown website and began working with a developer to help me with that, because if I'm honest, I'd actually tried before and the website that you see now is the third attempt and the third purchase of a website template.


Let's just say that WordPress had changed a lot since I had a blog years back, and I no longer knew how to do anything apparently on Wordpress. So hiring my web developer was the best decision that I could've possibly made and he was amazing to work with, whether that was here at home in France having late night meetings or early morning meetings in America over the Christmas holiday break.


There was also the ton of research that I did, trying to figure out how I should or which option I should say, of e-commerce site I should choose go with, and then building the Expatriotical store on payhip, which was my final choice and that pretty much leads us to today.


I'm proud of myself because there are so many more details than that and I could've thrown them in there, but that was the very condensed, at least for me since I'm long-winded, version of the first year of the podcast.


OK before I jump in to the quasi 10, because a couple of these episodes are interviews and they’re part one and part two that I did with the same person, but let’s say 8 to 10 episodes that are standouts for me, I kind of want to give you some statistics that I get from my hosting company, Buzzsprout, about all of you that are listening to the podcast right now. And I'm gonna be honest that I know that due to VPNs, these statistics are a little bit off, but here are the places that people are listening from.


I’m saying them by country from the greatest amount of listeners to the least amount of listeners. Starting with, unsurprisingly because that's where all of my family is, and I still have a lot of friends there, the USA, then France, the UAE or United Arab Emirates, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Russia, the UK, Austria, Spain, Australia, Israel, Sweden, India, and Saudi Arabia. And I happen to know that I have a new listener in Angola, but I'm guessing that they may have a VPN so you can't tell that it's coming from there.


Anyway, I share that because it's super exciting for me to see all of those amazing places that people are listening from and I'm really hoping that in the future, I see even more countries listed as you pass on the word and this community grows!


Ok, now for my favorite or we can at least say most memorable episodes. As a caveat, I pretty much would want to list all of the interview episodes, because I got to sit down and have great conversations with dear friends, and even my husband, Chris, and my kids, but then I would have a really big list, so I'm not mentioning them all, but I am mentioning some of them.


My first favorite episode is actually Episode 2: Redefining “Trailing Spouse”. And the reason for this is not because I did an excellent job, it was obviously only the second episode I'd ever produced so it might even sound a bit rough, but it's because I tackled something that was really important to me and that was talking about and attempting to rename the term trailing spouse.


I didn't even know about that term until I had been an expat for a couple of years, and when I heard it, I was absolutely disgusted because it was disrespectful, disempowering, and denigrating. So I did my best to set about renaming it. And really thinking about this issue. I've since found that some people call us accompanying partners, and the most commonly used term is expat partner. But I still like C.I.P. or completely irreplaceable partner, as the long version, because I feel like it bestows the importance of what my position is.


And I would liken that to just as a CEO is integral to a company, a C.I.P. is an integral role to an expat family.


My next favorite episode I've already mentioned actually, and that’s Episode 5: Language is Key with Sissi Arellano. It's not only a favorite because we overcame the obstacle of having major technical difficulties with equipment and Internet and I was able to get it edited moderately well to try to get all of the sound quality to be reasonable. But also because Sissi talked about something that I really believe in, and that's how important it is to try to learn the language in the country that you are living in.


She shared her experience of learning Mandarin when she moved to China, and how helpful that was, and I have found the same, the more French that I'm learning here in France and the more Italian I learned in Italy. The more that I learned the more I could get to know the people around me. The more I could serve in my community, and that's something that means a lot to me.


The third episode of my favorites in this last year is Episode 8: Man of the House with Chris Buja. I love this episode for a couple of reasons. One, it was the first episode that I did with somebody that was not in the same country as myself. And two, Chris, who is a friend and former parent at the school where my kids go, offered a really great take of what it's like to be a CIP, from the male perspective.


My next favorite episode is Episode 16: Pregnancy and Childbirth Abroad with Abby Helms. I love this episode because it tackled a subject that is something that can be really challenging and scary to face as a woman, or in general as a family, when you're living abroad. And also, it was something that I had personally dealt with, but I loved getting her take on it, because it was fresher than mine and she had had twins. And it was just a lovely and encouraging and fun conversation overall.


