Househunting Abroad: Art, Science or Pain?

What a difference a couple of weeks can make!  When I first planned this blog series on moving abroad, I was secure in the knowledge that we had found a place to rent.  The days of hunting and indecision were over, I believed, and now it was time for the mill of administrative boredom to grind down its excruciating detail.

Sometimes it feels like all the doors are locked...

But alas, not so!

 

 

 

In the meantime, we have had not one but two properties that we had set out hearts on slipping out of our grasp.  And, however ambivalent we felt about them before, their elusiveness suddenly made them all the more desirable in our eyes.  Two weeks ago, I would have said: ‘Involve the children in your househunt, especially if they are reluctant to move abroad.  It will help them visualise themselves in their new environment.’  But that has backfired, as the children are now crying over the swings in the garden and the playroom in which they had already mentally unpacked their toys.

So we are still very much in hunting mode, which is further complicated by the fact that: (a) Geneva is expensive and we don’t want to spend our entire earnings and savings just on rent; (b) we need to be living within 30 minutes of my husband’s experiment (and this side of the lake is much more expensive than the other side); (c) we have high-spirited boys used to chasing each other up and down stairs, so a flat is really only a last-resort option; (d) we need to be within a reasonable distance of a local primary school that has spaces and is used to dealing with multilingual children; (e) I am not based there to do all the legwork and viewing, while my husband (who does live there) does not speak French, so is reliant on the kindness of colleagues to make appointments or ask for documentation.  This last point, incidentally, may well be why we lost the previous two properties, but there is no immediate solution, short of a crash course in estate-agent French.

 

Living the dream?

Then there are all the normal problems and limitations that any family will encounter, such as conflicting priorities.  In my experience,  husbands tend to look for living rooms where they can strategically place TVs and other gadgets, or gardens where they don’t have to do much mowing.  Wives tend to look for views, well-equipped kitchens and the right kind of environment/atmosphere.  Children want a garden (preferable with swings and climbing frames, or swimming pools) and a playroom.  It can be really hard work balancing all the family’s demands and someone’s expectations will nearly always be disappointed.

That was the hardest thing of all: accepting that we would have to make far more compromises than we had expected or understood conceptually before we had started the actual househunting. 

Letting go of idealised images

There was that magnificent chalet up on Col de la Faucille, with breathtaking views over the Alps.  Only 500 metres away from school – 500 m in altitude, that is!  There was a promising house in a nice village, but with a garden so steep you could lose even the squarest ball in it.  There was a large house with plenty of garden located just a street away from the place we had lived in during our previous stay in Geneva, so comfortingly familiar, but with beams knocking us out throughout the first floor.  Finally, a house I craved with all my soul, except it was in the wrong village, probably the only village where I really did not like the school.

At least there were some possibilities back then.  But the more I look now, the fewer I see.  And the shorter the timeframes become. Oh, and can anyone help me solve the mystery of why men seem to take no pictures of storage space and the outside of the houses they are viewing?

Transitions: Developing Emotional Resilience

Julia Simens - this week's guest blogger

This is a guest blog by Julia Simens, educational psychologist and author of the book ‘Emotional Resilience and the Expat Child’, contributing author to The Gratitude Project: Celebrating Moms and Motherhood.  For more information about Julia and to read her blog and related articles, go to www.jsimens.com .

The rapidly-approaching summer months will be bringing transitions to many of you: We get transferred, friends change or move; a love one dies, leaves or gets in trouble; a child changes year levels or activities. The list, unfortunately, is endless. 

I have been lucky enough to thrive on change and in fact seek it out. Two children, four continents, seven new offices, seven international moves and ten more places on my ‘to do list’ has given me a unique perspective on what all these transitions do to the family. When unexpected events turn life upside down, it’s the degree to which our resiliency comes into play that makes these ‘make-or-break’ situations an opportunity for growth. The good news: each of us has the capacity to reorganize our life after a change and to achieve new levels of strength and meaningfulness. Though it’s easy to feel vulnerable in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, life disruptions are not necessary a bad thing because they help us grow and meet future challenges in our lives.

So how can you become more resilient?  Here is a look at four key characteristics of people who demonstrate resilience during life’s transitions.

1.    Positive trust

Resilient people rely on their belief in the basic goodness of the world and trust things will turn out all right in the end.

