Geopats Life Abroad : Chats with expats, immigrants, and locals
Geopats Abroad is about what helps us feel grounded while lin our life abroad. For eight years of my serial expat life, I interviewed people about the things that helped them understand, adjust to, and feel more connected to the places they were living. The original Geopats Abroad podcast ended in 2022, but the conversations still hold up. This Substack is where I’m bringing that archive back to life. Living Abroad, Culture, Identity, and Belonging I’m tidying up the older episodes to make them easier to find and listen to because more and more people are making the leap to living outside their passport country. In these conversations, you’ll find stories from expats, immigrants, international students, long-term travelers, and people whose lives don’t fit neatly into one place. The driving force of the podcast is my own curiosity and desire to connect with other internationals globally. This isn’t just an audio project, a podcast, a YouTube channel, or a Substack. It’s a very personal project. It’s part of who I am and who I was while recording these conversations. Some episodes are practical. Others are deeply personal. Most explore the small and big things that help us make sense of a new place and feel more at home in it. What Geopats Abroad Explores Each season of Geopats Abroad approaches getting comfortable in our new places from a different angle. Season 1: Guests looked back at something they had written during an earlier period of living abroad, including emails, blog posts, and social media posts, and reflected on how they saw that experience differently later. Seasons 2 and 3: Language learning. Season 2 focused on foreigners learning Mandarin Chinese, while Season 3 featured native Chinese speakers talking about learning English and other languages. Seasons 4 and 5: Online communities that helped people feel more connected and at home in a new place. Season 6: Books that helped people understand the places they were living in. Season 7: Conversations about learning languages other than Chinese. Season 8: Coffee and the role it can play in connecting to a place. Season 9: Podcasting globally: how it’s similar and different. And of course, how it can connect us to each other in our new culture. Season 10: A mixed season covering music, photography, returning home, and other parts of life abroad. Season 11: Immigrant kids who later became expats, exploring how growing up between cultures shaped the way they experienced living abroad as adults. About Stephanie Fuccio: Serial Expat Since 2003 I’m Stephanie Fuccio. I’ve mostly been living and working outside the U.S. since 2003 and have lived in Asia, Latin America, and Europe during this time. My own experiences with culture shock, identity, belonging, language, and building a life abroad shaped many of the questions behind Geopats Abroad. The podcast grew from my curiosity about what helps people feel grounded in a new place, how we build connection far from where we started, and how living abroad changes the way we understand home, culture, identity, and ourselves. Geopats is my ongoing archive of those conversations.
Episodes
Have you ever wondered why your immigrant parent(s) didn't prepare you for being a global citizen?
Chelsea thought this when she was struggling in her first expat place. Over time she began to understand the distinct difference between her mother's immigrant experience and her expat one. In this conversation, we unpack the lasting impression that Chelsea's mom had on her expat life and which influences ...
How much do our immigrant parents impact our adult expat experiences? This is what we're exploring in this conversation with return guest Alison.
Alison and I dig into growing up with two unequal cultures in one household, the racial struggles she's seen in many countries during her years living outside of her passport country of the U.S. and her coming to terms with the differences between her mo...
Questions about family can be triggering if the experience was not ideal. This is one of the reasons that Steph's talked about her family in tiny drips here and there but not in depth. But it felt disingenuous to ask other expats to open up about their early family life growing up with immigrant parents without diving into these experiences herself. So to help with this tabled turned interview, Melissa was kind enou...
Have your immigrant parents ever visited you in any of your expat places? Georges' parents have and it shifted how he understood their struggles moving from Greece to Canada. We cover a lot more ground on his parents' immigrant story and how it has both positively and negatively influenced his own expat experience.
Original publication date: July 28, 2022
This episode is really special for me. Last month for NaPodPoMo I had the extreme pleasure of chatting with Damon Castillo for this episode. Yes, THE Damon Castillo of the Mess of Me album that we've been using for the past 2 years in all of the Geopats Podcast Network shows. We talk about the longevity of the Damon Castillo Band, his geopatness, my favorite song on the Mess of Me Album (Saint Cecilia), his recordin...
Ken Hirano was born in Japan but his family moved to the U.S. before he started school. He returned to Japan to live a few times in his life, and now is one of them. He moved back to Tokyo about a year ago and recently (wrote a post on LinkedIn) on this geographic anniversary about his cultural and language identity. And that is what we are digging into today.
This identity path took us through how he feels in ...
Alison Maciejewski made me think long and hard about food photos in our shifting expat lives. How does our wanderlust come through online? But the conversation is not all serious, we have some fun comparing emoji options on Line (in Thailand) and WeChat (in China), what and where “ugly delicious food” is, and how using teen dramas are a good way to learn the Thai language.
original publication date:...
