The Odyssey: a classic case of inadvertent displacement. Even epic heroes get homesick.

The UN’s Office of Expat Affairs* lists 169 categories of expatriated folk circulating out there in the world. These include those temporarily displaced, as well as the lifers, abroad either by necessity or choice, all waving their foreigner flag, proudly or not, each one trying to assemble a new sense of normal on unfamiliar soil.

In your trips or life abroad, you may have encountered some of them:

The ego transplant expat, who flees his native land in an attempt to escape his old identity and reinvent himself in a fresh, exotic context.

The wanderlust expat, who has propelled herself by the momentum of reverie-induced rainbow farts through saltwater wormholes that connect to dream lands where all aspects of life are objectively hunky-dorier — well, as long as you squint a certain way and tilt your head slightly to the right and take amazing selfies that make the townies back home squeal: damn, girl, jealous of you.

There are also opportunistic expats: cultural stowaways or ingredients for the melting pot (depending on your viewpoint), committed to sacrificing a bit of the temporal for an eventual improved return on their labor, time, skills, children, etc.

And don’t forget:

The sweetheart expat.

The tabula rasa expat.

The diplomatic expat.

The retired expat.

The company transfer expat.

The digital nomad expat.

The missionary expat.

The volunteer expat.

And 157 other UN-recognized expat categories.**

As a former world traveler and current American resident of France, I’ve crossed paths with nearly all of them, though I am none of the ones listed above. I represent yet another group of displaced individual, probably the most common type:

I am the haphazard expat, or, the accidental expat.

I am the grumpy expat.

I am flailing abroad.

I am just a guy who ended up somewhere. It was an honest mistake. I initially came to France in February of ‘09 as a 24-year-old with itchy feet, and whose French word bank consisted entirely of cartoon-popular cliches.

I was compelled to leave my native land by a Franco-Japonais girl I had met during my travels in East Asia (I suppose that technically qualifies me as a sweetheart expat). Following our brief in-person encounter, the relationship blossomed as an email romance, which was tough-going because in those days there weren’t nearly as many emojis available to help one convey their feelings.

Eventually fed up of the long distance aspect, I embarked on a five-month play date with my lady friend in her hometown of Lille while she wrapped up her final year of medical school. I was too naive at the time to understand how easily five months could snake its way into becoming nine years. Fate determined I would have to learn the hard way.

My femme and me in 2009, at the start of my stretch as an accidental expat — before nine years of Belgian beer and two kiddos did me in.

To simplify, let’s say there are two types of haphazard expats: those who succumb to it, try to make the best of it, and those doggedly plotting their return home only to find their plans perpetually thwarted by familial and professional Chinese finger traps. I’m sort of in both camps; that is to say, in the beginning I mostly belonged to the latter, but then gradually learned to live as the former, only I never really stopped being the latter.

No wonder I’m a little grumpy. Homesickness is a persistent stitch in the side I wake up with every morning. I want to go home like Odysseus yearned to smooch the sandy shores of his beloved Ithaca. Specifically, I want to go back to my cozy hometown of Lake Stevens, Washington.

Or if I could just land somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

But, really, anywhere in the U.S. would do at this point.

Honestly, I think I’d be content just to live somewhere on the North American cont—

— a loophole emerges (a compromise, rather ) from which wafts the sweet, wild odors of yellow birch and maple syrup. If you think about it, there is perhaps only one place on this planet where the counterparts of a Franco-American couple could have an equal chance to thrive. How had we not thought of this before?

Subscribe to this spot to follow my family’s in-progress attempt to emigrate from Lille, France to Montreal, Quebec, and maybe even one day make it back to my beloved PNW. You can also count on plenty of tangents concerning expat life, French culture, French-Canadian culture, international entrepreneurship, and international family life — all through the lens of my enduring (read: stubborn) American perspective.

So what kind of expat are you?