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<\/figure>\n\n\n1<\/strong>. Your home country admin turns into nightmare<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to renew your passport, driver\u2019s license or get a new credit card? Adopt the brace position. You will often hear about expats\u2019 trouble with opening a bank account or getting any paperwork done in their host country. But leave your country of origin for a few years, and you can experience the same amount of trouble with your affairs at home. Administrators of any kind will frown if you don\u2019t have a permanent address. Authorities will ghost you and misplace your official mail. You will have accounts in banks in multiple countries, but none of them will want to give you a credit card. You will be forced to travel thousands of kilometres just to renew a passport, cast your vote or translate a birth certificate. If your home country bureaucracy insists on paper correspondence, you may need to rely on a combination of expensive delivery services, favours by friends and strangers, and prayer. And don\u2019t get me started on the big ones, like getting married \u2013 you may find yourself in a situation where visa requirements force you to be wed, but then it seems impossible to do so in any country! (Secret advice \u2013 try Denmark). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even your digital life can get derailed if you start spending too much time in lesser-known destinations, and you may come under different treatment with a \u201csuspicious\u201d IP address. I got banned from Facebook for a year and lost access to a number of other online providers simply because I tried to connect from Bangladesh. In some cases, it was my fault to the extent that I was slow\/hesitant to provide them extra information or passport scans \u2013 which I had never needed when connecting from Europe. On the plus side, you can use the time saved on social media to enjoy online news and video sharing sites without advertisements. It was a real reverse cultural shock to return to Europe and realize they have so many adverts!<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. You always waste so much time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Suddenly, your supermarket shopping will take twice longer. You need to figure out your new favorite brands, just to discover that with the unstable supply chains, they disappear from one day to another. Should you have any food intolerance, aversion to palm oil or allergy to cosmetics ingredients, you will spend an inordinate time standing by supermarket shelves, trying to decipher labels and frown away helpful salespersons beaming \u201cgood shampoo!\u201d at you. Should the local alphabet be a different one from what you\u2019re used to, you can triple the time. And it may turn out that whatever you\u2019re looking for, from baking lard to panty liners, is unknown in your host country<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s not only the supermarket. How do I post a parcel and pay the customs charge? Entering a post office with the long queues, strangely labelled booths and forms in officialese made me throw my hands up in defeat. Hairdressers are my other main terror: I may speak 5 languages, but I don\u2019t seem to manage fluent hairdresser in any of them. I literally rehearsed my act every time before getting a haircut in Russian. Your time-wasting habits continue in the taxi (practicing in your head numerals in the local language for getting the change right); in your research to find a shop selling the specific random item you really need that week (Internet being no help in many countries); in your brain-shredding quest to figure out railway ticketing, rabies vaccination or replacing your car key. Most expats come prepared for wasting time on removal reimbursements, visas and the like. But it\u2019s the daily grind of wasting time on the small things that really got to be my nemesis in expat life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3<\/strong>. Your suitcase is full of the weirdest things<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One panacea for above time-wasting and missing whatever you consider indispensable for life: pick it up on your trips. I have a whole line of suitcases and bags in my basement, serving as storage boxes, which I bought on my trips because I realized I needed more space for my weird purchases. Here\u2019s a taste of all the crazy \u201cessentials\u201d I\u2019ve lugged across continents: ground walnuts; four ply paper tissues; a certain brand of mouthwash; bulky board games and LEGO sets; a mitraillette sandwich; forty sets of adhesive hooks; inflatable sitting ball; waterproofing spray; double-bed mosquito nets; a toy set of bow and arrows; year-long supply of peppermint oil capsules; snow boots; nursery night lights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And books, books and more books, because some reading is just better in print, with pictures, or have not been digitalized at all. Sometimes my trips home, or to any close-culture destination from Paris to Sydney, ended up with time spent (wasted, again) on shopping for such \u201cessentials\u201d. But it makes a big difference to be able to make that Christmas cake with ground walnuts, have a new bikini instead of the stretched old one (good luck buying bikini in Dhaka<\/a>!), have just the toy your kid wanted, or the kind of home remedy that really works for you. And one cannot describe the sheer happiness of entering a Drogerie Markt\/Boots\/any Western drugstore chain after long months of absence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4<\/strong>. You may want a break from travelling<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was around twenty and a friend went on a work trip to Uruguay, I was dying with envy. Years later, I landed my first work trip, then my first overseas work trip (romantic Tianjin!), then my first business class work trip \u2013 it was the dream come true. Then I moved country, moved continent, and started the glamorous expat jet-setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Travelling used to be a real delight. The more I saw, the more there was to explore. Moving to Dhaka, only two hours from almighty travel hub Bangkok, with the hardship-related rest leaves and bonuses, was the golden ticket to venture everywhere. I had a favourite island in Thailand, did a city hop to Kolkata, went hiking in Australia, visited friends in Japan, flew over the volcanoes of