The Expat Wife: A Journey through Countries, Cultures, and Emotions

By Alki Economou

Do you ever dream about how amazing it might be to live the jet-setting life of an expat wife? Well, it's not all it's cracked up to be according to author Alki Economou who lived just that. 

In 

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781636760179

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The Expat Wife

The Expat Wife

A Journey through Countries, Cultures, and Emotions

Alki Economou

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2020 Alki Economou

All rights reserved.

The Expat Wife

A Journey through Countries, Cultures, and Emotions

ISBN

978-1-63676-501-3 Paperback

978-1-63676-016-2 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63676-017-9 Ebook

To my dad for showing me the beauty and magic of books.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Part 1.

NEW YORK

Chapter 1.

MOVING TO NEW YORK CITY

Chapter 2.

LIFE IN WHITE PLAINS

Chapter 3.

SOMERS

Chapter 4.

MOM’S FIRST VISIT

Chapter 5.

TRIP TO GUATEMALA

Chapter 6.

DEALING WITH EMERGENCIES

Chapter 7.

MORE VACATION TIME

Chapter 8.

BACK TO SOMERS

Part 2.

PUERTO RICO

Chapter 9.

MOVING TO PUERTO RICO

Chapter 10.

DORADO BEACH 

Chapter 11.

FIRST SIX MONTHS IN PUERTO RICO 

Chapter 12.

FINDING HOME

Chapter 13.

AN UNEXPECTED RETURN TO GREECE 

Part 3.

ATHENS

Chapter 14.

GOING BACK

Chapter 15.

HOUSES AND HOSPITALS

Chapter 16.

HOME FOR GOOD

Chapter 17.

MOTHERLESS

Chapter 18.

NO REST, STILL

Part 4.

MADRID

Chapter 19.

COMING TO MADRID 

Chapter 20.

HEALTH TROUBLES

Chapter 21.

THE TAX EQUALIZATION

Chapter 22.

MADRID LIVING

Chapter 23.

BEGINNING OF THE END

Chapter 24.

TO MADRID AND AWAY

Part 5.

MILAN

Chapter 25.

UNDERCOVER IN MILAN 

Chapter 26.

LEAVING MADRID FOR GOOD

Chapter 27.

FINALLY, MILAN

Chapter 28.

DEPRESSION AND REDISCOVERY

Chapter 29.

A BLOCKED ACCOUNT

Chapter 30.

FUN AND SORROW

Chapter 31.

HOSPITAL STAY

Chapter 32.

EMPTY NEST

Chapter 33.

THE END

Acknowledgments

Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.

—Thomas M. Cirignano

INTRODUCTION

If you had a job that paid you as much as your spouse’s, a great career ahead of you, a house of your own, and your mother living next door helping you out with daily chores, would you give it all up and move four thousand miles away? That’s what I did. Then I did it again, and again, and again. Was it the right thing to do? Did it pay off? Would I do it again? 

My story starts long before this. I grew up in Athens, Greece, in an affluent suburb close to the sea. My father was a doctor, and my mother was a banker until she stopped working when I was ten. I moved to Chicago in 1991 to pursue an MBA at Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. Upon graduating, I moved back to Greece and began working at Citibank. I quickly moved up the ranks, and by 2001 I was head of personal banking. Then, one day, my husband came home and told me he had been offered a position in New York.

At the time, my husband was working at Colgate-Palmolive. We had two young children—our son was three and our daughter was just six months old. We were living next to my mother, who helped take care of the kids while we were both at work. We also had our community of friends we had known for years. I had always been self-motivated, and I enjoyed having my own salary and economic independence. I didn’t mind working long hours. Every challenge was just an obstacle to overcome, not a roadblock. For a long time, my work was my proudest achievement. 

However, after my kids were born my priorities started to shift. Every extra hour I spent at the office was an hour I wasn’t spending with them. My son had learned my phone number by heart, and he would call me at the office and ask when I was coming home. So, when the opportunity came to move to New York, we decided to take it. It was a big promotion for my husband, and I was proud of him. It also gave me the perfect opportunity to spend all of my time with my kids. When Citibank offered to find me a job in New York, I turned them down. My kids were too young, and I didn’t want to leave them in daycare all day just so I could pursue my career. So, I resigned.

Living abroad gave me the perfect excuse to stop working and focus on my family. After eighteen years of moving around and not working, I found the satisfaction and happiness that came from focusing on my family was no longer there. I had lost track of who I was. I lived through others and for them. When I was working, I would receive positive feedback and compensation. As an expat wife, I never heard a thank you or a well done. Everything I did was taken for granted. But every time I caught myself having these thoughts, I would think, Didn’t I know what I was signing up for? The problem is, I didn’t.

