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02/11/2007
Life As An Expatriate
Life As An Expatriate Is Not Always Sweetness And Light by Don Saunders
Sitting in your dining room and gazing out across your windswept and rain soaked garden it is all too easy to imagine yourself with a new life in a new country, but how does this 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.
Possibly the biggest problem is that there are such a large number of variables to think about and Such a large number of factors which are quite simply unknown at the outset. It is very easy, for example, to think that the fact that you do not speak the language is not important as, at least in the short term, you may well be able to get by in your mother tongue and can always pick up the language in the longer term. But just how easy is it to learn a language and how easy is it to learn the language of your chosen country?
You may also be excited about the prospect of all that exotic food, but how is a perhaps marked change in your diet going to affect your health? You may very well have enjoyed some wonderful restaurant food on holiday trips but is this really the type of food you will be eating on a daily basis when you are cooking for yourself?
The problems are of course relatively minor when you compare them to adjusting mentally to living in what is not only a different country, but perhaps a very different culture. The things which you have thought of as both curious and fascinating when on holiday could well present you with considerable problems when they are a part of your everyday life.
Most countries with a sizeable expatriate community develop a substantial support network, which often includes an expat club which holds regular meetings, organizes outings and events, publishes its own newspaper and a great deal more. Initially this may seem to be extremely comforting but it is often worth considering why the expatriates in the country to create such an extensive support network. Indeed, when you examine the extent to which the lives of many expatriates revolve around the activities of the expat community you might well find yourself asking why they live overseas at all.
In point of fact many expats find that, once the novelty wears off, they regret their decision to move overseas but have in many cases burnt their bridges and now find that they have choice but to stay where they are and make the best of what is a far from an ideal situation.
Of course this is not the case with all expats and, as an expat myself, I can assure you that there are also many of us who are extremely happy with our decision to re-locate and would certainly not wish to turn the clock back. For many hundreds of people every year the decision to move abroad is the best decision they have ever made and one which they most certainly do not regret. By how can you tell which group you are likely to join before you take your decision?
Regretably, you can never of course be sure, but there are a number of things which you can do to increase your chances of your decision being one which you will be glad you made.
One of the most important things that you can do is to try the water and that means living in your country of choice for a reasonable length of time before cutting your ties with home. And the critical word here is ''living''.
It is no use simply visiting the country regularly on holiday, staying in a hotel and dining out in restaurants. Ideally you need to spend a minimum of a year in the country and 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, staying away from tourist areas and activities and becoming part of the local community. Live like a local, doing your own cooking and taking the time to learn about the local history, lifestyle and culture, while at the same time making the effort to learn the language.
By staying away from the expat community and integrating yourself into the local community from the very beginning you will rapidly find out whether or not you would be making a wise choice to move overseas permanently.
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