Singles living overseas are in a unique position. They have left everyone they know to move to a new place and take on a new role. I believe good, solid friendships are vital to anyone thriving overseas (or in their passport country for that matter), but especially for singles.
Read MoreWhen we first move overseas, we don’t often think about the long-term implications. It’s hard to wrap our minds around what nearly 20 years of life abroad will look like, or if we’ll even make it to that point. Quite honestly, not many people do stay for that long. Rachel Pieh Jones, author of the book Stronger When we first move overseas, we don’t often think about the long-term implications.
Read MoreThe baby stirs in her crib. It’s still in our room because the carpenter made it an inch too wide and it can’t fit through the door to her room which is, for some reason, more narrow than the other doors in the house. We were up most of the night. 40 hours of traveling back to our Asian home from the US has us all trading colds and coughs and fevers.
Read MoreOn the difficult days of expat life, we might be guilty of daydreaming about "going home." But then, we snap ourselves out of it and declare, "what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger!" We pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and march forward, determined to stay the course and not let anything threaten to send us packing. Over time, pride takes over and suddenly we think "going home" is equal to "quitting."
Read MoreYou see, I started college absolutely convinced I would be returning overseas after I graduated. I just could not picture what it would look like to live in America long term. It felt so foreign to me – whereas being foreign was what was comfortable. I knew how to handle being obviously "other" and to skate across the mix of cultures growing up overseas involves. But I didn’t know how to handle it when I looked
Read MoreDo you remember the early days of your cross-cultural journey? Maybe those days when you were packing and announcing your plans to friends and family and saying some hard good-byes. But those goodbyes were overshadowed by the excitement to come, the realization of a life of significance, the answer to a call,
Read MoreIt wasn’t until I was older when I realized that most of the world doesn’t define home like me.I have a children’s book called Home by Carson Ellis. It has beautiful pictures of all kinds of homes in it: huts, houses, shells, igloos, wigwams, beehives, clean homes, messy homes, and even a bus-home.
Read MoreOur journey to living abroad has been marked by "last times" and living like nomads. Like many who embark on new lives across an ocean, we experienced a last Christmas, a last set of seasons at home, a last time for certain experiences, and the list goes on. When we sold our home in the foothills of the Cascades with a view of Mt. Rainier, we lived temporarily with family for three weeks before we drove across the United States to spend a year in Texas. After a week of hard work, we put our condo on the market. I took a photo, wrote a caption, and claimed a hashtag so I could look back on the defining moment for years to come (#goodbyeklahaniehome). We then spent two weeks celebrating Christmas as we knew it before we said goodbye to the place where my husband and I had grown up and where we started a family. Now, we were leaving this place.
Read MoreEarly in my twenties, I married a grounded and reliable man who shared my growing faith. We bought a house, brought two children into the world, and started to put down our roots. But despite my desire for roots and security, our family was meant for a big international move. We knew this also meant lots of goodbyes, paring down favorite things, and sleeping in unfamiliar homes. Here we had worked so hard to build a life of constancy for our children, and now we were dragging them all over the country and then across the world, away from everything they had known. It was difficult for me, watching my children struggle with all the uncertainty. I wanted to create a life where they felt safe and secure – something far different than the life of loss and abandonment I had experienced in my own childhood.
Read More