Before starting this journey, I had always thought the expat life was luxurious and easy. I had heard from friends that expats lived in big houses, had drivers and housekeepers, and went from party to party without a worry in the world. Everything was taken care of for them by their companies. I quickly learned the real expat life was nothing like this. With each move, I had to pack and unpack my things, find a new house, and start over.

I learned new languages, new customs, new roads, and new shortcuts for rush hour. Every little detail that made up my everyday life had to be reinvented multiple times. The little coffee shop just around the corner or the small deli open late, the vet for our dogs or the pediatrician for my kids—each one of these things changed with each move, and every time I had to search for a new one. Every time we got settled in, we would move again, and the game of musical chairs would start all over. 

Don’t get me wrong, the expat experience has given me some great memories as well. Along the way I’ve met some fabulous people—both expats and locals—who I hope to stay in contact with for the rest of my life. I’ve met people who have opened their homes and their hearts to me and my family. There are some people who I might never meet again, but who have changed our lives for the better because of their kindness and genuine concern in helping us.

Throughout these eighteen years, every time I shared one of the many stories of my expat life with a friend, I would always get the same reply: You have to write a book. So, here I am, doing exactly that. I began to work with a life coach, and the experience made me realize I wanted to share my story with as many people as I could reach, helping some, entertaining others, and most importantly making myself visible again. The idea of writing my story came up during our conversations and I initially started writing this book as a form of self-therapy. Just writing these stories made me realize how many things I have achieved, even if I didn’t receive any recognition for them. I also realized if I hadn’t done all the tough work of packing and moving, this adventure would have never happened.

Sometime ago I reconnected with an old friend from my time at Kellogg. We hadn’t talked in twenty-five years, so there was a lot of catching up to do. I told him about my expat life and how I had resigned from my banking career to support my family. I ended with, I don’t currently work, which has been my go-to comment for the last eighteen years. He replied, What you said about not working doesn’t seem right to me. I know what the expat life means, moving the whole family, changing houses and schools. To me, it seems you’ve actually worked a lot!

This is the story of almost twenty years of my life: living in different countries, making new friends, and learning new languages, rituals, and traditions. I had to learn the tax system in more countries than I would like to admit, talk to customer service representatives in languages I had barely started learning, find new supermarkets, and discover the one special food my kids always loved. I had bad times and good times. I cried a lot and laughed a lot.

From my research, I realized we’ve really done things differently than most expats. While most maintain a house in their home country, go back for the holidays, and keep their traditions and customs with them wherever they go, we sold our home in Greece, didn’t return for all local holidays, and adopted customs from every place we’ve lived in. We celebrate Thanksgiving despite not being American, we sing the Puerto Rican version of Happy Birthday, we eat the twelve grapes every New Year’s Eve like they do in Spain, and we enjoy an Aperitivo in the evening.  

I have wondered many times, Where’s home? If someone asks me what my nationality is, I know I’m Greek. That’s where I was born and where I grew up. It’s where I lived for the first twenty-five years of my life. I love going back to Greece and spending time there with my friends. However, I don’t mind when I get on the plane and leave again. I don’t feel a deeper pull to live in Greece.

I feel at home in all of the places we’ve lived, and I often comment on how I could go back and live there forever. But when I pause to consider this, I don’t know if it would be the same. I love each place, and I know its hidden stores, small streets, and shortcuts to school. I know how to get around New York, Madrid, or Milan without ever looking at a map. But I also know life has moved on in these places. Some of my friends don’t live there anymore. Others have moved to a new house or changed jobs. A lot of my life was organized around my kids’ school, and they’ve both graduated. In the end, what I’ve taken away from the expat experience is: Home isn’t where you are, but who you’re there with. For me, home is where my family is. 

With this book I invite you to take my journey with me. It hasn’t always been tough, and it hasn’t always been easy. But it was interesting, to say the least. I have made friends I love dearly, my kids have really grown to become citizens of the world, my husband got the experience and exposure he wanted, and I am here today to tell this story. There were times I thought it wasn’t worth it and times I was overjoyed and as happy as one can be. I managed to live without things I previously deemed necessary and found meaning in ideas previously unknown to me. I packed and moved more than I thought I could handle. Yet I did it all, and now I’m here today to share these stories with you.