2.    Interpreting experience in an ‘open’ way

The ability to look at a situation in a new way (a skill called reframing) can minimize the impact of a new situation. Resilient people don’t always use an old definition for a new challenge they are creative.

3.    A meaningful system of support

One of the best ways to endure a transition is to have the support of another person who can listen and validate our feelings. It is important to choose people you trust. Don’t be surprised if it takes several friends, each of whom provides different kinds of support.

4.    Have a voice

Resilient people know that ultimately their survival and the integrity of their lives depend on their ability to take action rather than remain passive. Giving voice to your thoughts and feelings leads to insight and helps transform the meaning of a stressful situation into something useful.

Whether you are staying or leaving, these next few weeks you will be saying goodbye – to someone. The first step in this process is to celebrate with the ones that have been a part of your life and start the closure process. Major transitions are a ‘gotcha’ we all experience at one time or another in our lives.  Some transitions are easy to see and know but there are many hidden ones also. Be sure to let your friends know if you are dealing with a  ‘gotcha’ transition.

Preparing your child for the transition

*Julia, being American, often uses ‘gotcha’. This is a very informal way to say “I’ve got you” and it usually refers to an unexpected capture or discovery. It is a common term expressing satisfaction at having captured or defeated someone or uncovered their faults.

 

 

 

Relocation: Convincing the Family

Photo credit: Arvind Balaraman

After two weeks of secretive discussions and hidden asides to friends, I finally decided to broach the subject with my 8 year old.

‘Darling, how would you feel about going back to live in Geneva?’  Silence.  And then a determined, ‘No way!’

 

Over the following days, I gently approached the subject from many angles, not wishing to cause panic, not wishing to insist too much (especially before we had definitely made up our minds).  And each time the reaction got more and more dramatic, the tearful conclusion being: ‘You can go there with Daddy and my brother if you like, I’ll stay here all by myself!’

 

And it wasn’t just the children.  Grandparents, other relatives and friends, all had opinions and advice, and many of them were very sceptical of the move.  All of this can be  hard to bear when you are yourself in two minds about it.

 

Convincing others when you are not sure yourself whether you are doing the right thing…  what a challenge!  And yet, especially with children, you need to be strong and keep your doubts to yourself.  Not in the sense of painting an unrealistic picture or emphasising only the positives.  Here is what Oana, now 13, had to say about her parents’ claims when they first moved abroad when she was 9. 

 

‘They told me I would make friends really quickly, expected me to pick up the language immediately, said I would love the new house and new places.  But it took me months till I dared to say my first words in German.  I felt everyone was laughing at me.  The teacher was not as patient with me as the one back home.  I was really, really unhappy and I felt lonely in the big new house.  Even now, I can’t say I have as many friends, or best friends, as I did back home.’

 

Here are some things that you need to consider when you are trying to persuade your children that relocating abroad is a good idea:

 

1. Timing.  At what point do you involve the rest of the family (beyond the spouse, I am assuming you are involving them right away) in the debate?  Experience suggests it is better to give them time to get used to the idea, but not too early, just in case you decide not to go.  Brian says he told his children they were moving to Bermuda and generated huge enthusiasm for the idea.  A month later, they discovered Child No. 3 was on the way and changed their minds.  The two older children never quite forgave No. 3 for his untimely appearance.

 

2. Do not oversell.  Acknowledge that there will be difficulties (for all!) when adapting to a new environment.  Of course, put as positive a spin as possible on things, but do not promise perfection or you are setting your kids up for huge disappointment (as in Oana’s case).

 

3. Drip feed.  This is how we won our sons over.  I drip fed bits of information, news, pictures etc. of life in Geneva.  I got them involved in choosing the village, the house, the school. I casually mentioned Skype and webcams and having their own email addresses so that they could stay in touch with their friends in the UK.  I may even have promised some trampolines in the garden or pets (negotiations are still in progress).

 

4. Build resilience.  In yourself and in your family.  Expect some difficult times ahead but do not let that fill you with fear.  Instead, find ways to overcome those obstacles and support each other as a family.  More details coming soon, as I hope to get the wonderful Julia Simens http://www.jsimens.com  to guest blog for me next time on improving emotional resilience.

To Move or Not to Move – the Relocation Decision

Decisions, decisions...

