I was born, grew up and completed my studies in Moscow. After graduation, I started my career in management consulting where I spent 12 years traveling around the globe, working for global companies like Nestle Food, InBev, Accenture and Deloitte. My projects were focused on SAP and ERP implementation. In 2008, I decided to relocate to Dubai which has since become my base city and home for life. My last assignment as a management consultant was in an IT project (CWE) for Shell Iraq between 2012 and 2014. In 2014, I was diagnosed with a disc bulge. I suffered from sharp lower back pain for around a year, I couldn’t sit or move and eventually was forced to leave my corporate career. I had been visiting a chiropractor and physio on a weekly basis with very little success.

At this point, I started my own research looking for alternative ways to remediate my ailment as I desperately wanted to have my normal life back. This is when I first read about Pilates. I had never done a Pilates class before and didn’t understand how it could be beneficial. Hard to believe now, but I once thought that Pilates was some kind of infomercial fitness thing, that it wasn’t “real”.

After a few months, practicing Pilates became my healthy habit and I felt stronger day after day. In 2016, I decided to sign up for my first instructor training course in Dubai. Initially, this decision was driven by the desire to gain a greater understanding of how my body worked and ultimately, to manage my back pain. Coming from the corporate world, I hadn’t considered being a Pilates instructor until I discovered how many people around me were suffering from different kinds of trauma and health conditions related to bad posture. Requests from my family members, ex colleagues and friends started pouring in – they all needed help to ease their chronic or occasional back pain. Sharing my knowledge and being able to actually make a difference felt so rewarding and powerful.

In 2018, my husband got a job offer in Brunei and we moved here in early 2019 with our 2-month-old daughter. Being a new mum, in a new country, coming from Middle East to Asia – it was not an easy change for me. It took a while to settle down and accept these changes, starting from different climate and infrastructure to different lifestyle and food. While I had to stop teaching Pilates to be a full-time mum for my daughter, I never stopped practicing Pilates myself, almost daily. When my daughter turned one, I contemplated teaching again, but was unsure how to introduce myself to a new community, especially considering that at that point I hadn’t taught any classes for more than a year. That was when the amazing Panaga expat community gave me lots of encouragement and support. I will be forever thankful for this! When people found out I was a Pilates instructor, I got many requests to start classes. With the encouragement and enthusiasm from my friends, I managed to come back to my Pilates teaching practice in no time. In hindsight, this was a key moment in my career as Pilates teacher. It helped me realize that I can teach anywhere in the world and with the same success.

I am currently dedicating 2 to 3 hours per day teaching Pilates, focusing on private or semi-private sessions. Majority of my clients suffer from legacy back injuries and I find it very rewarding introducing them to the rehabilitative benefits of Pilates. A lot of what they learn in my classes can be applied to their daily lives. It is always heartwarming to receive feedback from my clients – from those who came to me struggling but can now sit at a desk pain-free or those who have now reached their movement or sporting goals. I have certifications in Pilates mat, reformer, pre/post-natal, injuries and special populations. Last year, I also completed my Barre instructor course – Barre is a cardio combination of Pilates and dance elements which I am now incorporating into my classes.

I love talking to people and encouraging them to obtain a fitness instructor certification and ultimately become a fitness instructor themselves (not necessary Pilates, but yoga, dance, anything you have a passion for). You don’t have to be skinny, well-coordinated or super fit. Nor do you need to be a fitness expert. The only real prerequisite is that you’re good with people and that you want to learn! Becoming a Pilates instructor is one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself and my career, and I would encourage anyone to follow their passion as you never know what doors it may open. If you are someone who loves fitness and wants to explore a new career path, I think it’s a great opportunity for you as well! Passion, more than anything else, is what makes a great teacher. It is fun, interesting, keeps you moving, and you can help change lives. It also allows you to set your own hours, work part time if you choose, combine it with other jobs, passions, or commitments, just like I do. You have the opportunity to be your own boss, which means you control your work-life balance in exactly the way you want.

A portable career is what many of us need and, although it started as a way to remedy my own health issues, I am so glad I was able to discover mine!

 

Ekaterina Lalji grew up and completed her studies in Moscow. Her 12 year career in IT projects working for multiple international companies took her around the world. In 2008 she moved to Dubai which became her home for life. Ekaterina currently lives in Brunei with her husband and 3-year-old daughter. She is focusing on teaching Pilates part time and doing family and commercial photography. Her hobbies include real estate and interior design.

I knew repatriation would be difficult. I knew because we’d done it before. But it was time.