Java. Plus the regular trips to Europe to see our home countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At times, it felt a bit overwhelming, like I\u2019d turned into a travel agency, with endless hours spent on hunting tickets, booking accommodation, confirming schedules. Still, it was the way of life, and I still haven\u2019t been to Myanmar, and Nepal, and Malaysia, and so on. I was just getting my Myanmar visa when Covid changed everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apart from an evacuation and a change of posting, I didn\u2019t travel during the pandemic. I stayed grounded for two years. And instead of frustration, I felt just the opposite \u2013 relief. No need to select destinations, no need to worry about flight schedules, no need to go anywhere at all. Hallelujah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Travel itself changed, and even post-Covid, it\u2019s still more expensive and unpredictable than it used to be. There\u2019s also a strong ethical movement to encourage us to fly less, and reduce the damage by over-tourism. But I know I\u2019ve also changed inside. I certainly lost any wish to travel to a destination just because I haven\u2019t been there yet. I draw great satisfaction of not getting up at 2 am for a plane, and avoiding awkward stopovers. I don\u2019t mind spending most of my free time on my own doorstep, exploring in the neighboring countryside (to my luck, I live in a very undertouristy country, so it\u2019s more fun than it sounds). I\u2019m on a break from travelling, and I don\u2019t know when, if at all, will I start craving it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Expats can be a boring bunch <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I used to imagine that expats would be inspiring characters, great company, constantly sharing insightful stories. After spending what seems an infinite amount of time talking about flight delays, international schools, crazy local drivers and other nuisances, I\u2019m quite convinced that you would find as many inspiring characters on the street where you grew up as among any group of expats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, it seems at time that expats are more boring than a random set of citizens from your home town. Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense. Expats are frequently pushed outside their comfort zone, exhausted by the daily exertion in unfamiliar locations, and often need to put up a polite face at work or with local contacts. So what do they want to do when they\u2019re with other expats? Make zero effort and whine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than that, why would anyone decide to uproot, leave their country and people behind, and drift from place to place? They could be great adventurers and idealists, a cross between Magellan and Mother Teresa \u2013 or they could be total misfits, looking for a place that\u2019s kinder to them than home. As this expat, closer to the misfit end of the spectrum, can testify, misfits make hit-or-miss company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To be fair, not all expats are consumed by watching Netflix, driving to the farmers’ market and talking about mosquito zappers. I did know expats who would rush off to go hand gliding or fasting in an ashram or partying at local weddings at weekends. On the more serious side, many people I knew had nontrivial experience like working in refugee camps, teaching as missionaries and living in high-risk regions. There were researchers who could talk hours about local politics, embassy staff with droll VIP stories, aid workers still nostalgic for the countries they evacuated. Just keep in mind that stimulating experience is no guarantee for stimulating character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6<\/strong>. All your friends live in a different time zone<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n First, it\u2019s your friends from your home country whom you\u2019re missing: you zoom, you whatsapp, you meet yearly, but they are not part of your daily life any more. With luck you make friends in your host country, expats or locals, who to some extent fill the gap, or even fill gaps you didn\u2019t know about. When you move next, you leave friends behind again. As many of you contacts are expats, they are also moving frequently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One day you wake up, and you realize that your high school friends live in CET, a set of good colleagues in PST, a few memorable friends in EET, a lovely couple in WIT, and so on. People representing phases of your life \u2013 university, various jobs, starting a family, midlife \u2013 all live in different time zones. You try to keep in touch, but it\u2019s never the same, so you need to go out and make friends again. And again. This long-term, but normally muted, heartache suddenly becomes a lot more poignant when it happens to your kids. Their first big heartbreak of losing friends is really hard watch, and it can make you reconsider the expat lifestyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. Raising a 3rd<\/sup> culture kid has real downsides<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With a third-culture kid, it\u2019s easy to feel that you\u2019re subject to human experimentation: the lack of reliable information and professional help can be a real pain. While popular mythology affirms that exposure to multiple cultures and languages would greatly benefit any toddler, in fact there\u2019s very little research to date on the impact of multilingualism in early childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On anecdotal level, everyone knows a 3rd<\/sup> culture kid who spoke fluent English, French and Japanese by age 3 – and believe me, everyone will tell you about it. But even allowing that most kids would not have any difficulty, I\u2019ve seen enough examples of 3rd<\/sup> culture kids who learnt to speak or read with significant delay; struggled with dyslexia and couldn\u2019t access adequate professional help; or became fluent in only one of the languages (typically the one of the school) and refused to speak the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there is that favourite expat topic, international schools. On the plus side, your kid will end up speaking English (or whatever the school language is) very fluently, which is a great draw for many non-English parents. On the minus side, the choice of schools could be minimal where you live. If you consider alternative systems such as Montessori or Waldorf, or you want a certain type of high-school education, you need to pick your countries very carefully. