To my surprise, I found myself in the midst of massive evacuation. I was just trying to get from Massachusetts to Florida after delivering my daughter to college, but I got caught up in it all the same.

A 10-hour drive from Boston to my first stop in the western part of Virginia turned into a 17-hour ordeal.

Along the way, though, I realized this traffic nightmare had some lessons to teach me about being an expat.

1. You Can’t Plan for Everything

I left my Central Florida home on August 15. The plan was to spend a week getting to and spending time with family in the Rochester, NY area. Then we would head for Boston. I’d drop my daughter at college, spend a couple of days with friends in the area, then head home. I figured I’d arrive before two weeks was up.

So far, so good.

Then Irene came roaring up the coast from her landfall in the Carolinas. I planned to go around it, heading far enough inland to be out of its path.

On Friday, I drove south on I-95 into Connecticut and then cut across to the west. It was a good plan, except. . .

Coastal areas were ordered to evacuate and everyone and his brother was heading west across Connecticut last Friday afternoon.

Sometimes you get caught up in events bigger than yourself and you have to just do the best you can. Weather disasters, transportation strikes and other disturbances can throw your plans into complete disarray. Make your plan, do your best, and adjust as you go.

If you’re flexible and adjust well, you’ll have a much happier expat experience.

2. Practice Patience

My first hint that I would have some big problems came when I turned off I-95 to the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut.

This is a, tree-lined, winding road, two lanes in each direction, normally a pleasant alternative to the super highways.

This time, not so much. Traffic on the entrance ramp was standing still. It’s a long ramp, and after we inched along for 45 minutes (with more standing than inching) I was getting more than a little agitated.

I didn’t know what was going on ahead of me, how long I’d be at a standstill, or any other useful information. And I needed to pee.

When you’re stuck in a situation with a lot of unknowns, patience will lead to information and solutions. Learn to embrace the uncertainty. Your stress levels will thank you.

3. Talk to Someone Outside the Situation

After 45 minutes, I was getting the screaming meemies. (Note to self: must work on that patience/embracing uncertainty thing.)

Fortunately, I had my trusty cell phone. I reached out to my sister, who’s familiar with the route. She didn’t have any useful information or help for me, but talking with her calmed me down.

Sometimes you just need to have a conversation with someone who’s not where you’re at to give you some perspective.

4. Take a Break

After getting off the Merritt Parkway and across the Tappan Zee Bridge to New York, I needed to eat and I needed a break.

Instead of choosing someplace quick, I decided to give myself some real unwinding time.

I found a moderately priced, leisurely Italian place, took my time ordering, and enjoyed not being in the car.

Even in a stressful situation, you can find ways to enjoy the moment. When you’re able to seize a few good moments here and there, you can cope with the stress much better.

5. Learn to Accept Bureaucratic Roadblocks

In Florida, when a storm forces evacuation of coastal areas, they stop collecting tolls and let traffic flow.

Apparently the State of Pennsylvania does not.

One of the worst traffic tie-ups I encountered was at the toll booths on I-78, just inside the Pennsylvania border.

Traffic crept along for about four miles before the tolls.

It continued at a snail’s pace for several miles after the toll booths as well. In their infinite wisdom, the PA authorities were shutting down access to the left-hand lane in preparation for planned construction.

Anyone with a lick of sense would have sent crews out to open up lanes, not shut them down. Ah, bureaucracy. . .

There’s not much you can do about such massive stupidity, so learn to shrug your shoulders and move past it. As an expat, you’ll be dealing with a lot of bureaucracy that seems unnecessary to you. If you can’t deal with it you won’t last long in your new country.

6. Keep your Goal Front and Center — Don’t Get Bogged Down

Did I mention that the trip of 10 hours turned into 17? I was expecting to arrive at my sister’s between 10 and 11 PM.

By 10 PM, I was still hours away. I started thinking about getting a room for the night.

By the time I got far enough west to find an available motel room, I was just a couple hours away from my destination.

In a phone call, my brother-in-law pointed out that if I stopped for the night, I’d be driving in rainy, windy conditions the next morning. I decided to push on.

Sometimes you just need to grit your teeth and get on with it.

