Life,Expatriate,Not,All,Sweetn travel,insurance Life As An Expatriate Is Not All Sweetness And Light
Like any American, traveling occasionally is just what I love doing and I bet you share the same stuff with me. But traveling does not mean that you would be safe. Escaping from our job and other stressful activities is just something that w Torres del Paine is among the biggest of Chiles national parks, occupying almost 600,000 acres (242,000 ha) of land in the south on the border with Argentina. It is also among the most important, receiving a significant proportion of domes
Sitting in your lounge and gazing out on 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 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.Possibly the most significant problem is that there are such a large number of variables to think about and so many factors which are quite simply unknown at the outset. For example, it is very easy to believe that the fact that you do not speak the language is unimportant as, in the short term at least, you will probably 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 for you to learn a language and how simple easy is it to learn the particular language of your chosen country?You might 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 might very well have tasted some wonderful restaurant food on holiday trips but is this really the kind of food you will be enjoying every day when you are shopping and cooking for yourself?All of these 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 fascinating and curious during holiday trips could well present you with considerable problems when they are a part of your everyday life.The majority of countries with a sizeable expatriate community develop a substantial support network, which usually includes an expat club which holds regular meetings, organizes outings and events, distributes its own newspaper and a great deal more. Initially this might seem very comforting but it is worth thinking about why the expatriates in the region to create such an extensive support network. Indeed, when you look at the extent to which the lives of many expatriates revolve around the activities of the expat community you may well find yourself asking why they want to live abroad in the first place.In reality many expats find that, after the novelty has worn off, they regret having moved but have all too often burnt their bridges and now find that they have choice except to stay where they are and make the most of their situation.Of course this is not true of all expats and, as an expatriate myself, I can tell you that there are also many of us who are extremely happy with our decision to move abroad and would not wish to turn back the clock. For many hundreds of people each year the decision to live overseas 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 going to join before you take your decision?Regretably, you can never of course be certain, but there are several things that you can do to increase the 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 and that means living in your chosen country for a fair length of time before you cut your ties with home. But the critical word here is 'living'.It is no good just visiting the country a couple of times each year on holiday, staying in a hotel and eating in restaurants. You need to spend at least a year in the country and throw off any idea of being on holiday. You need to make a determined effort to live as you would see yourself living in the longer term, keeping away from tourist areas and activities and becoming part of the local community. Live like a local, doing your own shopping and cooking and making the time to learn about the local history, culture and lifestyle, as well as making the effort to learn the language.If you steer clear of the expat community and integrate yourself into the local community from the very outset you will rapidly find out whether or not you would be making a wise choice to move abroad permanently.
Life,Expatriate,Not,All,Sweetn