Has a song ever carried you through a rough time in your life? That's exactly what happened to British international Karl when he moved to Denmark.
original publication date: November 12, 2018
📬 Traveling abroad long-term? Traveling Mailbox gives you a permanent US mailing address you can access from anywhere: https://travelingmailbox.com/geopats/?ref=3422
Can you imagine taking 35,000 photos in one year? Photographer Thomas Sandfield did this his first year in Hong Kong. Join us on this Expat Rewind show for a flashback to this first year as an expat for Thomas and all the flicker fun he had.
Original publication date: September 4, 2018
Thomas Sandfield: https://www.instagram.com/thomassandfield
📬 Traveling abroad long-term? Traveling Mailbox gives you a permanent US m...
Language podcaster Craig is from the UK but has been podcasting in Spain for many years. Alternatively business podcaster Pilar has the opposite geographical podcasting experience being from Spain and podcasting from the UK for a long time. And yet they found each other and created a podcast about the scene in Spain some years ago. In this conversation with Craig and Pilar we dig into what they learned about podcast...
If you've ever wondered what it's like to live, work, and podcast in Kathmandu, Nepal, this episode are for you!
Big & White, their podcasting nicknames, are two American Linguists who, until very recently were living in Nepal and creating a rather hilarious audio account of their daily lives. Their episodes covered much of what expat podcasts cover like food, weather, language, and cultural differences but there...
David Humphreys and Melissa Joulwan are the hosts of Strong Sense of Place, a podcast and web site dedicated to literary travel and books with vivid settings. In each episode of their show, they explore one destination and talk about what makes that place different from everywhere else on earth. Then they recommend books set in that destination and talk to a special guest.
Original publication date: March 6, 2020
What do you do as an expat when your life goal is to collect and share experiences and information? You start a podcast! And that is exactly what American expat in Germany Nicole Palazzo did just after her first year in Freiburg, Germany. We recorded this mini episode on the new Podbean Live app, which was in Beta version. There were some technical issues but we pushed through and I think there is so much useful and...
Yuki and I sat down to have this conversation far too long ago. Life has been crazy and, to be honest, I even stopped drinking coffee for awhile. So it felt weird publishing this episode during that time. But things feel a little more frothy these days, so here it is! And here SHE is:)
Yuki has sought out, enjoyed and brewed coffee in many locations globally. She's more known for her Book Nerd Tokyo Instagram account...
Erin and I met in Vietnam many years ago, the place where both of our coffee obsession hit a peak, so it only made sense to have her on the podcast. In this episode we dive into her coffee explorations in Australia, many countries in Asia, Italy and Canada.
Original publication date: July 24, 2020
📬 Traveling abroad long-term? Traveling Mailbox gives you a permanent US mailing address you can access from anywhe...
Travis lived in Germany and the Czech Republic for 20 years and podcasts about history on podcastnik.com. After talking about alchemy and witches as a ghost-tour guide in Prague, he teamed up with Pete Collman to figure out podcasting as a medium to tell stories from history. Travis has a long and complicatedly long adoration with coffee that started in his childhood upbringing in Germany. Now, he now lives in Orego...
Marielle is a Data Scientist in Berlin. She is also a long-distance coffee farmer because her family started a coffee farm in our ancestral home in the Philippines (in Mankayan, Benguet). They practice organic and sustainable Agroforestry and they hope to one day export their coffee through a transparent supply chain.
Original publication date: February 29, 2020
Ana Blackstad has experienced coffee culture in so many different places that I ran out of ink during our chat yesterday. Okay, I might be exaggerating a bit but seriously, Ana moved to Prague, Czech Republic only 3 years ago but she has made the caffeinated most out of her time there by exploring both local Prague cafes (many of which are listed down below) and those in neighboring countries like Italy, Greece, the...
Two Americans who barely traveled before the Peace Corps ended up mastering Albanian, building lives in tiny towns, and falling for a place that completely changed how they see themselves. Their stories about learning Albanian in real Albanian villages, picking up slang and dialects, switching between Albanian and Greek, and figuring out daily expat life through immersion and community are wild, and honestly it remi...
Language can be a lens into culture, a way to share our experiences and a tool to help others. These are some of the aspects of language that we discuss with guest Elizabeth Gowing. She worked in primary education in inner London before moving to the Balkans in 2006. From then until very recently she split her time between Kosovo, Albania and the UK. During her time in the Balkans she immersed herself in many ...
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.