On a day fraught with frustration and hassle, hours 14, 15 and 16 of my 10-hour drive were particularly challenging. I was tired, emotionally and physically. My hands hurt, my feet hurt and my butt was sore from all that sitting.

Fortunately, when I was about two hours from my destination, traffic decreased, the roads opened up and I was able to move right along.

I counted down every five minutes that got me closer to being able to turn off the engine and get out of the car. I watched my GPS avidly as it counted down the remaining miles.

7. Remember You Won’t Always be Stuck

Eventually, you’ll move forward. When traffic on the Merrit Parkway finally started moving again, I was thrilled to reach the dizzying speed of 30 mph. After that PA toll booth incident, I heaved a sign of relief when I could increase my speed to 10.

Even the worst traffic jams eventually break loose.

As an expat, persistence will pay off and you’ll find yourself breaking through restrictive barriers of language and culture. Paying a bill, making a new friend, shopping for groceries, or negotiating a major purchase are skills we take for granted at home. Overseas, though, learn to celebrate those achievements.

photo by smith on flickr

I recently received an email from Matt. Matt’s a medical professional who’s starting to research a move to one of the Central or South American countries. He’s not sure how transferable his professional credentials are and asks:

“Thank you once again. I really want to get this project off the ground, and I’ll take all of the help I can get.

“Which leads me to another question: how can one get started in this without much money?”

When Money is Tight, Get Creative

Matt, you’ve come to right place. We were pretty much wiped out by the financial crisis of 2008-2009, so we’re making our move on a shoestring.

However, you really do need to have a little money or at least usable credit.

Matt didn’t explain what “without much money” means to him. Does he mean he doesn’t have $100,000 to invest in the country, or that he doesn’t have a few hundred dollars for a plane fare?

Either way, the first thing Matt should do is narrow down his list of countries from six to no more than three. Then he needs to figure out how he can visit the countries on his short list.

It doesn’t matter how great a place sounds on paper, until you’ve had your boots on the ground you can’t possibly know whether you’d be happy living there. Once Matt narrows down his country choice, he’ll be in a better position to figure out what he needs to actually move there.

When funds are really tight, you need to get creative. What can Matt do to get himself to one of his country choices?

As a medical professional, it’s quite likely he could take some time away without worrying too much about finding or returning to a job when he gets back.

My recommendation to Matt: explore possible volunteer opportunities. Look for something that will pay expenses of transportation, food and lodging in the country and arrange to stay as long as you can. Rent out your home or apartment while you’re gone.

Ideally, Matt could arrange back-to-back volunteerism so he could try out two or even three of his countries during a six-month period. At the end of the six months, he should have a pretty good idea of where he wants to live.

Then he can return to the US and go back to work for a bit while he maps out his next step.

How to Narrow Down Your Country Choice

There’s an almost limitless number of factors that can influence your country choice. Some of the more obvious include

• climate
• language and culture
• work or business opportunities
• cost of living
• health care
• ease of travel to “home” country

To weigh out what’s really important to you can require some deep soul searching.

And, if you’ll be moving with a spouse, partner or children, the equation becomes even more complex.

It’s certainly possible to step through this exercise on your own, or with free help from websites and online forums.

There are lots of good country-specific forums out there. I’ve been hanging around the Panama Forum quite a bit in recent months, for example, and there are some good country forums on Yahoo as well.

If You Can Afford Some Shortcuts

If you have a bit of discretionary income to invest in the process, though, there are a couple of resources I recommend.

The first is 52 Days to Your New Life Overseas. As its name implies, it’s a 52-day (or longer, depending on how much time you have to put into it) series of thoughtful and thought-provoking materials to get you from wherever you are now to your new country. (You can read a review here. For contrast, here’s a review of a program I found to be nothing but fluff.)

The second is not a program for expats as such, but was designed by a life coach to help you really understand what makes you thrive. Called Live Bold & Bloom, it promises to help you create a life that is fun, adventurous, peaceful, exciting, challenging, engaging and meaningful.

You can read more about Live Bold & Bloom here.

photo by paul-simpson.org on flickr

“How Can You Be So Unpatriotic?”