PART I -

NEW YORK

Chapter 1

MOVING TO NEW YORK CITY

It was January 10, 2002. Everything was ready and packed. The plane was leaving in a few hours and it finally sunk in: I was leaving my mom behind. I’m an only child and my mother was seventy-five years old with Parkinson’s disease. How the hell could I do this?

With the exception of the two years I lived in Evanston, Illinois, for my MBA, I had spent most of my life in the same neighborhood in Glyfada, a suburb close to the sea outside Athens, Greece. I grew up on number eight of my street and when I got married, I moved in next door at number ten. My house was connected to my parents’ house by a corridor, so in reality, we didn’t even have to go out on the street to visit each other. This proved especially helpful after the birth of my kids. Early in the morning when I was exhausted and one of the babies woke up, my mom was next door to help me out. Late in the evenings when I was tired after work, a pot of hot food was always ready on our table, compliments of my mom. While I was working and my kids were taken care of by the nanny, my mom would always pop in and make sure everyone was safe, providing me peace of mind.

Now we were moving, not to another house or neighborhood, but to another continent. We were moving to New York, relocating with my husband’s company. We were starting our expat journey. I asked my mother so many times to come live with us in New York. It would have made things so much better for her and for me. She refused. She didn’t want to impose on us due to her health condition, and she really loved her house and routine.

When the actual moving day arrived, she was devastated. Seeing her like that, I started having second thoughts: What am I doing? Why am I doing this? How can I do it? I just wanted to stay there, cancel everything, and continue with life as I knew it. I was always so close to my parents and that was the life I had known for thirty-five years. Leaving all my comfort behind and starting from scratch was a huge leap of faith. But I did it. I was motivated and enthusiastic. Nothing could hold me back.

I was convinced this was the right move for us and was sure my mom would come to her senses. Why would she choose to live alone when she could be living with us? 

My son, Aristotle, was three-and-a-half years old and my daughter, Danai, was eleven months old. My mother-in-law, Billie, came with us to help in the beginning while we would be looking for a house, furniture, and so on.

We all flew together from Athens to JFK. Colgate, the company for which my husband, Konstantinos, was working at the time, had organized a pick-up for us at the airport upon landing. We had informed them we would need a big car to drive us to our temporary apartment. We were five people and had ten suitcases, so we were expecting a minivan or something of the sort. Instead, a huge stretch limo was waiting for us, much to the kids’ excitement. 

The company had provided us with temporary lodging, which was a furnished apartment on East 32nd Street in Manhattan. It had two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The best feature of the apartment was the view of the Empire State Building from the small kitchen window. At night I would pick the kids up in my hands and show them the view, explaining where in the world we were.

Being the clean freak I am, the moment we stepped foot in the door I ran to the grocery store around the corner, bought cleaning materials despite being jet-lagged after a ten-hour flight and cleaned the whole apartment. The drawers were dirty, the kitchen cupboards had leftovers, and the living room had dust. I couldn’t enjoy it until everything was as I wanted it to be.

That first night in New York City, despite the fact we were on the thirty-first floor, we hardly slept. I don’t know if it was from the excitement or from not being used to the city’s noises, like the sirens passing underneath our window and the garbage truck collection at 5 a.m. 

Slowly, as the days passed, everything became real for me. I’m in New York, in the heart of the city, I can walk to Grand Central or to the Empire State building, I can turn the corner and have dinner at a great little Mexican restaurant or go two streets up to have a ten-dollar manicure! I took the kids to FAO Schwartz and spent hours there, went to the Central Park Zoo to watch the animals, and to the Museum of Natural History to see the huge whale exhibit. I was at the center of the world!

My daughter’s first birthday was celebrated in New York City in our temporary apartment by the four of us and my mother-in-law. I still hadn’t gotten used to the huge American sizes, and finding a small cake proved almost impossible. In the end, at a small pastry shop where a tiny cake cost as much as two huge supermarket ones, I found what I was looking for. It was cute, tasty, and the one candle looked perfect in its center.

Despite never having had a close relationship with my mother-in-law, her coming with us to New York to help with the move gave us the peace of mind to do things like focus on daily chores, find a house, and open a bank account. In short, her being there allowed us to do everything that one needs to do to start a new life in a new place.

My husband had a week off before starting work, and we dedicated that time to finding a house. The company had assigned some real estate agents to help us in our endeavor. In theory, we should have had a relocation agency working with us, helping us pick the best place to live, explaining how the real estate market worked in the US with regard to school districts and how real estate taxes depended on them. 

They should have assisted us by explaining the healthcare system, telling us who we should call in case of an emergency and who we could trust to babysit our kids.