OK, so here's the part where I kind of have a two for one deal. My next favorite episodes are episode 21 but more so episode 22, and that was my interview with Paris photographer Katie Donnelly. I mentioned episode 21 because that is the first part of the interview, but in Episode 22: Fighting Cancer While Living Abroad with Katie Donnelly, Katie was really candid and really open about her experience.


And I will be really honest to say that she is not the first expat that I have met that has fought cancer while living in a foreign country, and I just really appreciated her openness and her willingness to do the interview with me and try to help others. Katie was also the first person that wasn't a friend of mine that I was interviewing. And she had graciously met with me before we recorded just to make introductions and get to know one another. So I was really appreciative for her taking her time and sharing her story.


My next favorite episode from last year was Episode 31: Empowering Girls to Explore the World with Doni Belau. This episode is really cool to me because it was the first time that anybody had reached out to me in regards to being on the podcast. I since have had that happen a few more times, but haven't felt like the things that the people wanted to talk about aligned with the podcast and with this audience.


But I do feel like what Doni offers to women, definitely aligns with what I want to offer to women. Which is empowering them and encouraging them to travel and see the world. Now this podcast isn’t just for women, but Doni’s company does definitely focus on that and the way Girls’ Guide to the World does that is by offering trips where you can book it as a solo person, but not go alone. And I also really loved hearing about the amazing places that Doni had been to.


The next episodes that are probably my all-time favorites so far, is again an interview where I split into two full episodes, and actually a bonus episode later, and that was Episodes 43 and 44: International “Amour” with Heather Dawes.


You guys this interview was just so much fun to do. It was just an awesome conversation, and I laughed, and teared up, and I had the chills, and I could not believe the crazy stories that my friend Heather had to tell. And as I thinking about it, we actually had had technical difficulties again, because I couldn't get the interface to talk with my new computer, and it was just crazy, but Heather was so patient and I got it all lined out, and it ended up being really great!


And the final of my favorite episodes, within the last year or first year really I should say, of the life of the Expatriotical podcast, is Episode 52: Favorite Foods Since Becoming an Expat! I know that might seem silly, but y'all I had so much fun, not only remembering all of those foods and listing them out and then describing the stories and how I came to know the foods and what they tasted like, but also I had a blast doing the fake cooking show reel for Instagram! It was so much fun.


And those are my 10 favorite episodes from the first year of life for Expatriotical!


Now let's move onto today’s “Chan Select”. I'm really excited to share this one just because of the excellence of the service that I've gotten here, so thank you Claire, and also because of the wonderful community that has been built by going to this place.


It's called Durand Dupont or Le Durand Dupont if you want to be very technical and it's a restaurant located just outside the 17th arrondissement of Paris. And it's where I meet with a group of people to practice French in a safe and non judgmental environment.


Everytime we talk about a different subject, from favorite foods, to favorite books, to upcoming vacations, and we do our best to stay as much of it as we can in French. While we munch on croissants or pain au chocolat, drink Cafe au laits, or a cup of Earl Grey. The ambience of Durand Dupont with its soft warm lighting and its 1930s vibe is welcoming, the company is wonderful, and the food is delicious!


Even though I listed a bunch of breakfast things, the first time I ever went there was actually on a date with Chris, and we sat outside in their hidden terrace, and enjoyed an excellent dinner.


I will be sure to include Durand Dupont’s website in the show notes and as always, I am not an affiliate, just a fan!


And now for a “Quote of the Day”. I found this quote, because I was trying to find quotes about favorites, and though the quote says nothing directly about favorites, it’s implied and it does come from one of my favorite children's authors. His name was, Theodore Geisel, but you know him better as Dr. Seuss. And he said, “To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.”


That's it for today everyone! If you haven't yet taken the time to swing by my new website, please head over to expatriotical.com when you finish this episode and check it out. You can find links to all of the episodes, direct ways to contact me, and also the Expatriotical store.


Have a great rest of your day and I'll meet you back here again next week. Until then this is Chandra Alley reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical!