One woman recently told me that she loved Anonymous Third World Country because for the first time, she “truly felt like an expat.”
Definition: she had a driver, cook, maid and nanny.
I’ve never had such an experience. For me, feeling like an expat has been more a feeling of displacement, not belonging, and difficulty. Don’t get me wrong, I love living overseas and there are thousands of wonderful things about this kind of life, but it is often difficult and unglamorous.
With the excitement of a transfer and getting to live in and explore a new country and its environs comes a lot of stress, hard work and waiting. Every new visa means more than getting to be a tourist in a new country. It means among a hundred other things:
Definition: she had a driver, cook, maid and nanny.
I’ve never had such an experience. For me, feeling like an expat has been more a feeling of displacement, not belonging, and difficulty. Don’t get me wrong, I love living overseas and there are thousands of wonderful things about this kind of life, but it is often difficult and unglamorous.
With the excitement of a transfer and getting to live in and explore a new country and its environs comes a lot of stress, hard work and waiting. Every new visa means more than getting to be a tourist in a new country. It means among a hundred other things:
- Quitting a job
- Selling a car
- Disposing of food / alcohol / cleaning products
- Saying goodbye to friends
- Closing a bank account
- Cancelling a lease, internet, utilities, insurance
- Filing a second set of local country taxes
- Packing a container to ship and two suitcases of belongings that you can’t live without for 1-3 months
- Updating an itemized inventory for container insurance
- Finding a new place to live
- Finding a new job
- Finding new friends
- Buying a car
- Getting a new driver’s license
- Setting up a new bank account
- Getting insurance
- Setting up internet and utilities
- Waiting 1-3 months for your belongings to come
- Finding your way around and locating grocery stores, dry cleaners, doctors, restaurants, hair salons etc.
- Living out of suitcases
My particular favorite circular reference is that you can’t set up a local bank account without an address and you don’t get an address until you can pay your deposit and first month’s rent. Wiring money from another country takes 2-10 business days and when you have 30 days to get yourself into ‘permanent accommodation,’ it means you have a maximum of 18 days to find where you want to live, in case the wire transfer actually takes 10 business days.
H and I just moved into our new ‘permanent’ home after hours at the leasing office trying to locate our wire transfer. And we were the lucky ones; the other family at the office had the same problem and went ‘home’ to their hotel room for another night, without the keys to their new rental ‘home.’ Unfortunately, H and I showed up at our new home to find that it hadn’t been cleaned, as specified in the lease, nor were there any linens for the bed or towels in the bathroom, also as specified in the lease.
So H and I had an amazing night sleeping on the couch in the unclean apartment because a used rental couch without sheets seemed a lot more sanitary than a used rental mattress without sheets. This was after a late night trip to the (thankfully) 24 hour Tesco to get beer and disinfectant to make one bathroom usable enough for the evening. We either didn’t get enough disinfectant or beer though because we started to clean one toilet and stopped when we found dried vomit/excrement on the outside of the toilet bowl; needless to say I’m posting this from the closest coffee shop with internet and a bathroom. Sadly I haven’t chosen a new gym yet or I could also be writing this freshly showered. I know, I know, this blog should really be renamed, The Glamorous Life of Anonymous Expat.
H and I just moved into our new ‘permanent’ home after hours at the leasing office trying to locate our wire transfer. And we were the lucky ones; the other family at the office had the same problem and went ‘home’ to their hotel room for another night, without the keys to their new rental ‘home.’ Unfortunately, H and I showed up at our new home to find that it hadn’t been cleaned, as specified in the lease, nor were there any linens for the bed or towels in the bathroom, also as specified in the lease.
So H and I had an amazing night sleeping on the couch in the unclean apartment because a used rental couch without sheets seemed a lot more sanitary than a used rental mattress without sheets. This was after a late night trip to the (thankfully) 24 hour Tesco to get beer and disinfectant to make one bathroom usable enough for the evening. We either didn’t get enough disinfectant or beer though because we started to clean one toilet and stopped when we found dried vomit/excrement on the outside of the toilet bowl; needless to say I’m posting this from the closest coffee shop with internet and a bathroom. Sadly I haven’t chosen a new gym yet or I could also be writing this freshly showered. I know, I know, this blog should really be renamed, The Glamorous Life of Anonymous Expat.
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