By most accounts, the time I chose to retire abroad was actually the perfect time to remain in the U.S.

The country had just enjoyed eight years of unprecedented prosperity…unemployment was near record peacetime lows, and the markets had recently enjoyed run-ups to all-time highs.

I was living on the 30th floor of a Midtown Manhattan highrise, rent free. I had a good job and walked just five blocks to the office on Madison Avenue from which we ran our international electric power plants.

The attacks of September 11—and all the dramatic changes they brought to American life—were still three days in the future when our plane took off for our overseas retirement haven.

Times were good, to be sure. But as many expats will tell you, what awaited us was even better…an extraordinary, grand adventure in an exotic land.

Yet those of us who live overseas frequently hear this: “How can you be so unpatriotic by moving abroad…especially in times like these? You expats are just running away…”

I wasn’t surprised to see it among my emails again yesterday, since I’ve been seeing a variation on this theme as regular as clockwork for years. And it makes no more sense today than it ever did. In fact, today’s expats are really continuing a pioneering tradition that was started hundreds of years ago.

As we head into the long July 4 weekend, it’s a good time to consider the patriotism of moving overseas.

The vast majority of the expats I meet are either adventurers or entrepreneurs…often both. They move overseas to take advantage of the excitement and the opportunity of living in a new country.

I see expats who enjoy a better quality of life…one that wouldn’t be possible back home with their available funds. And often, they reinvent themselves and break into a brand new livelihood.

Still others come to mine the wealth of financial and business opportunities abroad, in a less-regulated environment. I see people making property investments, starting up new businesses, or taking advantage of offshore accounts.

Of course a few move abroad in desperation…people who can’t afford their property tax burden, medical care, or other life necessities.

In no case though, can I recall meeting anyone I’d call “unpatriotic.”

I think that label gets tossed around willy-nilly when, in fact, it’s a small (though admittedly, sometimes vocal) segment of expats that is driven to leave home primarily by dissatisfaction. Made up of both conservatives and liberals, this group is unhappy with the state of affairs in the U.S.. and they like to talk about intrusive government, oppressive taxes, and the degradation of their freedom.

But I don’t think that makes them unpatriotic. In my experience, these folks are simply trying to re-capture a version of the U.S. that existed at an earlier time in their lives, or in another era altogether.

In many ways, we expats today are not so different from our founding fathers, who explored and settled in North America originally. They too arrived as the adventurers, the entrepreneurs, the desperate, and the freedom-seekers…just like expats today.

They too, preferred to look ahead with anticipation… rather than look back with resentment.

Of course, our ancestors who came from Europe, Asia and Africa had it rough compared to today’s expats. Our forefathers faced disease, hostility, violent weather, slavery, and often death. They were tough and life was often hard.

Today, the main hardships I hear about have to do with the availability of American cable TV or the locals’ ability to speak English. The gravest personal danger is usually encountering a pickpocket in the market.

But today’s expats share something even more important with our ancestors; their spirit of freedom, adventure and opportunity. We find it on the cobblestoned streets of Ecuador, the mountains of Colombia, or the sandy shores of Uruguay and Brazil. We stroll beaches, start businesses, learn languages, and settle into new surroundings.

So is moving abroad unpatriotic? Not at all.

Throughout our history, expats—both those arriving in North America and those moving on—have always represented the next cultural wave…the next big adventure.

And today’s expats are no different. They’re simply continuing the adventure that started hundreds of years ago…in the same spirit that brought our ancestors here in the first place.

Do you agree with Lee? I sure do — and I’m forwarding this to my mother-in-law. Share your thoughts in the Comments below.

Photo by Ken_Mayer on flickr

Some people have a high risk tolerance. Would you be comfortable packing a few changes of clothes into a backpack and setting out for parts unknown? I wouldn’t — but some people do just that.

Then there are those who have to plan every tiny detail. In the end, they don’t go anywhere because they’re too frightened of the unexpected.

Fortunately, most of us fall somewhere in the middle.

How can you balance the adventure/risk component of moving overseas against planning and safety?

For starters, you need to know yourself pretty well. . .