It took us around two months to make the final decision about relocating to Geneva.  At the time, of course, it felt like much longer. 

Every week, in fact, nearly every day, I was:

• – weighing the pros and cons;

– list-making laced with gut feeling;

– asking for advice and ignoring it;

– searching online expat chat forums for clues. 

With all of the discussions, alternative views and justifications, with all of the gentle nudging to find out what the children thought of it, I felt I had aged ten years by the time we came to the conclusion that we were indeed going to move. But I realise that we were the fortunate ones.  We could take our time to make a decision we can all be happy with.  Many other families do not have that luxury.  They are forced into a decision in a matter of days.  Sometimes it’s a stark decision:  a matter of ‘go abroad or lose your job’.  It’s becoming less common now, as companies begin to realise that not involving the spouse in the decision-making process can lead to the failure of the overseas assignment and premature return.  But it still happens.

We were even luckier in that we already knew the positives and negatives, the lifestyle and the bureaucracy of the place we are moving to.  We had already spent 18 months there in the past.  Unexpectedly, that made our decision harder: there were no rose-tinted spectacles to entice us with an idyllic image of our new life abroad.  We knew just how hard it would be to find suitable accommodation, a place in a school, have the children adapt to a new language, change the car licence plates… There was no honeymoon period for us, with its gentle ignorance.  There wasn’t even much nostalgia for our life there 4-5 years ago, as in the Pays de Gex a few years can bring in phenomenal changes and doubling of the population.

So what do families contemplating relocation abroad find most useful when making up their minds?

1. Talk to others who have made the move.  Not just the ones who are still living there, but also others who have moved on.  Ask lots of questions, both online and off.

2. Focus not just on the practical aspects of the move (important though these undoubtedly are).  In the midst of all the hustle and bustle, take stock of your resilience as a family.  Be honest about any weak points in your relationship with your spouse, with your children, because they are likely to be exacerbated during your time abroad.  Can you change as a family and would you want to? 

3. If you do ask friends and family for advice, be prepared to ignore it.  There may be hidden agendas and partial views at work there.

4. If at all possible, visit the country and town you are planning to live in.  Of course a weekend trip in glorious sunshine in June is different from seven months of winter, cold and darkness, but if you still hate the place when it’s at its best, then you know you are in trouble!   Yes, it would be madness to marry someone based on the first impression, but you cannot ignore that instinctive reaction either.

5. Rely on both your reason and your intuition to make sure you come to the right decision.  I’ve seen many cases where families make long lists of pros and cons, decide that the pros outweigh the cons and rationally they really ought to go… but even as they start making the preparations for their departure, their hearts just get heavier and more distressed.  A certain amount of grieving as you say goodbye to your current life is absolutely normal, but if there is no excitement whatsoever, no lightness of heart and quickening of pulse, then maybe your decision was the wrong one.  Be sensible, by all means, but be happy too.

It’s always going to be a leap of faith, just as much as a marriage.  Because, even if a marriage is (intended to be) permanent and your move abroad may not be, you will be changed by it.  You and your family will never be quite the same again.  And that is my only nod towards a certain Royal Wedding.

Relocation Blues

It's time to pack up again...

You may have noticed (I am flattering myself that someone is waiting for my blog posts with bated breath) that I haven’t been writing much lately.  That’s because we have been experiencing the highs and lows of relocation decisions, anxieties and excitement.  Ah, yes, I do not just coach others about moving abroad, I also happily take my own advice and medicine!

From summer onwards we will be moving as a family from the UK to Geneva, Switzerland, living on the French side of the border.  We expect to stay there three years, but life has a habit of surprising us, so we are prepared for anything.

I am calling this the ‘relocation blues’ (although perhaps it should be ‘blues and pinks’, because there is a lot to celebrate and enjoy, as well as much to mourn and worry about).  Over the next few weeks, I would like to write a mini-series charting our own personal relocation journey, as well as providing other examples and ideas or tips which might be useful to others about to embark on a similar experience.

I was thinking of the following topics:

1. To Be or to Be Elsewhere:  The Decision

2. Persuading Your Followers

3. The Househunt

4.  Education Systems

5. Portable Careers

6. Drowning in Admin

Are there any other topics that would be of interest to you?  What would be most useful or most fun to find out about?  It doesn’t have to be specific to Switzerland or France, since so many of the challenges of moving with a family are similar, regardless of continent.

