Global Girl Online

During the past fifteen years, I've been around the world and back again, and again, and again...

After living in India, my family returned to the country of our birth: Canada. It was the first time we had returned to Canada to live in fifteen years. We lasted about six months and through one horrific winter. Then we came to our senses and headed for a warmer climate.

So here we are in Texas, which also feels like home to us and we haven’t even lived here yet for a year. The US is comfortable to us. Our son was born in the US and we have spent ten of the last fifteen years relocating through five US states.

Last week, I attended a “spice-y” writing workshop in Houston.  It was hosted at the home of one of the women from the International Connections of Houston—an expat organization. After the workshop, there was time to chat with the ladies and to get to know them. They were telling me about ICH and assuming I was American, one of them said invitingly, “There are lots of Americans who have lived abroad and joined ICH upon repatriation.”

“I’m not American,” I said, just to set the record straight, “I’m Canadian.”

“Oh! Well, you’re an expat, then! Come and join us!”

Yes, I am an expat. Living in the US, sometimes that’s hard for me to remember. But it’s true. No matter how at ease I am, it’s not the country I was born in and I am not an American citizen.

I had the best day that day! Automatic acceptance by people I connected with immediately. These were my peeps. They didn’t even have to know me well, but we knew that we have had the same experiences and have gone through the same roller coaster of emotions over it.

It was that ah-ha moment that has recently given me a new clarity. It has given me my place here in Texas. And with my place has come a new project (of course, it has).

While I was living in Nova Scotia last year, my mentor had encouraged me to help other expat authors market their books through social media. I felt like it was a good idea and I wanted to do it but the pieces never really fit together properly for me. Between the Mom 2.0 Summit conference that I attended in February and the FIGT conference that I attended in March, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit rather nicely. At FIGT, I found myself with two of the most clever and creative, business-minded, 'trail-blazing' mentors. I am, indeed, a lucky girl.

And so, that’s how Global Girl™ Online was born. An online community that gives women a global platform to connect with other expats, shine a spotlight on their products and promote their businesses. It’s a central online meeting place for networking, sharing ideas, promoting ‘expatpreneurs’ and supporting our global community.

I’m very excited to put fellow expats and their work in the global spotlight! I hope my virtual expat friends out there will join me in doing so.

NXSEWWV7WAZK

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Author to Author interview. Jo Parfitt interviews Danielle Barkhouse, author of The Expat Arc

Those people who once would have journalled or written countless letters home as a way of documenting their experiences in a new country now turn to blogging. Canadian, Danielle Barkhouse, is no exception. Only she turned the blog about her life in Chennai, India into a blook (no, that is not a typo). When a blog becomes a book it is called a blook. The blog at Earthtodanie became The Expat Arc, and Danie published it herself through CreateSpace. She markets it using social media. Find out how her book was born and how no one is as surprised to have become an author than Danie, herself.

Danie expatriated from Canada fifteen years ago, ‘trailing’ her husband through twelve moves for his job with a multinational manufacturing company. She has enjoyed traveling, taking photographs and geocaching in the 20 countries she has visited. Having lived in four nations, they recently returned from India and call Texas “home” with their third-culture son and their third-culture golden retriever.

JP

Tell me about your own story, the one that is the basis for your book. Can you describe it in just a few sentences? To show that a book has focus it is vital that it can be described briefly and succinctly.

DB

The Expat Arc: an expat’s journey over culture shock is my personal journey through our first year of living in India. Written in an as-it-happens blog format, readers follow me through a whole range of first-time experiences and a roller coaster of emotions. Without the benefit of retrospect, I wrote an honest portrayal of culture shock from within it.

JP

Why did you write it?

DB

The blog started as a place where I could share India as I was experiencing it, with my family. My audience grew to include expats from around the world. And although they weren’t in all in India, they seemed to relate to my stories.

For someone who had always hated writing in school, writing a book was not on my life’s to-do list. The more I did it, though, the more I enjoyed it, and the more I needed to do it. I began receiving feedback and comments, urging me to publish my stories into a book. Initially, I put the blog posts into a book so I would have a bound copy as a souvenir to share with family. When I found a print-on-demand self-publishing option that didn’t cost me anything upfront but my time, I figured I had nothing to lose, so I published it.

Apology to Fellow Foodies

Have you ever recommended a restaurant to someone and they go there and then they tell you they didn't like it?  And you're all confused and thinking how can our friendship ever be the same and maybe we should break up because you clearly don't recognize good food when a waiter drops it on the table in front of you!?