With retirement age looming and parents ageing we realised our next move would probably be ‘home’ and so, last September we took the overnight ferry from the Hoek van Holland to Harwich for the last time. After the best part of three decades overseas I knew I had changed. No longer 100% British, I’d picked up the best bits of every country we’d live in and the wonderful people we’d met along the way and shed the bits of Britishness that no longer served me. Sure, I still say “sorry” way too much and begin my requests with, “Would it be too much trouble if…?” but I now consider myself an International, A Third Culture Adult and dreaded the profound loss of my international community. I was not looking forward to normality and a parochial mindset. To soften the blow of what we were leaving behind, we booked The Captain’s Suite on the Stena Britannica. Instead of the usual bunks we had a double bed and a wide round porthole instead of a headboard. The rain had started to lash it down while we queued at the port. Sideways stair rods flung themselves at our Volvo; the rocking and buffeting from the storm began before we even made it on board. By the time we were safely in our cabin, the boat was lurching and yelping like a fairground ride in need of WD40. We lay there side by side bracing ourselves for each rock and roll, awake all night. Though a safer, drier landing awaited us, we also faced several moves of temporary accommodation, endless boxes and an entry not into familiar faces and places but lockdown. Many of the things we had looked forward to were no longer available. We were going to London but theatres would be closed and being inside with anyone outside our support bubble not permitted. Was that stormy crossing a pathetic fallacy? A metaphor for the road ahead?

What happened next was a surprise. Our post-quarantine move into our London transit flat, right in the heart of Westminster was a joy. Every day we walked in a different park or along a different stretch of The Thames. We found sourdough bakeries and places to eat with outside tables. We met friends and walked in our permitted twosomes to a café for a takeaway coffee we were allowed to drink on the move. Time slowed and we watched leaves turn a hundred shades of mahogany, rust and amber before landing at our feet to scuff through with our leather boots.

The post arrival honeymoon period lasted the autumn, helped along despite the lockdown by the fact that Ian was able to work from home, albeit crammed onto a console table in the tiny hallway with his three screens. I worked from a Hobbit hole under the spiral staircase, bashing my crown every time I stood up until I learned better. I have always worked, ever since we moved to Dubai the day after our wedding, 34 years ago. I have always worked from home, from my computer, first writing word processing handbooks, then, as I grew a social network, teaching computer programs. I’d find friends by posting an advert on a supermarket noticeboard offering a free Writers’ Circle at my home where we would all write on a given topic and share our work aloud, for feedback. No preparation, no homework. I like to make things easy. People found the note and soon other wordlovers became my closest friends. It wasn’t long before they asked me if I would teach them to write too. I was an author after all, even if all I’d written was a cookbook and computer handbooks. I agreed and in the process created myself the perfect expat career. A career founded totally on what I most loved to do – to write and to teach. A career that I discovered, as we moved to Oman, Norway, the Netherlands, Malaysia, and Brunei was completely portable and better still, thanks to the Writers’ Circles I still ran monthly (now using Facebook rather than supermarket notice boards), was a source of soulmates. Over time I created and ran courses in writing books, articles and life story and even ran a course called The Naked Writer for a while. They all began with the Writers’ Circle.

But now I’d moved in a pandemic. I wasn’t allowed to start a Writers’ Circle even if I wanted to. We couldn’t meet in my home and no one was allowed to meet inside a café. We’d moved to a small block of apartments in North London but weren’t allowed to mingle with the new neighbours, though we can confess to an illicit coffee (bring your own coffee and chair and sit with your chair inside your own front door) with a neighbour. Once. And so I moved my classes online. To Zoom. Thanks to Facebook and email I was able to send a quick message to anyone I thought might be interested and miraculously filled my first online circle, then a second, then a book-writing circle and then a write life stories class. Students have to pay for those, but I am a firm believer that one of the first rules of networking is to be the first to give something for free. So, right back at the start I started Speedwrite Live, a one-hour informal session where one person gives a topic and everyone writes then shares. There’s no commitment. Register once and come when you can. Third Thursday of the month at 4pm UK time.

Since then, several times a week, instead of spending time with an international community face to face I do so online. Only it’s better and richer than ever before. Instead of my local Writers’ Circle feeding me with students for my classes, I now teach people from everywhere; people I met in Dubai, Oman, Malaysia, Brunei, Norway, the Netherlands. I welcome people who I met fleetingly along the way, like Charmaine, a local I once interviewed in Penang and Isabelle and Sa-Eun, Koreans I met through the Families in Global Transition conference that took place virtually this year too. Now my international community comes to me in my own living room and I don’t even need to make my usual flapjack and prepare coffee. Every week I am delighted to welcome new writers of all nationalities, mother-tongues and locations to my classes. Instead of shrinking, my world has expanded.

