Living & travelling abroad
AI has members from many countries. Some live in their home countries, some do not. Some have travelled, some have not. This is an open thread to share experiences and such.
Who lives in a country different from the one they were born in? What is life like? Does anyone want to ask about their experiences? Has anyone travelled and care to share about it?
To start things off, I come from the US and now live in Japan where I have been for about 15 years. Along the way, I have visited Canada, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, England, Denmark, Detroit (at least I consider it a foreign country) and Sweden. I speak English, Japanese, German and Swedish, though the latter two are fading fast. AI helps me support the first one.
\ 
Life abroad has been such a wonderful experience that I doubt I will ever return to the US (to live). If money and time permit, I hope to travel the world a little more.
Who lives in a country different from the one they were born in? What is life like? Does anyone want to ask about their experiences? Has anyone travelled and care to share about it?
To start things off, I come from the US and now live in Japan where I have been for about 15 years. Along the way, I have visited Canada, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, England, Denmark, Detroit (at least I consider it a foreign country) and Sweden. I speak English, Japanese, German and Swedish, though the latter two are fading fast. AI helps me support the first one.
\ Life abroad has been such a wonderful experience that I doubt I will ever return to the US (to live). If money and time permit, I hope to travel the world a little more.
Comments
About every two years I go back and stay in Auckland with friends, I absolutely love it there!
What is life like here? It can be rather mediocre. Growing up and living in London is fantastic - particularly for the young and carefree. Jobs are great too. It's great if you're into the immaterial.
Actually I spent half of my university years in France - living in Paris as well as the south of France. Spent a lot of time travelling abroad to the States and Canada (where most of you guys livfe). In terms of preference, I love the university lifestyle in France; the food; the people; the language and literature. When I return to England, I really think Wordsworth sucks, English food sucks; English taxes suck and English Fixed Penalty Notices and Congestion Charges suck. To say nothing of the inane drabble that passes for several hundred pages of the 19th century literature and British music. Whereas I love French literature and culture, I find their bureaucracy depressing. Trying to get a job in France for any young person is riddled with with a hierarchial pandering to authority. It becomes rather tiresome, and fantasies of a meritocracy become stillborn. For that reason I live in England, where as least because I'm a native, I'm qualified to do something, not because I'm necessarily good at anything, but just because I'm English ;P
Clearly that means if I move to Scotland, I will become useless.
Last year I travelled on the rough to China with a visa, a camera and not much else. I spent most of it alone, although I was working as a freelance for several corporations, I only ever touched base with them in Hong Kong for a few weeks. It was a fantastic opportunity. I speak English, French and German and Mandarin fluently - or so I thought! Mostly I spent time travelling off the beaten track in China, visiting remote villages, writing articles for magazines and discovering the generosity of the chinese people on the way. I was really stunned at how generous and kind they were to me in villages and rural provinces. Life for 24 hours on the train from Hunan to Beijing is a real experience! In one journey in Hunan, I decided to discover the mountains of Zhang Jia Jie without knowing much about the geography. On the packed train, some of the local lads started trying to talk to me. I joined in a game of poker with them and got talking. By the time we finished the 8 hour journey, they'd invited me to go on a camping tour with them in the mountains - we weathered torrential thunderstorms; losing our way, thickets of fogs for days and had a fantastic bonding experience (not Brokeback Mountain thank you very much). I felt really honoured that they were even bothered with a foreigner with me - they made a real effort and were so hospitable (and yes - they told me my Mandarin really sucks!) It still brings tears to my eyes thinking of their kindness. The lifestyle was more simple; nothing like the modernityof Beijing or Shanghai. The remote villages have a delightful humanity which I'm yearning to return to before the Beijing 2008 Olympics destroy the rest of rural China through modernisation.
A year later, back in England, I'm still working as a freelance, although the dreary middle-classness of the English gentilly is rather stultifying. Can't wait to leave England - I'm reflecting on how decadent living in materialistic countries is
Calling a different culture home, learning the languages, and working in and with local organizations was a life-altering experience. Been back in the states since September. Already getting tired of experiencing my country through a windshield after living carless for the past two years.
Can't recommend Peace Corps enough to the Americans. Grassroots international development experience, some travel opportunities, language learning, and general awesomeness all on the government's dime.