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But languages and schools are just the surface symptoms of the huge difference it means to raise a 3rd<\/sup> culture kid. There\u2019s a whole uncharted land of identity, roots and cultural attachment behind. You may be able to read your country\u2019s fairy tales to your 4-year old, but your 10-year old will prefer the books from the school library, and you\u2019ll need to adapt to whatever culture they represent. You can visit your home country with your kids every summer, but they will only ever see it as a vacation destination. The whole concept of \u201chome country\u201d and \u201croots\u201d will be something very different for your kids than for you, and you won\u2019t always be able to relate to their feelings in this area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8.<\/strong> Country likes and dislikes are hugely subjective<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I moved country three times, and twice to places where I had never been before. I had googled, and read guidebooks, and called contacts\u2019 contacts to ask questions, but here\u2019s the thing: you\u2019d only ever know how you like living in a place after living there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People\u2019s likes and dislikes are strongly filtered by their personality, lifestyle, family situation and even their actual mood. Should both of you be globetrotter introverts with family, gluten intolerance and a passion for tennis, the info exchange will be highly useful. But you cannot ask them to fill out a personality test, so there\u2019s always the risk that your conversation partner is your polar opposite, and whatever you learn is totally irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you plan to move to a hardship posting, the large amount of negative comments can be quite intimidating. I remember having a hard time before moving to Dhaka, with many interlocutors dwelling on the gruesome aspects and finding nothing positive to mention, until I figuratively closed my eyes, muttered \u2018\u2019seeing is believing<\/a>\u201d, and stopped listening. Much of the intel was true, of course: Dhaka is a hardship posting for a reason [or ten<\/a>]. Yet I met expats who liked living there so much that they extended their contracts, returned to work there, or felt strongly nostalgic for the good things<\/a>. All countries I\u2019ve experienced divided expats into camps of fans, haters and fence-sitters. I\u2019ve met people who\u2019d go misty-eyed over Yemen, Burkina Faso or Belarus, and also others who\u2019d dislike a much easier place \u2013 there\u2019s truly no limit to the human capacity to see reality through unique glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9<\/strong>. You experience death too often<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No, I\u2019m not referring to flying in Nepal or encountering an infected Aedes mosquito or being held at gunpoint at a non-official border crossing. I\u2019m more thinking of the out-of-body experience turning into a ghost and attending your own funeral and its aftermath, and the sobering lesson how easily life will go on without you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you\u2019re preparing to leave a country you\u2019ve lived for a while, and you\u2019re wrapping up your life, you can encounter very strong feelings of grief and loss. It doesn\u2019t always happen: in Dhaka, for instance, I\u2019ve remained too much on an outsider even after 3 years to experience the final departure with great intensity. But if you get integrated with the local community, if you thoroughly invest your energy in local matters, if you find yourself in a good spot \u2013 it can be extremely painful to pull up and leave it behind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve had two such departures so far (one after as short a time as 6 months, the other after 4 years), and in many ways, it really felt like death. In most cases, it\u2019s not likely that you\u2019d ever return, perhaps not even for a short visit. It\u2019s not a goodbye, it\u2019s a forever bye, and it\u2019s often very abrupt: one day you just board the plane, and your life before instantly disappears. One day you seem to matter to the people around you: next day you\u2019re gone, and another expat takes your place. One day it\u2019s your house, your garden, next day you\u2019ll have moved and never see it again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While people everywhere experience change, it\u2019s more typical for expat existence to experience all-encompassing change, where every aspect of your life changes in a very abrupt manner. OK, in this case, we know that there\u2019s life after death \u2013 a kind of reincarnation, a very similar you, somewhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. Once you leave, you can never return home 1.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no avoiding Heraclitus, he was really spot on with that man and the river (as in \u201cNo man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you leave your home country for an extended period, when you return it won\u2019t be the same country anymore. In my case, the seminal moment came somewhere along the 6-7th<\/sup> year of absence. After 4 years of being away, I still could have easily imagined moving back and reintegrating into my old life. After the 6th<\/sup> year, however, I increasingly started feeling like a stranger in my home country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not sure whether this is linked to the \u201cpermacrisis\u201d nature of our days \u2013 after all, Heraclitus lived in a different age with different worries. Perhaps change has always caught up with travelers after a long absence. If you spend a decade out of your country, the political landscape can undergo tectonic change – my British friends who left around 2010 would have found an entirely different country if they returned in 2020 (which they didn\u2019t). Your country may join a global alliance, or quit a regional one, new parties could appear with new ideas, or old ideas considered long dead could be revived. Some expats try to keep track of daily news, some expats struggle even to recall the current prime minister\u2019s name. Either way, they cannot escape experiencing the change when they move home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And you miss out on a lot more than politics. Culture, from new films to new hits by new bands. Jokes, memes, theatre or celeb shows. Urban landscape \u2013 the city where I was born and lived for most of my life has become a global tourist destination, with lots of eye-catching modern architecture, hype vegan restaurants and revered night-life. Whole neighborhoods have gentrified beyond recognition. There is a whole new metro line, for heaven\u2019s sake, and every second square has been renamed. The city where I grew up and the country that I left behind in 2012 are not there anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 11. <\/strong>Once you leave, you can never return home 2.