Know Your Risk Tolerance

Sometimes it’s obvious. If you thrill to jumping out of an airplane, can’t wait to try that really big bungee jump or stake your entire life savings on one card in a Texas Hold ‘Em poker game, you have a high tolerance for risk. You’d probably be comfortable with the backpack-heading out scenario, so this article’s really not for you.

Conversely, if you wouldn’t dream of stepping outside to go to the mailbox without checking the weather first and putting your extra money into a bank CD is the only “investment” you’ll consider, you’re very risk averse. This article probably isn’t for you either.

But if you’re one of the majority in between those two extremes, you need to figure out how much risk you’re willing to take, how much planning you’ll do to minimize the risk, and how much ambiguity you’re able to tolerate. What kind of expat will you be?

You can start with some personality tests. There are plenty available online — here’s a list of the more common tests. There are also tests to specifically measure risk taking. You’ll find quite a few if you Google “personality test risk taker.”

How Well Do You Plan?

Even the jumper-out-of-airplanes plans ahead to minimize risk by strapping on a parachute (or sometimes two!).

In the movie One Fine Day, Michelle Pfeiffer’s character carries a purse that seems equipped for any possible eventuality — even creating superhero costumes for the kids on the spur of the moment. “Where do you get a bag like that?” George Clooney asks her.

Easy. She’s a super-planner. I have a friend like that. Need a bandaid? Safety pin? Spare anything? She’ll have it with her. Super-planners know exactly how much they spend on everything and what their savings or investment account balance is at any moment.

At the other end of the spectrum is the person who can’t plan what route to drive to the supermarket.

If you’re going to become an expat, planning is a necessity.

Are You Comfortable with Ambiguity?

Change and ambiguity go hand in hand, and the bigger the change, the greater the uncertainty. Are you an “everything is either black or white” person, or are you comfortable with shades of gray?

Use Your Past Experience

If you’ve moved before — and most of us have — you have some personal history to help you figure out how you’ll handle an overseas move.

Your experience with any major life change can be put to good use, in fact.

Think about some of your biggest life changes. They might include

• moving
• graduation
• applying for/choosing a college
• entering the job market
• changing jobs
• overseas travel
• marriage
• having kids
• divorce
• changing careers
• going back to school as an adult

Chances are, none of those events happened by accident.

Think about how you felt before, during and after any of these life-changing events. Happy? Excited? Overwhelmed? Scared? Angry?

What did you do to tone down the excitement levels, reduce the fear or manage the overwhelm? How did you cope with the people close to you who told you that you couldn’t/shouldn’t do that?

Did you envision what your life would be like after the wedding, the graduation party, or the baby’s birth? How close was the reality? How did you handle the differences?

Use those planning and coping skills you’ve developed throughout your life to smooth your overseas move.

We’ll be talking more about this over the coming weeks and months.

How do you plan in order to minimize the risk of a big change? Share your strategies in the comments section below.

An expat coach can help you prepare for your move, and can help with your adjustment to life in a new country after you land.

I recently interviewed a group of six expat coaches. You can learn more about them here.



The base of all coaching relationships is life and relationship challenges, coach Heather Markel explained. Expat coaching zeroes in on the specific challenges you face in your overseas relocation.

Some of the areas where coaching can help include:

• Work-life balance.

• Handling culture shock
• Relocation decision
• Preparation for the move
• Overwhelm
• Cross cultural understanding
• Coping with children and their relocation and adaptation issues
• Career/job search
• Starting a business
• Family issues
• Transition issues
• Self-esteem
• Identity crisis

If you’re in a situation where your company is relocating you, a coach can also help your spouse or partner. Evelyn Simpson told me:

“Any accompanying partner can feel lost as they embark on life in an unfamiliar country and culture without their support systems of family and friends. Their partners go off to work their children go to school and there they are in a sea of boxes with no friends.”

Coaching can also be a wonderful career for an expat who wants to develop work that’s not tied to a specific location.

Here are a few resources to help you learn more about coaching and what it can do for you:

Socialnaire is a 12-week program to help you make friends overseas
What Is Coaching?
The Expat Coach Directory

Have you worked with an expat coach? Did it help? Why or why not?

