The Life of an Expatriate is not All Sweetness and Light

By Donald Saunders


Sitting at home and gazing out across your windswept and rain soaked garden it is easy to picture yourself enjoying a new life in a new country, but just how does this picture in your mind’s eye live up to the reality once you have moved overseas? Well, this is not perhaps as easy a question to answer as you might imagine.

Probably the most significant problem is that there are so many variables to think about and so many factors which are quite simply not known at the beginning. It is very easy, for example, to believe that the fact that you do not speak the language is unimportant as, in the short term at least, you may well be able to get by in your mother tongue and can always pick up the language in the longer term. Just how easy is it however to learn a language and just how easy is it to pick up the language of your chosen country?


You may also be looking forward to all that exotic food, but just how is a perhaps substantial change in your diet going to affect your health? You may very well have experienced some wonderful restaurant food on holiday trips but is this really the type of food you will be eating every day when you are cooking for yourself?



The problems are of course relatively minor when it comes to comparing them to trying to adjust mentally to living in what is not only a different country, but possibly a very different culture. Those things which you have considered both curious and fascinating during holiday trips could well present you with considerable problems when they become part and parcel of your daily life.

Most countries with a sizeable expatriate community develop a large support network, which often includes an expat club which holds regular meetings, organizes events and outings, distributes its own newspaper and considerably more. At first sight this may seem very comforting but it is worth considering why the expats in the region have found it necessary to create such an extensive support network. Indeed, when you see the extent to which the lives of many expats revolve around the expat community you may well find yourself asking why they chose to live overseas in the first place.

In fact many expats find that, once the novelty wears off, they regret their decision but have frequently burnt their bridges and now find themselves with no alternative other than to stay where they are and to make the best of their situation.

Of course this is not the case with all expats and, as an expat myself, I can tell you that there are also many of us who are extremely happy with our decision to move overseas and would not wish to turn the clock back. For many hundreds of people each year the decision to live abroad is the best decision they have ever made and one which they assuredly do not regret. By how can you tell which group you are likely to join before you take your decision?

Regretably, you can never be certain, although there are some things which you can do to increase the chances of your decision being one which you are glad you made.

The most important thing that you can do is to test the water so to speak and this means effectively living in your chosen country for a fair period of time before you cut your ties with home. But the critical word here is ‘living’.

It is no good just visiting your chosen country from time to time on holiday, staying in hotels and dining out in restaurants. Ideally you need to spend at least a year in the country and to throw off any thoughts of being on holiday. You have got to make a conscious 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 just like a local, doing your own cooking and taking the time to learn something of the local history, lifestyle and culture, as well as making the effort to learn the language.

By steering clear of the expatriate community and integrating yourself into the local community from the very outset you will rapidly find out whether or not you would be making a wise decision to move overseas permanently.