The Life Of An Expat Is Not Always Sweetness And Light
Sitting sun lounge and looking out on your windswept and rain soaked garden it is all too easy to imagine yourself enjoying a new life in a new country, but how does the picture in your mind’s eye compare to the reality after you have made the move? Well, this is not perhaps as easy a question to answer as you might think.
Perhaps the greatest problem is that there are such a large number of variables to take into account and so many factors which are simply unknown at the outset. It is very easy, for example, to believe that the fact that you do not speak the language is not important as, in the short term at least, you may well be able to get by in your mother tongue and can always pick up the language in the longer term. Just how easy is it however to learn a language and how simple easy is it to pick up the particular language of your chosen country?
You might also be excited about the prospect of all that exotic food, but how is a possibly substantial change in your diet going to affect your health? You might very well have eaten some wonderful restaurant food on holiday trips but is this really the sort of food you will be eating on a daily basis when you are cooking for yourself?
The problems are of course minor when you compare them to adjusting mentally to living in what is not only a different country, but possibly a very different culture. The things which you have thought of as both curious and fascinating during holiday trips could well present considerable difficulty when they become a part of your daily life.
Most countries with a sizeable expatriate community develop a large support network, which usually includes an expat club which holds regular meetings, organizes events and outings, distributes its own newspaper and a great deal more. At first sight this might seem to be extremely comforting but it is worth thinking about why the expats in the region feel that it is necessary to create such an extensive support network. Indeed, when you look at the extent to which the lives of many expats revolve around the expat community you could well find yourself asking why they live abroad at all.
In fact a fair number of expats find that, once the novelty wears off, they regret their decision to move overseas but have frequently burnt their bridges and now find that they have choice except to stay where they are and to make the most of their situation.
This is not of course true of all expats and, as an expatriate myself, I can tell you that there are many of us who are very happy with our decision to live abroad and would not wish to turn the clock back. For many hundreds of people each year the decision to live overseas turns out to be the best decision they have ever made and one which they certainly do not regret. By how can you tell which group you are likely to fall into before you make your decision?
Unfortunately, you can never of course be sure, although there are several things that you can do to increase your chances of your decision being one that you will be glad you made.
One of the most important things that you can do is to try the water so to speak and that means living in your country of choice for a fair length of time before you cut your ties with home. But the crucial word here is ‘living’.
It is no use just visiting your chosen country a couple of times each year on holiday, staying in hotels and eating in restaurants. Ideally you need to spend a minimum of a year in the country and to cast off any idea of being on holiday. You have to make a determined effort to live as you would want to live in the longer term, steering clear of tourist areas and activities and becoming part of the local community. Live like a local, doing your own cooking and making the time to learn something of the local history, culture and lifestyle, while at the same time starting to learn the language.
By staying away from the expat community and integrating yourself into the local community from the very beginning you will soon find out whether or not you would be making a wise decision to move abroad permanently.
By: Donald Saunders
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This post was written by whatever on October 6, 2009