Photo by Rudy Herman on flickr

As I write this, the movie Eat, Pray, Love is hitting the cinemas in the United States. I am sure most people are already familiar with the story.

The book’s author, Elizabeth Gilbert, is frustrated with her life in the United States and decides to take a year off traveling, spending time in Italy to eat, India to pray and Bali to find love.

I have been living in Bali for the past year and it is not surprising to come across many people (mostly women) who have come to Bali after reading the book. I haven’t had a chance to see the movie yet, but I am sure even more people will be drawn to Bali either for a short or extended stay.



Bali often has that effect on many people. People come only expecting to stay for a short holiday and then they find that they don’t want to leave!

I myself was looking for somewhere to live abroad and after spending some time traveling to Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia and some other parts of Indonesia, I finally decided I wanted to stay in Bali.

What’s So Special About Bali?

So what wanted me to live in Bali? Bali is a small island and you can travel from the south to the north in 2-3 hours. Bali lies just 8 degrees south of the equator ensuring warm weather throughout the year and is a mecca for surfers and fans of marine sports.

Bali has many picture postcard perfect scenes, from the beautiful sunsets to the magnificent rice field terraces carved out of the mountains.

Even though I have been here a year, I never get tired of the beautiful scenery.

Another thing which leaves a strong impression on people visiting Bali is the people. Balinese are mostly Hindu and preparing for and attending the many ceremonies is an important part of their lives. Religion, community and family are all important to Balinese and the strong community aspect of Balinese life, makes it an interesting and rewarding place to live.

In most western countries we have lost the community aspect to our lives and often people don’t even know who their neighbors are. This is one aspect of living in Bali that was unexpected for me, but it is one that I really enjoy. People seem to have more time for each other, even if it is just sitting outside chatting.

Different Timing

The whole concept of time is also completely different. Not only do Balinese use a different calendar, there never seems to be a rush to do things. This of course can be frustrating for many expats and it does take some time to get used to, especially if you are trying to run a business or build a house.

I think in western countries from a young age, we are taught to always make the best use of our time, whether it is going to school or at work or even in our social lives. It leads to people forever rushing around going from one appointment to the next. ‘Doing nothing’ is usually seen as wasting time and after moving to Bali it can take some time to adjust to a life where you don’t always have to be doing ‘something’.

Working in Bali

Other than a few English schools that employ a few language teachers and some five star hotels that have foreign executives, there are few jobs for foreigners in Bali. This means to live in Bali on a permanent basis you either need an outside income source like a pension or investments, or you need to run your own business.

Some foreigners have successful businesses exporting furniture and Balinese handicrafts. Many foreigners also have businesses catering to Bali’s tourism trade, which is the islands main source of foreign income. I run a few websites making money from Google Adsense and affiliate programs.

Since it’s not easy to find work in Bali, I wrote a free guide to how people might be able to earn a living. It is aimed for expats wanting to live in Bali, but much of the information could also be applied to any other country. It can be downloaded here: http://www.baliexpat.com/guides-and-ebooks/getting-started

Fortunately the cost of living is fairly low in Bali, if you move outside of the main tourist areas. Indonesia is a developing country, so internet is not that fast and it’s relatively expensive, but it is adequate for most people’s needs.

Some people move to Bali thinking it will be one long holiday and it will be just like living in ‘paradise’ and they are usually the expats who don’t end up staying long. I think Bali is a fantastic place to live, but like anywhere in the world, it’s not always a bed of roses.

As long as people realize that there will be problems along the way, you don’t constantly compare everything to back home and you have to adjust to a new culture and way of doing things, you can have a great life in Bali.

Photo by Catherine Perkins

Guest Post by Barbara Diggs

Lucky is the expat that has no lingering guilt associated with his or her decision to live abroad. But, I think, rare is that expat also.

Maybe you feel a bit guilty about how living abroad will affect your children, or you worry about the feelings of loved ones left behind. You might even have conflicted feelings about preferring another country over your own.

For me, as excited as I was to move to Paris nine years ago, I felt terribly guilty about leaving my mother behind.

