• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Future Expats

Create an Untethered Life Overseas

  • Home
  • Start Here
  • About
    • Big Fat Disclaimer
    • Privacy Policy
  • Portable Careers
    • Blogging
      • Blogging for Expats WordPress Tutorials
    • Life Coaching
    • Photography
    • Teaching
    • Websites
    • Writing
  • Prepping the Move
    • Countdown
    • Narrowing Your Country/City Search
      • Africa
      • Asia
      • Australia/New Zealand
      • Central America
      • Europe
      • North America
      • Region
      • South America
    • Visas and Residency
    • Quality of Life
    • Learning the Language
    • Health Care
    • Technology
  • Panama
  • Blog
  • Resources
    • Hire Me!
    • Expat Resources: Prepping the Move
    • Expat Resources: Portable Careers
    • Expat Resources: Technology
    • Book and Movie Reviews
You are here: Home / What Kind of Expat Are You? / What Kind of Expat Is She?

What Kind of Expat Is She?

August 26, 2009 by FutureExpat

What Kind of Expat Is She?

Margarita Gokun Silver recently posted her three top reasons for becoming an expat. It sounds to me as though she’s a good example of a Student/ Adventurer! What do you think?

Three Reasons to Become an Expatriate

Hong Kong Disney
Hong Kong Disney

by Margarita Gokun Silver

Growing up I never had an opportunity to travel and see the world. I was born in a country that didn’t let its people go abroad and thus I was effectively cut off from anything that lay beyond the borders of my homeland. Naturally, as it is with all human beings, the prohibited became an fascination — and I wasn’t of, course, the only one fascinated with seeing what lie beyond. Most of my generation was just as infatuated as I was.

When I finally broke free and moved to another country, I had all the freedom in the world. I could travel, see new places, experience new things, and learn. Travel was no longer prohibited yet the fascination stayed with me. To this day I am happier when I find myself in a completely new territory with adventure, things to explore, and change to experience.

Later in life, when I learned about values, I realized that my fascination with the “abroad” was the direct result of values that I held and hold dear to this day. Values such as adventure, newness/change, learning/growth, and challenge are central to my feelings of fulfillment. And those values are the ones that I was seeking to honor when I embarked on an expatriate lifestyle.

And so here are my reasons for becoming an expatriate in no particular order:

  1. Learning and Growth. Expatriate lifestyle offers you an unmatched opportunity to grow. Yes, you can read about most places in books, you can watch programs about them on TV, and you can even travel to most places for a vacation. But you’ll never learn as much about a country and its people as you learn living in their midst. So, if you have a particular hunger for learning about different places of the world, this might be a reason for you to consider becoming an expat.
  2. Challenge. Surely things can be challenging anywhere, but living in another culture takes the concept of challenge to a whole other level. So, if you thrive on being challenged to the brim, if you enjoy overcoming difficulties, and if you find yourself being bored in you current place of residence, expatriate lifestyle might for you.
  3. Change. Many people have trouble tolerating change, but I am certainly not one of them. I even have to move furniture around in my house in order to change something. I thrive on change — change feeds my creativity, it empowers me, and it creates possibilities. So if you feel that change is something you crave, becoming an expatriate will definitely help you find it.Read more from Margarita at the Global Coach Center blog. Thanks for permission to reprint this post, which is copyright 2009, Global Coach Center.Want to comment? It’s simple — just click the link below.

Filed Under: What Kind of Expat Are You? Tagged With: adventure, expat, student

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Joni Gordon says

    August 31, 2009 at 10:40 am

    I love this site and think that many of your readers will be interested in a documentary film that really describes the expat experience.
    It is called Lost and Found in Mexico and is a personal
    film that really hit home with me.
    Joni Gordon

    • FutureExpat says

      August 31, 2009 at 1:44 pm

      Hi Joni,
      Thanks for the kind words. For anyone interested, you can see a trailer for it here

Primary Sidebar

Visit Panama

Panama Relocation Tours

VPN Services

Best VPN for TravelersBest VPN for Travelers

Sale on .COM Domains!

KINGCOM domain salepixel

More Posts

Your Top 20 Country Choices for Overseas Retirement

image of springpad notebook

8 Tools for Organizing Your Portable Career

The Dangers of Social Media

After the Lights and Music End: The Dark Side of Carnaval in Las Tablas, Panama [Video]

Write Your Way to a Life Overseas

WordPress logo

Dress Up Your Blog with Pictures

Top Expat Blogs – How Cool is That?

Here's a new award. . . We've just been named to the Top Expat Blogs list at Ranked Blogs! If you like us, click the link and vote us up! we're one of the top expat blogs at Ranked Blogs! Future Expats was recently awarded a spot in the Top 100 Expat Blogs.

Follow Me

  • Twitter

Copyright © 2023 Future Expats Forum
Proudly running on a Genesis Theme by StudioPress