The Grown-Up's Guide to Running Away from Home, Second Edition: Making a New Life Abroad (35 page)

Patronize shops in the neighborhood and become known to proprietors and clerks. They’ll remember you, and you’ll feel more at home returning to Carlo’s butcher shop or Michelle’s bakery. The ambience is much more fun than in a supermarket chain, and eventually, as you become part of the community, you’ll get a better cut of meat or perfectly browned bread!

If you belong to a specific denomination, introduce yourself to the minister, priest, or rabbi. As in the United States, these religious affiliations lead to social events that are put on by church members and in which you can participate to meet new friends.

Just as in the States, people in communities overseas need volunteers to help with community projects. Sign up in your community to help run the local fair, help beautify the town square, or teach kids English.

Gail, a long-time American expat, is a full-time English teacher who encourages volunteers among the English-speaking community to speak to her young foreign students. She has the English speakers talk about a hobby or interest to help the students hear the real thing from someone new.

Communities overseas are like anywhere else. If you participate, you become acclimated and make new friends. If you don’t, you’ll be on the periphery of life. Get involved and deepen the pleasure of the adventure.

Everyone who moves overseas invites everyone back home to come visit. Then sooner or later, everyone who moves overseas begins to wonder why they were so loose with the invitations. You may be a perfectly sociable sort, and we all like visitors, but there comes a time when the washing machine can’t keep up with the changing of the towels, and the budget just won’t cover another week of touring with indefatigable friends or relatives.

Be prepared with a few ground rules. These are perfectly acceptable among civilized hosts and guests, and ensure that both enjoy the visit more thoroughly:

Guests Must Have Transportation
. Squiring people around in your vehicle for two weeks is exhausting and frustrating for both parties. You may want to put your feet up or even do your wash. They want to pack every sight they can into their two weeks’ vacation. This is especially onerous when you have back-to-back guests. The second group gets the watered-down tour, and you end up feeling guilty that you didn’t do more. With their own rental car or plans to use buses or trains, you’ll all be happier.

Guests Take Responsibility for Their Own Plans
. Be wary of the visitor who says, “Oh, you know the area, just take me where you think best.” You may have different interests, and in any case, you’re then responsible for planning every minute of their visit. See the preceding transportation comment! If they need advice, of course give it. This helps if you have plenty of information available for them to read, with some maps helping them find their way around.

Collect a File of Local Sites
. Visit tourist offices in your area and collect brochures on the different tourist sites within a day’s drive. Hand these to your guests and let them pick their own day trips. If they don’t, then assume they want to sit in your backyard and smell the flowers.

Don’t Be Shy About Asking Guests to Contribute
. I hope your guests are polite enough to offer to buy groceries while there or treat you to a dinner out as their contribution to having a free room for their vacation. They also should clean up after themselves and help prepare meals with you. If, however, they seem remiss in this matter, just say cheerfully, “Hey, I was wondering if you’d help make dinner tonight.” Or, “We usually ask guests to prepare a meal one day a week while they’re staying with us. I hope you won’t mind.” They’d have to be boors to say no. If they do, you know never to invite them again.

You may do all the right things to find new friends, share your home with old ones, discover new interests, and still suddenly find yourself running head-on into culture shock. It can be brought on by the simplest things: the shopkeeper in Italy doesn’t stock your brand of toothpaste; you can’t find the new mystery (in English) anywhere; the electricity in your rental house cops out when you run the washer and the vacuum at the same time.

Once the initial excitement is over—heck, maybe even the minute you set foot on foreign soil—you’ll begin comparing the new location with the States. Try to remember, however, that if you wanted the same experience, you could have stayed in the comfort of your same-old-same-old living room.

Have patience. Regard the merely unpleasant with a sense of adventure and consider it as an interesting story to tell family and friends back home later, when the distance provides some humor.

One final note: If you are seriously unhappy overseas, you can always go home again. But make sure that your misery is not just a temporary situation brought on by exhaustion or two weeks of unseasonable rain and cold weather. You could have been this unhappy at “home” too. Give yourself some time, and often you’ll discover that you adapt and enjoy the very aspects of a culture that at first may have shocked or dismayed you.

Your adventure overseas will end when you return to the States, but this is not the end of the story. The memories of your trip will linger, providing pleasure long after you unpack your bags. The friends you’ve encountered will be spread far and wide, and, like Johnny Appleseed’s trees, they’ll flavor the following years through correspondence and future visits. The new foods you’ve learned to appreciate will spice your meals with variety and conversation as you share them with family and friends. Certainly, you’ve gathered enough travel tales to hold court at cocktail parties for years to come.

Still, when all is said and done, you will return to pick up your life where you left it … or will you? You may physically return to the exact same city, the exact same neighborhood, the exact same house, but, as it is for the child who grows and returns to his old room after years away, the room that once was so large seems to have shrunk.