I'm on my knees, ever-so-humbly begging forgiveness from anyone to which I've recommended a restaurant.  I've committed horrible sins that no self-proclaimed foodie should ever commit.

When we lived in India, there was an American diner called Sparky's.  We met the owner on our house hunting trip and he said to us, "You won't like the food here tonight, but wait until you've lived here for a while, that'll be the best burger in town."  He was absolutely right.  We had recommended Sparky's to people who were just arriving in town and they hated it.  I'm sure it grew on them in time, though.

JB just returned from Singapore.  A year and a half ago, he loved going to Singapore.  He always hit up the California Pizza Kitchen and the Black Angus Steakhouse when he was in town.  After being back in North America for a year and a half, those restaurants held little appeal to him and he thought the food was terrible.

It's all relative.

During the time that we lived in England, we travelled to Venice, Italy and had the most amazing 10th Wedding Anniversary dinner at Hostaria da Franz.  We later recommended it to the parents of our friends who were planning on going to Venice.  The delta between the food in England and Italy was apparently somewhat greater than the food in the US and Italy.  They didn't enjoy it all.

So, back to my apology.  If I have recommended a restaurant to you in the past and you hated it--I'm sorry.  I can only chalk it up to the relativity of our different experiences and the delta between the food where each of us were residing and the restaurant food (that I loved and you may have hated).

But then again, I never met a menu I didn't like.

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Happy 3rd Birthday ExpatWomen.com!

Dear Expat Women.com,

If I could sing a la Marilyn Monroe, I'd belt out a breathy version of Happy Birthday for you.  Unfortunately, you'll just have to use your imagination on that one--but the thought and the love is there.

It seems like yesterday that you were taking your first baby steps.  My!  How quickly you've grown in just three years!

You have become the most comprehensive, global website for helping women who are living overseas. Your site displays 1,000+ content pages, 1,000+ expat women blogs, 200+ readers' stories, invaluable country resource pages, interviews with successful expat women, loads of motivational articles and an inspirational blog and newsletter.

A very happy birthday to you and best wishes for even more success in the years to come!

Danie Barkhouse

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Jo Parfitt's Review of The Expat Arc

I should be far more professional and suave about this but I can't even pretend to be that cool.

I'm so excited and so thrilled by Jo Parfitt's review of my book, The Expat Arc. That's right.  I said--Jo. Parfitt. As in Expat Entrpreneur and A Career in Your Suitcase.

Yeah!  That Jo Parfitt.

Here is her review as posted today on her blog at http://www.joparfitt.com...

from blog to blook

By Jo Parfitt, on January 11th, 2010

Everyone knows that if you plan to write a book yourself you need to check out the competition. You need to read books like the one you are going to write to find out what works and what doesn’t, to get ideas and be motivated by the fact that if someone else can do it why can’t you? On my blog I like to draw your attention to every book that I think will inspire my students, mentees and readers. As I have lived abroad for 22 years and believe in writing about what I know it makes sense that expat living has become my specialism. Further, because of the knock-on effect, many of my clients are writing such books too. So, now it’s time I told you about Danielle Barkhouse’s Expat Arc.

Robin Pascoe, expat expert and author of many books on living abroad, recommended this book to me and I have to admit that I was suspicious to hear it was a blook. That’s a blog turned into a book, complete with photographs. I expected to find a book that was lightweight and filled with LOLs, asterisks and other incomprehensible acronyms. I was wrong. What I found was a deep and insightful read about a very real relocation to Chennai by a totally honest and very witty Canadian. Written to stay connected with her family what Danie Barkhouse found was a following of others keen to learn about her move and, through her many links to Wikipedia and other sources of further reading, meanwhile she created a wonderful resource on how to survive in India. Snakes, monsoons, traffic and handling domestic staff are among her many typical experiences and her accounts tell it how it is, showing Danie in her true colours. In addition, her candid account of her culture shock and eventual acculturation will provide many readers with a valuable insight into the reality of being a trailing spouse. As one myself, having lived in Dubai, Oman, Norway and the Netherlands, I could empathise, even though in my 22 years abroad I have only ever seen one snake.

Danie’s book is a great example of someone who:

• writes about real life
• writes honestly
• can write humour
• adds character and dialogue
• adds lots of useful resources
• shares her emotion

As an editor myself I have to confess that I would have liked the book to have had a rigorous proofread, and as a fussy so and so I would have liked the entries to be dated and evenly spaced so I could keep track, but that’s just me being picky. Read it for yourself and see what you think. and while you are at it you can follow Danie on Twitter at ExpatArc. Her website is www.daniellebarkhouse.com

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