Although, I'm always trying to add impressible, tax-haven, emerging nations to my list of places to eventually move. At the moment, Slovakia is at the top of the list. I would like to go build battery recycling plants there. . . but I need some more seed-income first.
I plan on living in Germany next year. The only concern I have is that the iPhone is available there when I move.
People travel on vacation. I on the other hand prefer living in each country for a while, going native, living like the natives, eating what and where they eat, getting to know them, working a regular job with them, not doing the tourist thing, and then when my feet get itchy again, move to some other country and live there. This has made me pretty well-informed and tolerant of other cultures.
Ethinicity-wise, I am Indian (the chocolate-brown kind, not the red kind).
Cheers
I've changed my mind - I don't live in England. I'm living in denial.
Is this thread making anyone else feel un-worldly?
sure, i've known for a while just how crap my situation is, the question is how to change it. I live in a pathetic small town which I largely ignore because I hate pathetic small town people, but the problem is I have been institutionalized by being bought up in a pathetic small town, and to be honest, I don't know how to get out.
Try a short trip to another country if you can; the experience is very rewarding. If you can't travel, try an international club in your town or a nearby city. There is likely to be something and some of the events can be fun and educational.
Married at 19 to a German but when we split up 5 years later I decided to travel overland from Amsterdam to Afghanistan to fight with the mujahedeen. Didn't know anything about Islam or anything then, just wanted to be in a war situation as I was not quite emotionally balanced due to the break-up.
Went by train some of the way and got stuck in the Balkans when some aggro kicked off there and had some trouble in Bulgaria also. .
When and where were you in the Balkans if you don't mind me asking? If you were going to fight with the Muj we were on different sides and most likely didn't meet each other, but I was in Sarajevo for a bit and it'd be kinda cool to run into someone on an Apple site that was there at the same time. Small world and all that.
Is this thread making anyone else feel un-worldly?
When I travel (and I'm working on it every other Summer, at least), I spend most of my time in London, where I spend 3-5 weeks at a stretch.
Goodness, what a bumpkin!
I'm picturing Midwinter as a Mormon Creole with a straw hat and overalls...
Carharts coveralls and a dash of Cherokee, thank you. The rest is fine. Except for the Mormon thing. I ain't no Mormon.
I get so caught up in the day-to-day that I often forget about the larger world beyond the abstract political and economic issues.
I'm from the USA and spent some time living in Central America in my 20s. It was fascinating and I loved meeting people and seeing things, but I always felt out of place. I felt like I could have lived in Nicaragua for years made tons of friends and I still would have felt like an outsider. While I can understand, tolerate and celebrate cultural differences, I couldn't give up my own cultural perspectives. I felt like that left me separated from those I was living and spending time with.
By contrast, my sister lived in the remote mountains of Mexico for a year and found that she could essentially become Mexican. Her perspectives seemed so different when she returned that my parents were worried about her. I didn't worry much as she was happy. She has since married a Mexican man and lives more in the Mexican culture than she does in the traditional North American culture. My parents are used to it now.
One of my favorite traveling experiences took place in El Salvador in the early '90s just after the civil war was ended. I popped off to ES without so much as a map after breaking up with my girlfriend in Costa Rica. My first 3 days in the country were just freaky as I found if almost impossible to engage anyone in greetings much less than conversation. The results of years of civil war, guerrilla war and death squads were appallingly obvious. No one made eye contact with me on the street or in a bus. My greetings were not even brushed off--they seemed to pass right through people. I don't know if it was that way for strangers in general or if my obvious USAness put people on edge. The only people who spoke to me not during a financial transaction were grandmothers who would approach me on the street to make sure that I didn't stay out after dark (crime was rampant).
This doesn't sound like a good beginning for one of my favorite travel stories, but it is essential back-story. I was on the verge of giving up, and leaving the country dispirited, but eventually I was able to meet some people. Once I had gained some trust, people were as I have found them throughout Central America. I ate with them and danced with them. I was invited into their homes.
I took a road trip toward a national park and cloud forrest, Montechristo, that straddles the border between El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. I was looking to hitch a ride up the road so I would be able to day hike back down. The people I hitched with decided that I needed to go all the way up with them. They took me up (somehow getting governmental permission to the restricted park) shared their food and their tents and blankets as we spent two misty days and chilly nights on a remote mountain rainforrest.