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not only the river that changes, but also the man. \u201cYou\u201d cannot return because after 4-8-12 or more years, you would not see your home with the same eyes. You would be at a different phase of your life, perhaps bridging your early adulthood into midlife. You would evolve from moving abroad with two suitcases to hiring moving companies to pack your sofas and bookshelves. But beyond years and career and furniture, you would acquire something more profound: wider perspective<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps the best description of how faraway adventure can alienate you from your home is in Lord of the Rings, in the last chapter of the trilogy, when the four hobbits return to the Shire after their heroic quests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While you\u2019d (hopefully) not have to scour your homeland from twisted wizards and ruffians, you will easily meet the same indifference to your experience, the same disinterest in events beyond the borders of the country, however powerful their impact may be globally. Just like the hobbits, you may find it impossible to fully settle back into this narrow mindset, and may in secret continue dreaming about Grey Havens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 12.<\/strong> Once you leave, you can never return home 3.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Would you dare to step into the same river again, knowing that after crossing it, you have to stay on the same riverbank forever? I\u2019ve met many, many expats for whom the regular change of country has become standard way of living. From Yemen to Uzbekistan, from Uzbekistan to Bangladesh, on and on. For those who work in certain international or regional organizations, even \u201creturn to base\u201d means living in a foreign country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you\u2019ve done a string of countries, the chances of settling down anywhere become slim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your home country may have become too alien, and having lost (or never built) a real professional network there, opportunities may seem scarce. You may opt for settling in a cosmopolitan hub, perhaps your headquarters or corporate base, continuing as an expat but without the constant moving. You may occasionally dream about sodding all and start a goat farm in Yorkshire or give ukulele lessons in Andalusia. But behind real or imagined opportunities to settle down and stay in one place, often lurks a very genuine fear of doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is this anything to do with Peter Pan syndrome, a kind of emotional immaturity and reluctance to commitment? It\u2019s often quoted, but I\u2019m not certain. After all, many expats make plenty of commitments: to an organization, striving for permanent status; to a professional career; to spouses, children, pets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It may be that settling down just looks too difficult. If it\u2019s the home country, it may involve a radical change of career, and the need to build a new professional existence practically from scratch. If your spouse is not from the same country, and\/or the kids barely speak the language, they would face a lot of problems with integration \u2013 possibly a lot more than during your expat times. And the old maxim, \u201cwhatever the problem, in 1-2-3 years we\u2019ll be gone anyway\u201d doesn\u2019t apply anymore. You\u2019re there to stay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At a cosmopolitan hub, career\/spouse\/schools issues may be easier to handle, or at least they would fit the familiar expat routine. But it may be a location chosen out of necessity and compromise, not something you genuinely enjoy, and the prospect of being stuck there for a very long time may be daunting. It may be impossible to properly integrate \u2013 many expat hubs welcome expats, but keep them fenced off from locals. It could feel like a worst of both worlds: you\u2019re never at home, but never really abroad (in the sense of being in touch with a fascinating foreign country and culture) either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A downer? Yes. Still, while expat living may have its drawbacks, it often seems that the most difficult part is quitting. As long as you\u2019re scrolling the options for your next posting, imagining life in Sierra Leone, Honduras or Kazakhstan, your identity crisis is at minimum, your wanderlust at peak. Imagine when we\u2019ll be able to reach and settle exoplanets<\/a>! I wonder what glamorous ex(oplanet)pat life will look like, and what unglamorous difficulties our future ex(oplanet)pats will report\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve spent the last 12 years living as an expat in 3 very different countries on 2 continents, and I still don\u2019t have my sights on returning to my home country. Good advice on handling homesickness, diversity and cultural shock; the spiritual rewards of personal growth, life-altering encounters and loyalty miles – I\u2019ve heard it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[138,136,35,145,78,137,34,135,141,142,143,140,139,144],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bangladesh","tag-3rd-culture-kids","tag-advantages","tag-bangladesh","tag-culture-shock","tag-dhaka","tag-drawbacks","tag-expat","tag-expat-life","tag-home-country","tag-host-country","tag-jet-setting","tag-return","tag-travelling","tag-uproot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":61,"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hikingonpluto.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/IMG_3640-1024x768.jpg\")
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