how are the expats feeling today?

[gigem]

I am so sleepy, I didn't stay up all night but I've been up for like 8hrs now and it's not even noon. I was quite frazzled on the ride to work, I did not want to be bombarded but so far everyone has let me be. 

I don't have a lot of big thoughts yet, too tired to think for now. I guess being expats we get some space between us and what's happening? Probably depends on what country you are in and the community around you.

Cicero I hope your surgery goes okay. 

ETA: The post title was meant to be "us expats" but it looks like us as in small letters US/USA expats so I've changed it to "the" 

[rupertpenny]

Ugh. Terrible. I do feel like Trump will not affect me negatively, but I'm still ashamed of my country. I also feel glad that I just signed a new contract through 2019 but I also feel like a coward a bit, like by living abroad I am taking the easy way out or something. Ugh.

[mrsukyankee]

As someone who has dealt with Brexit, I feel like my world has gotten very small. I am heartbroken. I can't deal with this in both of my countries. I don't have the energy. I can only fight on one front. And I'm questioning my citizenship in the US even more than before. I recognise my privilege, that I can decide to remain here and even that I could probably find a job elsewhere if need be.

[Cicero]

I'm not having surgery today after all. The second opinion says it's not a tumor but a hernia. I'll have surgery for that when we're back here next month.

Re: how things will be in TZ--of say the vast majority of the anti-Trump stuff has come from other Americans. Locals who have brought it up to me have been pretty mixed in both directions so I don't foresee it being nearly as much of an issue as living in Europe when Bush was in office was.

[dulcemariamar]

I feel horrible but not just because of the outcome but also because I stayed up most of the night to seemthe results.

I was planning on spending next summer in the States but I think I just want to stay in Europe. Is that an overreaction? I just want to stay far from the crazy

[gigem]

I'm also ashamed (especially since I'm feeling that I've spent this afternoon answering to colleagues what they didn't want to ask me this morning), disappointed in what we thought was the political make-up of our country (the polls made us believe something that maybe we were choosing not to recognize but obviously existed?), and embarrassed. Also feeling my privilege to hide in my corner of the world for the foreseeable future. But even if we stay far away, we are still citizens and represent our country, and I guess the ripples of US policy and policies affect all ends of the earth in someway.

[belleabroad]

I went through almost all the stages of grieving yesterday...acceptance will never come . I woke up at 5 am and looked at CNN on my phone and sat bolt upright in horror. I lay there watching live coverage for a while until I started crying. I literally didn't know what to do with myself yesterday. My husband called (he's in London for work) and we just sat there talking like a family member had died suddenly and unexpectedly. Finally I dragged myself to the gym but later ate a metric ton of Sour Patch Kids while watching Stephen Colbert's sign off from his live Showtime special. (It actually helped to take the edge off a bit. Just the right balance of lament and levity. Highly recommend if you haven't seen it.) I'm just so so so sad about this. It still doesn't feel real.

[gigem]

RockNVoll thank you for sharing with us

[jennybee1018]

Nov 10, 2016 6:56:26 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I wasn't ready to talk about this yesterday and was in a state of despair deeper than I imagined I would be. I am disappointed, embarrassed, and feeling lost. This is not the country I thought I lived in. It's an eye-opener about just how wide and deep the fear and hatred run in a country I thought was still largely about opportunities for a better life.

This how I feel as well. I left the US to move to Doha 7 years ago, so I know I've been gone for a while, but this is not the US I left behind. It's devastating to see just how divided the US is. We thought it was bad when Obama won and now I fear it's 1000 times worse.

Agreed with rupertpenny that I feel like it won't affect me much, and we're here until at least 2018, so we don't have to go back anytime soon. But friends and family that I love will have to deal with it and I need to figure out how to deal with that.

For now, I am donating money to organizations who are making a difference and will do what they can to protect the rights that are currently in place for all Americans.

[origami]

I can't remember ever being so shocked by an election. After it was obvious trump was going to win I literally couldn't even read b/c my eyes wouldn't focus on the words. I'm from MI and I swore up, down and sideways that MI was a solid blue state that would NEVER go for trump. So now not only do I feel like an idiot, I wonder if in 2 years of being abroad I managed to not fit in anymore with the only state I've ever lived in. It's crazy. I blame the polls for this. Being out of the country, and blocking most people who talked politics on FB, I was totally out of the loop with how people felt. I relied totally on the data and that data was shit-tay. It would have sucked to know a month ago that Trump was inevitable, but the shock factor surely made this all worse.

I'm not a worrier by nature so at this point I'm trying to be optimistic that Trump won't be able to get many of his assbackward ideas off the ground, but if I think about him too much I do get stressed. I don't love being 8 minutes away from a crazy dude's nukes, and Trump has said a lot of inflammatory things about Korea. My biggest worry with Trump is that he will start a war. Trump even said he'd go after the US-Korea free trade act b/c it's "job killing." EYEROLL. If he takes my motherfucking breakfast sausage from me I will fly back to DC and march on washington. I realize there are more important issues at stake but he seriously did mention this trade pact and it will actually negatively impact my life if he succeeds. My DH's Korean coworkers are beside themselves. On election day they kept walking up to his desk to inform him of how much they hated Trump. They said it in a way like they expected DH to pick up a phone and do something about it so it was part humorous, part sad.