At the time of my decision to move, my father had died only sixteen months earlier and my mother was still adjusting to her new life. Even though my brother and sister lived in the same city as she – and I didn’t – I fretted that I was bailing out at a time that she needed me.

Moreover, I knew that even without the complicating factor of my father’s death, she wouldn’t really understand or appreciate my desire to live in another country. This was a woman who lived (and still lives) five minutes away from where she was born, grew up, married, divorced and married again. Although she’d visited many U.S. states, she had never left the country and nor expressed any desire to, save a vague wish to visit the Caribbean.

I knew she would see my wish to live in Paris as evidence of my so-called “wildness” (she thought me “wild” because I did things like go skiing, parasailing, and make trips down the coast of California alone), and because she’d consider the move to be “wild” and strange, it would worry her.

There was no particular point at which I broke the news to her. I had decided to move to Paris after visiting a friend there on the back end of one of my “wild” ski trips in the French Alps. I was leaning out the windows of my friend’s apartment on rue du Bac, watching ordinary scenes of Parisian life below, when I became gripped with the notion that I had to live in Paris. I didn’t want to be another fly-by-night tourist exclaiming, “I feel like I’m in a movie!” when wandering down Parisian streets. I wanted to have a real relationship with the city.

Still looking out the window, I called my boyfriend (now husband) in New York and said,“Let’s move to Paris,” and he said, “Let’s do it.”

When I returned to the U.S., I was bursting with the news, like a girl in love. My mother heard the news of our decision along with the rest of my family and friends, but other than getting a queer deer-in-the-headlights look on her face when I talked about it, she didn’t say much. She probably didn’t take me seriously since there were few people less equipped to move to Paris than me: I couldn’t speak a word of French, nor was I qualified to practice law in France, and I was too saddled with student loans wait tables or teach English.

It was only when I got a lead on a law job in Paris it dawned on her that I was determined to make the move happen. When I told her about the potential job, a pained expression crossed her face and she wailed: “Can’t you wait until I’m dead?” I shot back: “I have to wait that long? You’re only sixty-five!” But even as I hugged her and told her not to be silly and to think of all the great trips she would take, guilt grabbed my heart and twisted it with both hands.

Fifteen months after I made that fateful call to my boyfriend, he and I moved to Paris. (How we both managed to get jobs is another story.)

A full year later, my mother made her first trip across the Atlantic Ocean. I cannot describe the pleasure it gave me to see my homebody mother sitting in Parisian café (fanning her hands against the smoke, it’s true), savoring a chausson aux pommes, or gasping with delight upon seeing the Eiffel Tower or Sacre Coeur.

As she visited more and more over the years, I marveled that this woman who had only been on an airplane two or three times before I moved, had grown so comfortable with international travel that once when her plane was diverted to Lyon because of fog in Paris, she hardly turned a hair (while I was freaking out with worry). When she safely arrived in Paris she mused that next time she would like to actually see Lyon.

My husband and I have been living in Paris for over nine years now, and my mother comes over two or three times a year. She walks down Parisian streets and handles basic transactions with an ease that makes me swell with pride.

While I still have rushes of guilt about living abroad, a year or two ago, she said something that assured me that I made the right decision. She was at lunch with a friend and other people she didn’t know very well, when the conversation turned to Paris and London. “It made me feel so good that I’d actually visited these places and was able to join the conversation,” she told me later. “I probably knew Paris better than anyone there!”

I realized then that my expat journey has been a journey for her as well — an enlightening, confidence-building journey in which she has discovered the fun of being “wild,” and the pleasure of having an intimate relationship with a city that most people only dream of.

Isn’t it lucky, then, that I didn’t “wait until she was dead” to move to Paris? Sure, she misses me … but if I hadn’t moved, there are other things she would have missed as well.

Barbara Diggs is a lawyer-turned-freelance writer living in Paris. She blogs about her expat life at International Mama.

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How has your family influenced your choices? Click the Comment link below.

Moving overseas was one of the best things I could have done.

The Author in Paris

My short answer is that I live in Britain for love: my husband is British. They always reply ‘awwww,’ because it sounds so romantic.

But the full answer is of course much longer than that, and predates my husband’s entry into my life.

