How to Make a Smooth Transition to Living Abroad

So, I heard that you’re taking the plunge. After a deep breath, weeks of running dialogue with your wife, and way too many stolen peeks at your kid’s Magic 8-ball; you’ve accepted the transfer to Europe.
What are you going to do?

First, let me assure you that toilet paper does exist there. Men don’t really use the bidet. So, relax.
Here’s a good toddler hack though: Bidets serve as a perfect mini-sink for the little hands that dirty up your house all the time.

More importantly, pull up a chair and I’ll tell you how to make the transition without getting divorced, fired, or thrown in a gulag. The truth is that moving can be scary business. Just moving from Newark to Mobile creates significant challenges. And, depending on who you ask, they speak English in both places.

People who live their entire lives in the same county seat don’t understand that cultures often change drastically even within the borders of your birth country. Moving from a metropolitan area to the suburbs takes some getting used to. Throw in funny clothes, weird culinary habits, and something that sounds like Greek to you; and you’ve just created a daunting challenge for anyone.

You and I are creatures of habit. Whether we know it or not, we like structure. Men like familiarity. There’s nothing like a slice at the corner pizza joint on a Friday night. Like at Cheers, everybody knows your name.

Puberty passed a long time ago, and yet in one way or another, we’ve all still got remnants of our woobies. That’s why moving is so tough. Moving means trading in those woobies for whatever they might call them in Slovenia.

Your rugrats are resilient. In a lot of ways kids are tougher than adults--physically and emotionally. I’ve seen my kids’ heads bounce off the ground more times than I want to admit in public. Most of the time if I didn’t make a fuss, they would get up look around and then go about their normal business of terrorizing the cat again. Don’t let the stained clothes and mussed hair fool you, children are well-engineered.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t need stability. They do. Boatloads of it. They need to know they’re safe. When environments change, and their worlds are turned upside down, well, their worlds get turned upside down.
As a parent who’s about to make them do somersaults, you can head-off potential problems before they ever arise. So, here are a few things to keep in mind before you get on that big jet airplane.

Google is Your Best Friend
Start researching your new home right now. Find out anything and everything you possibly can. I’m sure that someone has already set up an expat message board in Andorra. Let them help you. It’s my experience that expats are a super-helpful community no matter where you are. True, some of them will have already been scarred by the culture and your bitterness radar should be able to detect that. But, fellow expats have already navigated an awfully delicate minefield. Let them show you the map.

Don’t put all of your cultural eggs in the same search engine basket though. Get some hands-on, down and dirty experience. Case the joint before you lug all of your earthly belongings to a place that sells blocks of congealed blood in the butcher shop. (It almost looks like jello, if jello had a rusty blood color.) Short of maxing out the credit cards, do everything possible to take an advance trip without the kids. Treat it like a second honeymoon. It will give you the opportunity to scout out those first few hurdles that you’ll face when you finally do arrive with the ducklings in tow. That’s exactly what we did when we made the leap.

We took a week, and with no small amount of divine favor, by the time we left we had rented a house and bought a mini-van. We slept a lot sounder knowing that we wouldn’t spend our first month in a hotel subsisting solely off the cultural equivalent to Top Ramen. We had the keys, and when we touched down in our new country we went straight to our new digs.

How did we do that?

Here’s another hack: Carefully hire a reputable local real estate agent. He likely won’t get paid unless you find a flat (British for apartment). If he’s a smart business man, he’ll also be happy to make another few bucks on helping you tick the other errands off your list.
Finally, take pictures. You’ll look like the tourist you are, but that’s fine. Pretty soon you’ll be local, secretly laughing at the funny looking tourists. My wife and I love to play “They’re Not From Around Here” whenever we’re in public now.
On this trip, take all the pictures you want. Take pictures of everything and remember that you’ve got bundles of joy at home waiting to find out what the Chief Spies saw. Take pics of the schools. The women who carry sacks of potatoes on their heads. Whatever. Photograph anything that looks different.

Anxious friends and family back home will thank you.

Decide What’s Really Important and Take It With You
Triage. That’s what the initial stages of moving six times zones looks like. First, figure out how long this project will keep you away from your country. If it’s a quick stint, you’ll want to take only the essential items. A minimalist mindset works better. Verify the baggage restrictions before you assume how many bags the airlines allot to each passenger. Also, look into how much extra or oversized luggage costs.

