InterNations guestblogger Abu Muhammed, a US expatriate who is now living in Saudia Arabia, shares his impressions of his first trip to Indonesia. The first thing that I noticed about Jakarta was how domestic the airport seemed. It reminded me of my childhood neighbor’s front yard. Her name was Ms White, and she had a [...]
Filed under: Adventures Abroad, Culture Shock, Guest Author on March 22nd, 2013 | No Comments »
Our guestblogger Abu Muhammed from Saudi Arabia muses upon stress caused by ongoing culture shock and, paradoxically, by the slow pace of life in his new home. I heard an acquaintance of a friend of mine was told to leave the KSA because at the age of 33, he had developed a heart condition. He’d [...]
Filed under: Adventures Abroad, Culture Shock, Guest Author on March 12th, 2013 | No Comments »
This week, our guestblogger Jessica – a recent US repatriate from Belgium – talks about attending her first InterNations Event in Washington, DC. As most expats know, the moving process is always challenging. It takes a few months to get settled in and figure out a new city. As a “repat” (my version of the [...]
Filed under: Guest Author, InterNations Events & Activities, Repatriation on February 4th, 2013 | 1 Comment »
Our new guest blogger Jessica from Adventures of the Repatriate opens her series on repatriation with some musings on how it felt to move to the US after seven years of living overseas, in Belgium, and how she gets over being “homesick” for Brussels. We also have an interview with Jessica on her (former) expat [...]
Filed under: Adventures Abroad, Culture Shock, Guest Author, Repatriation on January 22nd, 2013 | 5 Comments »
InterNations member and guest blogger Juanita Kwarteng, a Ghanian-Canadian who grew up in the Middle East, is a true advocate of open-mindedness and cross-cultural communication who has dedicated her life to celebrating diversity. Here she gives us her very personal take on culture shock. For me, culture shock is the closest way to feel like [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Expat Advice, Guest Author, Intercultural Differences on February 9th, 2012 | No Comments »
We interviewed Justine, originally from Montréal Canada, who is now living in Lyon, and tells us how her initial expectations of life in France were completely up the wrong alley. Tell us a bit about yourself: How did you end up in Lyon? Was there any culture shock being a French-Canadian and going to France? [...]
Filed under: Adventures Abroad, Culture Shock, Expat Interviews, Intercultural Differences, Languages, Moving to Another Country on January 31st, 2012 | No Comments »
Expat Maris tells us about his experience of feeling strangely at home in his country of origin, Latvia, despite not having lived there longer than 10 months of his life. I was born in Latvia, yet spent most of my childhood and adolescence in Denmark and was living in the United States for the past [...]
Filed under: Adventures Abroad, Culture Shock, Intercultural Differences, Moving to Another Country, Repatriation on January 25th, 2012 | No Comments »
Emilia from Rome moved to Vietnam for work and discovered that her version of traffic was anything but! In Vietnam the amount of cars and other modes of transportation completely overwhelmed her at first, but eventually she caught the vibe and now loves going from A to B in Ho Chi Minh City. When in [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Intercultural Differences on November 17th, 2011 | No Comments »
Michael from San Francisco went on a 2 year expat assignment to Zurich Switzerland and recalls how incredibly unprepared he was for what awaited him in this foreign country. I had always wanted to go to Switzerland, I am a big fan of skiing and where can one ski better than in the Swiss Alps?! [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Expat Advice, Intercultural Differences, Moving to Another Country on November 4th, 2011 | No Comments »
Linda lived in Vienna for the past eight years and figured it was time to go back to her hometown of Bonn, Germany again. In an interview she tells us how it was to move back to Germany and how she found it so strange that even though Austrian and German culture are not so [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Intercultural Differences, Repatriation on October 17th, 2011 | No Comments »