I grew up in a small university town in Northern Minnesota. By the time I was 18 I was fed up with the small town. When my drama club decided to take a trip to England I signed up immediately. England!

Many car washes and garage sales later, our small group were boarding a 747 in July 1988, on our way to London. When we began our descent to Heathrow and the clouds gradually parted, I saw the little squiggly, crazy quilt pattern of fields below—so unlike the giant grids of Mid-West America. This was my first real view of the world outside the States. At 18 I was hungry for all new experiences and I was thrilled (almost overwhelmed with excitement) to see this green and pleasant land waiting for me to explore.

We did a whirlwind tour of sites in and around London. I was agitated because I was the oldest in the group. I had graduated a month previous and I wanted to be independent, free to explore the world. I was standing by myself at Windsor Castle (possibly in a sulk), near a wall overlooking the valley across to Eton School. The wind gusted and I could smell things that I had never smelled in Minnesota—a combination of the fresh, woody willows along the river, the old lichen covered stone of the castle walls, even the short cut green grass held a different scent in the misty air.

My drama teacher walked up beside me and looked at the view. She could sense my restlessness. ‘You’ll be back,’ she said, as if reassuring me. ‘You’ll come back one day.’ She was certain.

When I went to university that autumn, I learned that the university had a Study Abroad programme in England. I signed up. I spent seven months of my junior year in a castle owned by the Duke of Northumberland. He rents out the servants quarters to the students of my university. It was an amazing experience, cold, but amazing.

While there I fell in love with a local who was about to go to medical school. I went home to finish my degree, he moved to London to start his training and when I finished university I moved to London to be with him. We got married perhaps a bit too early, but my work permit ran out and I assumed I would be with him forever.

I’m no longer with him, but I am still in England. When my marriage was breaking down my dad expected me to move home. I didn’t. How could I? I didn’t even know how to pay a bill in the States. The culture shock of repatriation on top of a divorce would have been more than I could have coped with at that time.

I had been in England for 10 years, I had a circle of friends and good support. I still had friends in Minnesota but they had got on with their lives—it would be a lot to expect them to suddenly fit me and my emotional baggage in again. So I stayed in England.

Eventually I remarried—another Englishman. And I’m still here.

Do I miss the States? Of course. Would I move back? Well… We talk about a retirement home in the States one day, but I don’t see a move back to the States before then. If I had known back in ’88 on the walls of Windsor Castle that not only would I return, as my teacher said, but that my future would be dominated by a life in England, would I have done anything differently?

The answer is yes, probably…possibly. I never planned on making a life here. It has been full of emotional hardship and heartache. And yet, I don’t regret moving overseas. Of course I could have made a life anywhere, but moving overseas helped me grow into the person I was meant to be by pushing my boundaries, testing me and helping me develop in ways that I would not have been able to while surrounded by people and influences back home.

That growth and development are the reasons why a move overseas was the best thing for me.

The author is an American freelance writer who has lived in the UK for 20 years. She blogs about life as an expat at Mid-Atlantic English.

1. Empty Nest Expat. Currently living in Prague, the blogger describes herself as “an American expatriate bursting with enthusiasm to GET OUT AND EXPERIENCE OUR GLOBE! ”

2. Living In the Sun. This is a website with four offshoot blogs, each dealing with a European/Mediterranean country. There’s one for France, Portugal, Spain and Greece.
3. Soul Travelers 3. Two fifty-something parents and a nine-year old travel the world in “an epic odyssey: open-ended, years long slow trip around the world as a family adventure, unschool, spiritual journey and lifestyle.”
4. Expat+Harem. A Berkely, CA native living in Istanbul with her Turkish husband.
5. My Several Worlds. The author is a traveler and photographer. Originally from Ottawa, Canada, she currently lives and works in Taipei. Her site features gorgeous photos, as well as information about teaching English abroad.
6. Career by Choice. Megan Fitzgerald helps expats develop their careers abroad.
7. Traveling4Health. While not specifically an expat blog, this is a terrific resource for anyone interested in health care abroad.
8. Mid-Atlantic English, the blog of an American who’s lived for an extended time in the UK.
9. The Cranky Yank. This is the personal blog of Dan Prescher from International Living, and he always has a unique perspective.