The enduring image I have from that trip was when they found out that I was celebrating my 25th birthday the second day. There, on the side of a mountain, during a break when the clouds were not above, but below in the valleys, with a rainbow in sight, they linked arms to toss me in the air 25 times as is the Salvadoran custom. It was one of those moments that seemed just perfect in my life.
I've been around most of Western Europe, North America, North Africa, and the Far East in my time.
Living in New Orleans has been the hardest five years of my life, marked by culture shock, long periods of unemployment, and, ultimately, losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. I thought I was well-travelled, but nothing truly prepares you for moving abroad on a permanent basis.
The funny thing is, I went back to Britain last summer, for the first time in five years, and I felt like a fish out of water in my own home country. And it was so cold! I honestly can't see living there again. There is much about America that frustrates me, but there is much to embrace here, too. Americans exude a positivity that I can't help but respond to, and, despite all that has happened, I believe my opportunities are greater here.
Being ethnically half-Chinese half-Indian, I look kinda Indian, but with some twists. The interesting thing is that in the USA hispanic immigrants talked to me in Spanish [thinking I was Mexican]. In the Netherlands people spoke to me in Dutch [thinking I was Indonesian, Indonesia being a major former Dutch colony]. Somewhere on the way to the USA from Asia/Pacific I stopped over in Osaka on transit. Tiny hotel room but good Japanese porn. It is really stunning, Japan is basically the *only* Asian country with very liberal sexual attitudes. Strangely somewhere around Osaka airport some of the security people spoke to me in Japanese. Anyway Japan, I feel is a very unique Asian country in and of itself... In Australia people generally regard me as "Indian ethnic from somewhere - modern International version" (or so I like to think). In Malaysia people assume I am Malay ethnic but the moment I start speaking English they think I am a foreigner from the Indian subcontinent or maybe the Phillipines or the Middle East or who knows where.
At this stage I have a Malaysian citizen card and passport. I have an Australian live/work permanent residency until end of 2011. I also now have a working holiday visa to the UK for April 2007 to April 2009. I have never been to the UK/ Ireland... It scares me. Poms (with all those different accents!! WTF!!), Scots, Welsh, Cornish, Irish [Northern Ireland]. For some reason though I wanna really immerse myself in Ireland [Ireland proper]. Eire...! (Is that right the spelling??)
My list of cities I have/ do enjoy living in (given reasonable family, job, financial, social settings), is, from best to not that fantastic:
Sydney
San Francisco
Melbourne
Brisbane
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore
.......................
I was born in Manchester, England, where I lived until I was 26. I then moved to Edinburgh, Scotland for five years, before relocating to New Orleans, LA.
I've been around most of Western Europe, North America, North Africa, and the Far East in my time.
Living in New Orleans has been the hardest five years of my life, marked by culture shock, long periods of unemployment, and, ultimately, losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. I thought I was well-travelled, but nothing truly prepares you for moving abroad on a permanent basis.
The funny thing is, I went back to Britain last summer, for the first time in five years, and I felt like a fish out of water in my own home country. And it was so cold! I honestly can't see living there again. There is much about America that frustrates me, but there is much to embrace here, too. Americans exude a positivity that I can't help but respond to, and, despite all that has happened, I believe my opportunities are greater here.
Thank you for your touching story. How are you doing now, if I may ask? Hope things are better. Due to Bipolar Disorder (Type 2) I have been generally chronically unemployed for 2 years or so. I am thankful for some recent government assistance in Australia but I may have to relinquish this soon to go back to KL Malaysia with my parents where I will not get government assistance but instead depend on my parents and maybe, some sort of part time job.
sure, i've known for a while just how crap my situation is, the question is how to change it. I live in a pathetic small town which I largely ignore because I hate pathetic small town people, but the problem is I have been institutionalized by being bought up in a pathetic small town, and to be honest, I don't know how to get out.
One step at a time. My moving around has been strongly influenced by my desire to dump old friends and their perceptions of me and re-invent myself. One can only do this to a certain degree before one desires more stability. AppleInsider is certainly one of your first gateways to "get out". I think the biggest thing you can do is get your passport, if you don't have one already