I said at the beginning of this piece that we’d repatriated before. In 1997 we moved back to England from Norway for a few years. I admit that I struggled. I struggled to make a new community. I started a Writers’ Circle. I started a women’s networking group and I ran writing classes, but, by and large, the people who attended were British and had never lived abroad. Don’t get me wrong, they were lovely people, and many are friends to this day, but they were not ‘my people’. After seven years that continued to be as up and down as that night on the ferry a year ago, we went back overseas. That was 15 years ago and now we are home again. This time, forging a local community has been made almost impossible thanks to the pandemic. Instead of finding new friends I’ve taken many old ones with me and made new ones too who live all over the world. Anushka and Mattie from our apartments found their way to my online classes and I’ve seen more of them on a Zoom screen than in the flesh. It seems that rocky night in the Captain’s Suite was not a premonition after all.

 

Jo Parfitt has been both an expat and a writer for more than 30 years, has written 32 books and mentored more than 300 new authors. She runs Summertime Publishing, specialising in books by and for people living overseas, hosted a writers’ circle and taught writing wherever she has lived in the world.

Find her at www.joparfitt.com.

If you would like to join an online event then visit www.joparfitt.com/virtual-events

It has been more than 6 years now since we made the big move and relocated from London, UK, to Houston, US, but the memories are still vivid – as if it was only yesterday!

Although I had never stepped foot on US soil before,  I was excited to find out what Texas had to offer. Having relocated in the past, I had learned that getting involved with local communities as soon as possible helps to feel integrated and at home, and so I decided to try and use my experience volunteering with the Scouts in the UK to establish a connection.

Scouting is a movement for young people that aims to contribute to their development – in practice, groups of boys or girls come together weekly to learn about how to explore the outdoors, help the community they live in and learn life skills.

Leaders are usually parents or educators who enjoy being outdoors. Occasionally the groups (called Troops) go camping for the weekend to put their skills to the test. The movement is present in many countries across the world, and I was eager to give my best to their Houston community.

Once I had a rough idea of where we would be living in Houston, I searched for Scout Troops nearby – one attached to a local church caught my eye. We were still living in London, so finding a contact person and an email address was all I needed to get on with my plan. If I could start volunteering as soon as we arrived, I’d be “in with” the locals and hopefully feel like I had a purpose and identity in Houston. I quickly typed a message explaining my situation and asked how I could become one of their volunteers.

Later that week I received a reply – all the way from “across the pond”! It was Mike – the Scout Liaison for the church in our future Houston neighborhood – saying he would be pleased to meet up when I arrive. He asked if perhaps, I would like to join him and his family at church on my first Sunday in Texas. ‘Why not?’, I thought. ‘I will get there even if I’m jet-lagged and lost!’ Mike then sent me a note that he’d be the one in cowboy boots! Oh dear – what was I letting myself into? Where was I going?!

After setting ourselves up in the temporary apartment and getting used to driving on the crazy roads, I made my way to the church in the Energy Corridor and was a little nervous about stepping in. It was still a bit early, so I sat near the back of the church. I obviously wasn’t difficult to spot… Before I knew it, a tall, bearded Texan along with the cowboy boots came over and introduced himself as Mike.

His family and the church community welcomed me with open arms. I later found out that it was Go Texan Day – a Houston tradition that has been around since 1950s and is a chance to celebrate all things Texas.    I was so NOT prepared! A fellow Outpost US team member, Debbie, soon took me to Cavender’s, a popular western wear outfitter, to get kitted out and get me my first cowboy boots!

I am so glad I didn’t put off meeting Mike and his family – we are still close friends. His daughter is my daughter’s godmother, and we need another shopping trip now to get some cowgirl boots for my 2-year-old!

I encourage everyone in a new location to ‘get stuck in’ and out there meeting people. Find a connection with the local community and give things a try. Your people might be just around the corner, so get out there, be open and explore – it is so worth it!

 

Amy Clark is the Focal Point of Outpost USA. She is from the U.K. and has a master’s degree in Education and a post-graduate certificate in teaching modern foreign languages. With her husband, Ian, she embarked on her first international posting for Shell in 2010 when they moved to The Hague. In 2012, they then moved to London with Shell,  followed by their current assignment in Houston which started in 2015. Amy has taught French and English whilst on these assignments and loves to share knowledge with others. She has held various positions within the Outpost USA team including Database Manager and Communications Manager. Amy enjoys hiking, camping, Texas BBQ and meeting people.