You’ll discover differences, of course, in your neighborhood and in your friends and family. A new mall took over the old dry cleaning plant or cousin Holly grew a beard. None of these superficial changes will come close to the changes that occurred within yourself. You’ve expanded your horizons and your mind by encountering the world outside the United States. You’ve come back a changed person, while many of your neighbors may have simply changed television channels.

They may be excited to tell you about all the changes in the neighborhood since you left. They may also like to hear your travel tales. But what many returning expats have discovered is that the original base of commonality has been eroded.

After tasting gelato in Rome, you may be less than interested in the fact that there’s a new ice cream store around the block. The other situation that arises is that, once the initial excitement of your return is over, any mention of an adventure overseas will make it appear as though you’re bragging, only
you’re dropping names like Paris and Barcelona instead of movie stars. Even if your friends never tire of your stories, many of the adventures you’re so fond of will be beyond their comprehension.

In addition, due to the fluke of geography that isolates the United States, many people in the United States are able to isolate themselves from world events. The United States is a big country, and the news tends to concentrate within the country’s borders. This lack of knowledge may seem narrow-minded once you’ve become acclimated to international living, with the world perspective that accompanies it.

I tell you all this not to discourage you, but to prepare you. Many people I spoke to called returning to the States more difficult than encountering the new culture overseas. Forewarned is forearmed, and I hope that, if you keep this in mind, you won’t feel quite as let down when you discover that reintegrating into your old life is not as easy as you may have expected.

You can readapt, but ideally with new interests and resources, just as you adapted to your adventure and new country overseas. By not expecting to fit immediately back into the same square hole, you may round out your life in new ways in the States.

One way is to seek out others who have the new mind-set you’ve discovered. Join or start a French or Spanish or whatever-language-you-learned club. Volunteer at a local elementary school to talk about your adventures and tell the kids about life overseas. Become part of the international community in your city or town. Maintain contact with your friends overseas and invite them to visit you. In this way, you can extend the pleasure of your time abroad for many years after you return.

The big question many people ask those of us who choose a long-term adventure overseas is: When will you return? Six months? A year? Five or more?

Some people can answer immediately. They know their sabbatical is for a set amount of time—the length of a professional assignment
of two years, for example. Others simply say, “I’ll stay as long as I’m enjoying myself.”

Once they’re settled overseas, some people discover that the lifestyle suits them, and they extend the stay—again and again. Finally, some know that they won’t return at all. As Claire in Portugal says, “The family will just visit us here. We can’t see any reason to go back.”

Of course, many grown-ups running away for the adventure will eventually miss family and friends and want the comfort of familiar U.S. soil. Often, even longtime expats return when they are older to be near children or settle down from the rigors of travel. But expats must be a hearty bunch, because several told me that they’d consider returning after they turned eighty or older!

The time frame you choose will be subject to your own lifestyle, family, age, and desires. Whenever you choose to return from your overseas adventure, you will be enriched by the experience for your remaining days.

No selected bibliography could possibly encompass the wealth of information available in the travel section of your local bookstore or library. There you’ll find stacks of books that will help you investigate specific destinations. A little more digging will provide detailed information on cultures and customs overseas, international job or study opportunities, and a myriad of tales written by others who’ve lived or traveled frequently overseas.

This bibliography is a compilation of some of the books that I think are particularly interesting and useful in researching an adventure abroad—including my own!

The Grown-Up’s Guide to Retiring Abroad
by Rosanne Knorr (Ten Speed Press, 2001). Twenty countries are profiled as potential live-abroad destinations, including lifestyle, housing, weather, cost of living, health care, and safety.

The Grown-Up’s Guide to Living in France
by Rosanne Knorr (Ten Speed Press, 2000). Specifically written for the expat settling into French life, with information on everything from visas to housing, healthcare to entertainment, shopping and making friends.

Living, Studying, and Working in France: Everything You Need to Know to Fulfill Your Dreams of Living Abroad
by Saskia Peilly and Lorin David Kalisky (Owl Books, 1999). An informative guide, not for tourists, but for those who want to immerse themselves in French life.

Living and Working in France; Living and Working in Spain; Living and Working in Britain; Living and Working in Switzerland
by David Hampshire (Haddam, CT: Survival Books). Practical and easy-to-read books provide essential information on the details of setting up a household overseas, from choosing lodgings to health care to dialing the phone.

Choose Mexico for Retirement: Information for Travel, Retirement, Investment, and Affordable Living
(10th ed.) by John Howells and Don Merwin (Globe
Pequot, 2007). The title pretty much says it all: these experienced authors cover the many draws of Mexico for American retirees.

Falling … in Love with San Miguel: Retiring to Mexico on Social Security
by Carol Schmidt and Norma Hair (Salsa Verde Press, 2006). Like so many others, I did fall in love with San Miguel, so this title appeals to me!