First Impressions in a New Culture

Three friends who have not seen each other since high school twenty years ago are chatting late at night.  One has since moved to Canada, US and now France.  One has lived in Geneva, New York and is now back in Romania.  The third has lived in the UK, Germany and Greece. 

Friends' Reunion

They are comparing notes about their first impressions of their new cultures – and their first impressions whenever they go ‘home’ to their birth country.  What did they find most ‘different’ at first sight?

1) Rules of hospitality.  How to behave as a guest, how generous (or not) to be as a host, subtle rules and assumptions about present-giving and receiving – these are the most immediate eye-openers.  Food running out at Western parties is often mentioned by Mediterraneans and East Europeans as an example of lack of hospitality.

2) Gallantry.  How men behave towards women in public.  All three of them said they missed the gallantry of having doors opened for them and seats offered to them, even the odd wolf-whistle, in the Anglo-American or Germanic cultures.  The feeling was that these latter cultures were not necessarily less sexist, but just less interested in women.  Particularly in those that were not available.

3) Levels of friendliness can be hard to interpret.   You have to be prepared to deal with rejection and not take it personally.  And not confess too much to the first person who wishes you a nice day.

4) Speaking the language of your host country is tricky, even if you previously thought you were fluent in it.  Regional accents, colloquial expressions, new slang and cultural allusions that you are unfamiliar with (cricket or baseball metaphors, anyone?) can make you feel like a beginner all over again.

What about your own big ‘eye-opening’ moments when you moved to a new culture?  What did you find interesting, exciting or perhaps frustrating?  And did your first impressions change after spending more time in that country?

12 Things I Learnt at the Washington Conference

Just back from the wonderful FIGT (Families in Global Transition) Conference in Washington DC http://www.figt.org/2011_conference and I am sitting in groggy but rapt contemplation of all that I have seen, heard, encountered and learnt.   I feel somewhat like a boa constrictor who has just swallowed a very large animal and now needs a bit of time to digest.

Washington DC. March 17-19

Here are just a few of the small and big revelations of the past five days, in no particular order:

1) American conferences are slick, well-organised and colour-coordinated, even when run by volunteers.  But yes, the air conditioning is fierce…

2) With concurrent sessions, there will always be clashes between two or even three or four sessions that you really, really want to attend.  Resign yourself to the fact that you cannot possibly see them all.  Or, even better, go with a friend, divide up the sessions and ensure both take copious notes.

3) Interculturalists love to talk and meet people!  It was the friendliest atmosphere I have ever experienced at a conference.  The emphasis seemed to be upon collaboration rather than competition (which, having been to some academic conferences, is not always the case).

4) Despite your good intentions, you will come home loaded with books.  Yes, I could have bought them afterwards on Amazon and had them delivered to my house, but what would I have read on the plane?  And how else would I have got the authors to sign them?  Expect some book reviews shortly.

5) You’ll get a lifetime’s worth of memorable quotes.

6) Everyone hates the term ‘trailing spouse’.  Thanks to Jo Parfitt, writer,  publisher and global nomad http://www.joparfitt.com/ ,who suggested that maybe we should refer to this category as STARs (spouses travelling and relocating) and STUDs (spouses transitioning under duress).

Now, excuse me while I settle back to digest some more….

Ah, I hear you say, but where are the remaining 6 things you have learnt?  There will be another blog post later this week about this, I promise!

Top Qualities of a Cross-Cultural Communicator

I’ve been writing several papers and talking about how to communicate successfully across cultures lately.  I’ve come up with a list of essential qualities for cross-cultural communicators, but I am sure there are many more that I could have added to that list.  I am not claiming, by the way, to be proficient at all of the qualities below – there is always more work to be done and more to be learnt, after all.

1) Openness and genuine curiosity – by that I mean, a warm, caring curiosity rather than its nosy twin

2) Asking questions instead of assuming you know all the answers – perhaps a touch of humility

3) Flexibility and adaptability

4) Leave your ego at home (but not your values, you don’t have to agree and condone everything you see)

5) Patience – it can take a long time to break down barriers

6) Resilience – to recover from leaving your friends as soon as you’ve made them and to find ways to keep in touch even so.