   Do you have a favorite expat blog? Share it by clicking on the Comment link below.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://futureexpats.com/9-expat-blogs-to-follow/feed 7 http://futureexpats.com/expat-missionary-saint http://futureexpats.com/expat-missionary-saint#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:00:39 +0000 FutureExpat http://futureexpats.com/?p=1683 March 17 is celebrated throughout the United States and Ireland as St. Patrick’s Day. On St. Paddy’s Day, as it is familiarly known, we wear green, eschew orange and drink gallons of green beer. (Yuck!) We hold parades, dye entire rivers green, and generally behave in a very un-saintly fashion.
   
   

   St. Patrick: A Brief History (with a little guesswork thrown in)

   
   St. Patrick himself is a figure shrouded in some mystery. He probably lived during the 5th century, and was a Roman Briton from a well-to-do family. When he was about 16 years old he was kidnapped and brought to Ireland where he was a shepherd for about 6 years. At the end of that time, ostensibly after having a God-inspired vision, he escaped and made his way to the coast where he was able to catch a boat for home.

   After his arrival home, his Christian faith strengthened by his experience, he undertook religious training which continued over the next 15 years. He returned to Ireland after his ordination as a priest, with the mission of converting the heathen Irish and ministering to the Christians already there. Patrick served the Irish Christian community until his death and is considered to be the patron saint of Ireland. Definitely a missionary expat, then!

   St. Patrick is credited with driving all the snakes out of Ireland, although there is no evidence there ever were snakes there. The snakes could be a metaphor for the druidic religion which he undermined. Ireland was completely Christianized by about 200 years after Patrick’s death.

   After living among the Irish during the six years of his captivity, Patrick understood the language and the culture. Ever the canny missionary, Patrick craftily superimposed Christian symbols and rituals onto the existing pagan symbology instead of trying to eliminate the pagan Irish symbols and practices. For example, he took the sun, a powerful symbol of Irish pagan belief, and added it to the Christian cross, creating the Celtic Cross we still see today.

   St. Patrick’s death is popularly believed to have been on March 17. After his canonization, Irish Catholics celebrated the anniversary of his death as a saint’s day with feasting (and drinking!) despite it’s occurrence during Lent.

   St. Patrick’s Day Today

   Today we associate St. Patrick’s Day with shamrocks, leprechauns and Irish nationalism.

   • The shamrock was an important pagan symbol of spring. Patrick supposedly used it to teach lessons about the three-in-one nature of his Christian God. During the 17th century, the Irish started to use the shamrock as a symbol of their heritage and history and their dislike of English rule. Today it’s considered good luck, and a symbol of Irish nationalism.
   • The leprechaun we know today is really an American invention, loosely based on Irish tales of the fairies or the “little people.” The original of the Irish fairy tale was a crafty, tricky, not very pleasant looking character who could (and often did) cause humans a lot of misery and confusion and was obsessed with gold and wealth. According to history.com, they were not associated with St. Patrick or his day until after Walt Disney released a film called Darby O’Gill & The Little People, which featured the cute, harmless little leprechauns we recognize today.
   • Irish nationalism is symbolised by the shamrock and the color green. In the Irish flag, the green stripe represents the Irish Catholics while the Orange stripe represents the English Protestants. Wearing orange on St. Patrick’s Day is an insult to any true Irishman. We even make sure our canine companions comply.
     

     Saint Patrick’s Day Parades

     The first St. Patrick’s Day Parade took place, not in Ireland, but in New York City in 1762 when a group of Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched on March 17. By 1848, several Irish societies combined to form the official New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The New York City parade is the oldest civilian parade in the world, and the largest US parade with about 150,000 participants lasting 5 hours.

     And while Americans were lifting a glass to St. Paddy, over in Ireland the pubs were closed on his day until the 1970s.

     The website st-patricks-day.com lists parades in 45 US states and the District of Columbia (Alaska, Idaho, Hawaii, New Mexico and West Virginia don’t participate), as well as Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, most of the European countries (France is the notable exception), as well as China, Japan, Singapore, Tainwan, Korea and Dubai.

     

   
   
   
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