Welcome to The Expat Diaries!
Where every week, you’ll get to meet someone who has moved from their home country to a different country where they started a whole new life.
You’ll find 👇🏼
🌎 Interviews. Conversations with people who’ve moved abroad about where they moved, why they moved, and what happened next. Some conversations are funny. Some are chock full of helpful advice. Some stories will break your heart and some will inspire you to have your own adventure abroad.
🌎 NEW (in July): “Dear Me, From Here: Letters to Our Past Selves.” A monthly guest essay series, featuring writers from around the world sharing heartfelt, honest, and sometimes hilarious letters to their pre-move abroad self. The surprises, the lessons, and the moments they'd love to share with their younger selves about what happened after the crossed the border.
🌎 NEW-ish: Personal essays (from me). Occasional posts about my personal experience living in Portugal (where I am now). And probably some stories about when I lived in Vietnam or the year or so when I was housesitting around Europe or any of the random other places I visited and put down a security deposit on an apartment when I was trying to figure out where to settle.
🌎 TOTALLY NEW (in July): Monthly book club. So we can read and discuss a variety of life-abroad-memoirs. Because if you’re anything like me, these kinds of books are what get me really dreaming about living somewhere new. And also? Because how fun would a life-abroad-memoirs book club be! Super fun, I think.
If you’re contemplating (or in the middle of) a life-changing overseas move, come and be part of this.
It’s a whole lot of everything you want to know about moving abroad (and sometimes moving back). And a great way to connect with people all over the world who are dreaming and planning and doing exactly this.
How Much is a Subscription and What Do You Get?
A subscription is $5 each month or $50 for the year.
💌 Free subscribers get all of the newsletters in their inbox every Saturday. Including: the interviews, the “Dear Me, From Here” letters, my personal essays, and a summary with my thoughts on the monthly book club memoir.
💌 Paid subscribers get all of that. Plus:
Exclusive access to the interview recordings. Which means you’ll get to watch the full video or listen to the entire conversation on podcast, including the parts that aren’t included in the newsletter.
Exclusive access to the private, paid subscribers only Book Club. Where we meet on the last Sunday of the month over Zoom to hang out and talk about the memoir we read that month. You also get a say in choosing the book we’ll read. Cocktails and snacks are not included, but encouraged.
Who am I?
I’m an American, currently living in Portugal.
I first left the US in August 2007 for Italy. I ended up back in the US a few months later due to a family matter and my complete inability to convince the Italian authorities to give me a residency permit.
I left again in May of 2016 and landed in Thailand (temporarily). Then Cambodia (even more temporarily). Before finding home in Hoi An, Vietnam.
I decided to leave Vietnam when it became abundantly clear to me that ❶ I was never going to be able to communicate in Vietnamese. And ❷ the climate was unsuitable to my menopausal super flashes. To say I was sad to go is an understatement.
I’ve been living in my super cute apartment in a little city by the sea in Portugal since 2020 and have no plans to leave any time soon.
I started this newsletter after reading so many posts on so many expat social media pages from people thinking of making the leap and asking these same kinds of questions. I hope this newsletter is helpful to you if you’re moving abroad or thinking of moving abroad.
And whether you are or aspire to be an expat or not, I hope you’re inspired by reading the stories of people who dared to leave home, hoping to find home.