An extra bag paid for at the airport typically costs between one hundred to one hundred fifty U.S dollars. Our family typically budgets for an extra bag or two in these situations. Paying for an extra suitcase makes much more sense than any surprises encountered for an embarrassing overweight luggage situation at the check-in counter.

If it’s a semi-permanent move and you’re able to hire a container to ship almost everything, including those precious wedding photos, consider a few things. What goes in the container? Things that you can live without for up to several months. What goes in the luggage? Mainly in-season clothes for wherever you’re moving. What goes in the carry-on? That’s exactly where I’m going now.

After you’ve decided how much you can take, but before you’ve got it all neatly packed away, make sure that you separate any really important items. Find a place for those in your hand-luggage. That way you can carry any essential items on the plane or boat with you.

Wait, what? Boat?

Yes. Here’s another continental moving hack. Many times it’s possible to find cruises for the same amount of a round-trip airline flight. If you could swing it with your company, it would serve as a family distraction--I mean, vacation.

I know a family who got a great deal on a Disney cruise to their destination country for the same week they were traveling. It made their move with three young girls the trip of a lifetime.

Best of all a cruise completely removes the dreaded jet lag that can last up to a week and totally tank your initial productivity. For those reasons alone, it’s worth considering.

However you decide to travel, do yourself a favor and don’t pack your daughter’s favorite stuffed animal or game console. Carry them on with you. That way you run less risk of them getting lost, if even for a short time. If you choose to ship a container, for the love of all things good and quiet, don’t put anything in the container pile that Junior has to have to go to sleep.

Your kids’ essentials may be different than what you would consider essential as a parent. You know your kids, and you know they need special things. Familiar things. Comfortable things. For a smooth move abroad, make sure they have them.

Including family pets. If pets are part of your family, and you’ll be gone longer than a couple of months, figure out a way to take them. It will make life on everyone so much easier in your new world.

Finally, please don’t forget any important medications--in your carry-on! It’s not a terrible idea to take at least an extra month’s worth of medication or contact lenses. You don’t want to be worried about those necessities right after you set foot on foreign soil. Navigating important medical appointments without proper language skills can be painfully stressful. Avoid minor issues by taking extras with you.

In the same vein of what you’d like to take with you, don’t forget Grandma. I highly recommend taking a trusted friend or family member with you to help with the kids initially. No matter how much the company has prepared for your arrival, in the first few weeks, you’ll need to take care of important matters-with both you and your spouse present. Having someone to watch the kids takes tremendous stress off of these initial meetings.

A good rule would be to plan on your nanny coming along for two weeks. During the first week, she keeps the kids while you buy furniture, set up bank accountants, and whatever else the country throws at you. Set your life up quickly while you have someone to occupy the kids.

The second week of your friend’s two-week excursion can serve as her vacation. Go site-seeing. Go out to eat. Do all the things that you would on a vacation in that area. Or, if she prefers, allow your nanny to have some free time to do whatever she wants. With that schedule, it’s typically easier to recruit a volunteer to help you.

Don’t Get in a Hurry
The American culture notoriously over-values both hustle and bustle. Europe and the rest of the world live at a much slower pace. When I wanted my kids to attend a summer extra-curricular program at the school they would attend the following year, I set up a meeting with the principal. We had a cordial discussion, but he told me that it wouldn’t be possible for my daughter to attend. I expressed my desire for her to learn the language as quickly as possible so she could adapt to the culture and have the level of success that we as a family expected. It sounds snobbier written that way that it really was, but his response was simple and direct, “Children aren’t machines.”

I wanted to explode, but I accepted his no, and we went on with our business as a family. When you get to your new home, don’t expect everyone to take your life and needs as seriously as you do. Learn to slow down. Learn to speak at a lower volume. Try to blend in and become a part of the local culture.

Give yourself plenty of adjustment time. It’s a good idea to try to go before you begin your work. If that’s not possible, negotiate with your employer for some well needed transition time. If you have school age kids, and it’s possible, go before the school year begins or consider allowing your children some time to make the initial transition. There’s not much scarier than plopping a third grader down into a classroom full of kids she doesn’t know who all speak a language she doesn’t know.

Finally, establish a new routine as close as possible to the old routine, and as quickly as possible.

Things will be different no matter where you move. Finding a healthy balance between the best part of the American culture and the best part of your new culture is enriching and will allow your family to have a unique outlook on life going forward. It will give your kids an experience that they’ll never forget, but most of all it will multiply their resourcefulness and resilience tenfold.

Take advantage of this amazing opportunity, but make sure that you do an expert job of preparation before making the leap.