7) Be prepared – do your homework before you go to another country. 

BUT be prepared to be surprised – no matter how well you do your homework!

8) Humour – ability to laugh at yourself and at others, although you don’t have to share your jokes with foreign audiences.

Anything else I should have mentioned?  What has been the character trait or quality that has kept you sane when travelling, moving, negotiating or marrying abroad?

Are you more creative abroad?

Is it true that artists, composers and writers who live abroad are more creative?  There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence for it:  Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Stravinsky, Nabokov…  The list just goes on and on.  And of course it’s received wisdom that travel broadens the mind.   A  recent article by Maddux and Galinsky in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology goes beyond individual examples to examine five broader and more systematic studies looking at the link between living abroad and creativity.

Their conclusion is that actually living for extended periods of time in another country and having to adapt to a new culture certainly enhances the ability to ‘think outside the box’, to find novel approaches and solutions to problems, to notice and tolerate differences, to create new insights.  All of these elements are important in the creative process, going far beyond merely artistic creativity.

[You may also like to look at the caveats about the validity of some of these studies posted by other scientists, for example: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/05/creativity_and_living_abroad.php ]

I think these results will not hugely surprise anyone or change your world view dramatically.  It kind of makes intuitive sense, doesn’t it?   The more diversity you experience, the more you are confronted with different values and languages, the richer your personal repository of sounds and pictures with which to decorate your new canvas.  Certainly most global nomads are excited and happy about these findings.  See for instance http://www.articles.totallyexpat.com/living-abroad-proven-to-improve-creativity/

What I find interesting is that the authors claim you do not gain this richness of experience merely through travelling.  This is where I would like to see more research.  Can it be true that superficial impressions, no matter how strong for sensitive artistic types, are not as valuable?  In other words, it’s not all about motion and change, but also about stopping and resting?  Again, an attractive thought, confirming what many of us expats believe to be true.

And yet, I wonder if a well-travelled artist might not achieve a more profound understanding of a particular culture than someone who has lived there a while but never made an effort to understand, connect and integrate.  I can think of some expats who only saw what they expected to find in their host countries.  Does that sound like anyone you know?

Wish I’d Known That When I Moved Abroad

I’ve conducted an informal opinion poll amongst those of my friends who have spent more than six months at a time in a different country and we came up with the following list of things we wish we had known before ever coming up with the brilliant idea to live abroad in the first place!   Because no matter how much you want to explore other countries and other cultures, there are going to be some tough times out there…

This is just a short bullet-point type list.  I have written a more detailed report about this which will be available on my website shortly.  http://www.theculturebroker.co.uk/free/

1.  Culture shock will hit you.  It may not be when or how or how much you expect it to hit you, but it will come as surely as night follows day.

2.  Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.  You cannot avoid culture shock entirely, but you can prepare for it and thereby minimise its devastating effects.

3.  Don’t just survive, learn to thrive.   Some people hate their time abroad so much that they go into minimal resistance mode, just keeping their head down until they can go back home.  Don’t let that person be you!

4.  Build your own expat support network…  After all, they are the ones who understand best what you are going through.

5. But learn to let go of the expat community.  Don’t live in an exclusively expat bubble, or you’ll feel your time abroad has been wasted (in more ways than one).

6.  Be curious about individual people and you will start to understand the culture better.

7.  Understanding is not unquestioning acceptance. YOu don’t have to agree with everything you see or hear.

8.  But understanding does breed respect.

9.  It’s OK to make mistakes.  And when you do, handle it quickly, sensitively, and don’t be afraid to admit when you are puzzled and need help.

10.  It’s the little things that matter.  The two things people most miss about their home country when they go abroad are: food and the weather.  Regardless of how wonderful the cuisine and climate may be in their adopted country (and how rubbish it may have been back home), there will always be some little things that provoke strong loyalties and nostalgia – how else can you explain the fish’n’chips and baked beans pubs in Spain?  Or me wolfing down a cheeseburger and fries in McDonald’s (a place I normally avoid) after several months in Japan?  But what I am trying to say is that it’s not decadent or culturally obtuse to miss the little things, and if we can make our lives easier by indulging in some of these luxuries, why not?

What do you think of our list?  Are there any other things you would have found useful (with the benefit of hindsight)?  What little things do you miss most of all?