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
92 episodes
A German American Household & Life Abroad in China and Thailand: S11E4
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 bet...
Life Abroad in Thailand, the Czech Republic, and Mexico After Growing Up In A Chilean American Household:: S11E3
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, th...
From Immigrant Roots to Expat Life: Growing Up with Immigrant Parents and Living Abroad: S11E2
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 abo...
Montreal to Shanghai: A Greek Canadian Expat Story: S11E1
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...
Damon Castillo on Making Music, Letting Go, and Creating for Others: S10E5
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 th...
What It Feels Like to Return to Japan as a Japanese American: S10E4
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 (
California to Prague: Building an Online Life Across Countries: S10E3
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 Thail...
A Welsh Expat in Denmark: The Album That Helped Him Settle In: S10E2
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
Thomas Sandfield on Street Photography, Culture Shock, and His First Year in Hong Kong: S10E1
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.
Early podcasting in Spain and the UK with Pilar Orti and Craig Wealand: S9E4
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...
Expat Life in Nepal, Two Americans on Podcasting and Kathmandu: S9E3
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 cre...
Strong Sense of Place A Travel Podcast on Books That Bring Places to Life: S9E2
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...
An American Expat Podcaster in Freiburg on Building a Podcast Life in Germany: S9E1
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 re...
From Tokyo Kissaten to Paris Cafés, A Book Lover’s Coffee Life: S8E5
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 littl...
Vietnam Egg Coffee & Italian Espresso, A Canadian Expat’s Coffee Journey: S8E4
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, Ital...
An American Expat's Coffee Journey Through Germany, Prague, and the U.S: S8E3
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 medi...
The Philippines to Berlin, a Coffee Lover on Brewing and Farming: S8E2
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). The...
From Prague to Turkey, Italy, and Norway, an Expat’s Coffee Journey: S8E1
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 ...
Peace Corps in Albania and Bangkok: An American Couple on Learning Albanians: S7E7
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 ...
British Author in Kosovo on Learning Albanian and Language Differences Across Albania: S7E6
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 m...
American Linguists in Nepal on Nepali, Facebook, and Language Preservation: S7E5
If you've ever wondered what it's like to live and do linguistic research in Kathmandu, Nepal, this episode is for you! Big & White, their podcasting nicknames, are two American Linguists who, until very recently were living in Nepal and cr...
4 Language Learning Podcasters on Motivation, Accessibility, and Starting a Podcast: S7E4
On September 30, 2020 I was thrilled to lead a language learning Podcasters panel for International Podcast Day. You can watch the video of this panel on YouTube, https://youtu.be/hR8fr0Hapo0, OR you c...
German in America on Language Differences, Culture, and Everyday Communication: S7E3
In this episode, Steph Cook of Transcontinental Overload is kind enough to ponder 3 aspects of German that strike me (Geopats Steph) as strange. Her insights and humo(u)r about these differences is a sheer delight. You will never hear the Germa...
A Singaporean Writer in New York: Language, Identity, and Living Between Cultures: S7E2
As a writer and playright, words are what Jeremy Tiang uses to share his ideas about the world and all of its ambiguity. In his prose he addresses issues of identity, culture, and the boundaries of what we think these ...
A Chinese American on Cantonese, Mandarin, and the Emotions of Language Learning: S7E1
Liv is in an interesting language experience right now. She grew in New York City using Cantonese with her Southern Chinese mother and some Mandarin Chinese with her Taiwanese father. She then picked up Spanish and English in her diverse NYC en...