After more than 50 entries, This ExPat Life is coming to an end. Jacob and I are returning to the United States after living as expatriates for two and a half years in Mexico, Costa Rica and China. That doesn’t mean our five-year adventure of traveling and living around the world is over: we’ll just be focusing on the USA, Canada and Mexico for the next 12 or so months.

Looking at the last thirty months of living in foreign countries, it’s no surprise that I was rarely at a loss for something to write about. Some of my favorite stories are: doing laundry with an almost-automatic-washing machine in Costa Rica; when we were illegal immigrants into Mexico; learning Chinese social graces through a meal with my husband’s English students; and being sick abroad.

The strangest entry had to be when a UFO stopped me from getting home from Shanghai to our Chinese city of Wenzhou—but, of course, no one told us this in the airport at 3:00 in the morning: we read about it on line the next day.

It’s a bit harder to reread those that deal with the risks and difficulties of our chosen lifestyle: leaving San Jose, Costa Rica after being robbed three weekends in a month; being propositioned by a Mexican truck driver on a deserted road; and the impossibility of crossing a street thanks to millions of new drivers in China.

Certainly the toughest one to relive was the story of watching a man beaten unconscious on the street and while people watched without coming to his aide. It wasn’t until I received readers’ comments about my safety that it occurred to me that going to help the victim being assaulted by four 250 pound men had, maybe, put me in danger.

But then there are funny postings like How Entertaining is Chinese Food? And let’s not forget the only guest post I’ve had—by Boris the Cat—about his week in human hell.

I’ve enjoyed sharing my stories with you and hope you had as much fun reading about my adventures. You can still keep up with me through my Friday blog Baby Boomers Traveling and can soon look for my new blogging venture dealing with the business of travel and tourism.

The Boomers’ Guide to Going Abroad to Travel|Live|Give|Learn is now available through BookLocker, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com. If you’d like to read a free excerpt, just click here BookLocker excerpt and you can read the introduction and the first chapter. BookLocker also has a pdf version available to download instantly on your computer for $9.99. An e-book version will be made available soon.

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On this, my last day in China, I’m looking ahead to how being back home in North America will seem somewhat foreign at first. Long-term expats—those who’ve been gone for several years or decades—are often warned of the culture shock of re-entry into their own societies.

I don’t expect a stunning surprise since I’ve been back so often. But do I look forward to those first few weeks when special insight is granted travelers to see their own countries and people through the eyes of outsiders. If in China I’m always impressed by the sheer number of people, I will surely find California with its green wooded hills, wide boulevards and large suburban malls a sparsely-populated space. more…

Going through my photos for last week’s blog about food, I found so many pictures of restaurant menus that I knew I just had to do a piece on all of the fun things we’ve found in Chinese eateries. And, when we went out on the weekend with English teachers who told us that the new menu item at a local favorite Arabian restaurant was “fetus” salad, the deal was sealed.

The best Chinglish you’ll find anywhere is on labeling and restaurant menus. Sometimes it’s just cute like the Kwepie Doll mayo and jams featured in last week’s blog. At other times, it’s really confusing because you can’t figure out what it is they’re trying to say. We sometime spend most of the meal—long after we’ve ordered—trying to decipher what the menu items are supposed to be. more…

When we spent two months traveling around China as part of our 26-month ‘round the world trip in 2007, we felt as though we’d been invited to the greatest dim sum buffet in the world. The variety of food from Hong Kong to Beijing was tremendous. We had many old favorites but tried a lot of dishes we’d never had before and stayed away from a few that would require more courage than we’d yet developed in our travels.

I still remember the dumplings in Xi’an—I should, we ate them often enough—that were as memorable as the Terra Cotta Warriors. The Peking Duck (where else?) in Beijing was fabulous and eaten as it was in the company of a group we’d just spent two weeks with touring the country made it that much more special. more…

In our continuing series on getting to know the locals when living in a foreign country we’ve seen how important learning the language is to settling in well. It’s never more so than when you want to patronize their shops—which is a great way to get to know your neighbors. Be warned, though: It will give you the best pantomime practice ever. The experience will make you an amazing charade player!

You might think, before going abroad, that you’re used to dealing with foreigners back home. Maybe it was the Koreans running the small shop near the university, the Indians at the newspaper shop in London’s East End or the Armenians at the Los Angeles 7-Eleven. What these shops have in common, however, and which you won’t find in many parts of the world, is the convenience of self-service. Or, when abroad, you sometimes can’t find what you’re looking for because all of the brands are unfamiliar and (wouldn’t you know it?) all of the labels and signs are in the local lingo which you still can’t read. more…