You’re Not In Kansas Anymore
Dear Student,
Congratulations.
Fifty-two days ago, you began a journey that I promised would lead you to your new life overseas, wherever you decided to launch it.
Today, 52 days later, you’ve arrived. You’ve made your New Life Overseas Plan… and you’re ready to fire it off.
You’ve considered your priorities, preferences, agendas, and objectives in wanting to reinvent your life in a new country…
You’ve figured your nest egg and calculated how much money you have to live on on a monthly basis…
You’ve considered the world’s top overseas havens and chosen the one or two (or perhaps three) that seem the best fit…
You’ve researched residency options… you’ve solicited tax advice… you’ve shopped for health insurance…
You’ve organized your administrative life so that you can manage your investment portfolios, your bank accounts, and your credit cards online from anywhere in the world…
You’ve downsized and made a plan for what you’ll take with you when you move… nd you’ve thought through what you’ll need to acquire once you arrive in your new home…
You’ve organized your scouting expeditions to each location on your short list… you’ve thought through a plan for finding new digs (to rent, not to buy… at least at first!)…
You’ve begun thinking through options for supplementing your income in your new life… how to appoint your new home… how to learn a new language (if you need to)… how to make new friends…
You have now a new life overseas… in a box.
You can launch it now… in a few months… or maybe a year from now. But you’re ready.
Taking stock of the ground we’ve covered these past 51 days, I can think of but one more important piece of advice I want to share with you… namely:
Whenever you do decide to put the plan we’ve made over the past 51 days into action, the result will be that you’ll be living in a different country.
As well as stating the obvious, I’m offering perhaps the most fundamental and (if you’ll forgive my waxing philosophical for a minute) profound insight you need to have at this point.
This program has armed you with everything you need, a step-by-step plan for launching a new life overseas…
In a country that will be foreign.
Or, considered from the other side of the border, in a country where you’ll be the foreigner.
You’ll be the outsider… the guest.
In every place I’ve recommended in this program as a potential destination for your new life overseas, you’ll be a very welcome guest. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to keep the situation in perspective.
Your new life is going to be a grand adventure, full of unexpected delights and discoveries. Your quality of life will improve (I’d bet), and, without question, your horizons will expand. A year… three years… a decade after you’ve embarked on this new chapter of your life, you’ll look back at the you you are today and smile. How far you’ve come, you’ll realize with deserved satisfaction.
Big-picture, the journey you’re on the brink of will be (again, I’d be willing to bet on it) the most wondrous of your lifetime.
Day-by-day, it’ll often seem a study in frustration and insanity.
What is wrong with these people (you may find yourself wondering now and then)? Why do they do that like that? Don’t they know that’s not how that’s done? There’s a better… simpler… easier… more efficient way!
And, likely, you’ll be correct. But that’s not the point.
A friend, a fellow expat, an American who worked for several decades in the construction industry in the States, and who moved to Panama City from the East Coast about a year ago, stopped me in passing on the street the other day to say:
“Have you seen the hole they’re digging over there?”
“Uh… the hole? No, I don’t think so…”
“Well, you’ve got to go take a look. You won’t believe it. They’ve got five guys digging… with shovels! They’ve been at it for days. They’re digging a ditch to lay some underground cables. I asked the one who looked like he was managing the operation how much longer he thought the work would take. He told me four more days!
“Well over a week in total. To dig a hole that could be dug by one guy with a little digger machine in a half-day, tops. One guy a half-day! But they’ve got five guys digging for more than a week! You’ve got to go see it. You won’t believe it…”
My friend was correct, of course. With the right piece of machinery, the work that was taking this Panamanian crew more than a week to accomplish could have been handled by one guy in a matter of hours.
Maybe, though, they don’t have that piece of machinery…
Maybe they had one of those machines, but now it’s broken, and the parts they need to repair it are nowhere to be found in this part of the world…
Maybe they aren’t interested in securing that piece of machinery because it’d put four guys out of work…
Who knows.
I stopped asking those kinds of questions long ago. I’ve learned to accept what I cannot change.
More than that, I’ve learned to respect the idea that my way might not always be the best way, all things considered.
Because I can’t know or understand all things.
As with the road crew example I shared above. I don’t know any of the thinking (or, perhaps, non-thinking) that went into making the decision for how to accomplish the work needed. If I knew it, I likely wouldn’t understand it. If I tried to understand it, my blood pressure might rise, my eyes might begin to twitch…
Better simply to accept it.
To change how you look at things, process things, consider things, react to things…
You aren’t going to change the people or the culture of the place where you’re relocated. You are going to have to make the adjustment.
“He’s peering through a different set of lenses,” my friend David remarked once in this context. “He hasn’t learned to check his expectations at the border.”
David was reflecting on a conversation he’d had with a colleague of his from the States who’d recently made his first trip south of the Rio Grande.
“He complained that the staff at the hotel where I suggested he stay in San José, Costa Rica, didn’t speak English,” David continued. “In fact, the staff at that hotel does speak English. Just not rapid-fire American English. Nor could the staff, I guess, readily understand that variety of English when it was spoken to them.
“I take a different view,” David, who hails from the United Kingdom, went on. “The way I see things, I’m a guest here in this part of the world. I’m the outsider. I bend to accommodate. I don’t expect staff in a Costa Rica hotel, for example, to speak Her Majesty’s English. But if I speak slowly and carefully and I allow them to do the same, we understand each other fine.”
Years ago, I met someone in the States who’d just returned from his first trip to Latin America. He’d spent a week in Panama. “The television channels were all Spanish-speaking,” he complained. “And the television in my hotel room was an old, rabbit-eared set.
“Plus,” he continued, appalled, “many of the police cars didn’t have brake lights. Some of the fire trucks I saw were vintage World War II. And the restaurants couldn’t understand that I wanted ice in my iced tea.”
This fellow, like the gentleman my friend David described, hadn’t checked his expectations at the border. As a result, his experience in Panama was a great big letdown, so disappointing that he abandoned his plans to relocate overseas altogether.
I remember one day, shortly after we’d moved into our new home in Casco Viejo, when Lief came bursting into the office dripping wet. “The window in my taxi was broken,” he explained. “A few minutes after I got in, the skies opened. It rained buckets. I tried to close my window, but the handle was broken off. The driver reached back to hand me a pair of pliers. I tried again to close the window using the pliers, but the driver began shouting at me in Spanish, ‘Not like that, not like that!’ I wasn’t doing it right, I guess. I never did manage to get the window to close. Rain poured in on me all the way over here.”
Lief was returning to the office from our new house in Casco Viejo, where he’d gone to meet the Cable & Wireless fellow who had been promising to install internet for us for weeks. Lief had gone from one maddening experience to another…
“The guy kept insisting that the only way for us to have internet would be to run a cable from our neighbor’s place along the sidewalk in between the two houses. I was trying to tell him that that sounded like a ridiculous strategy, when our neighbor on the other side, who happened to be sitting outside on his balcony, spoke up to say that our house was already wired for internet. The cables for both his house and our house had been run underground at the same time, he explained. Our neighbor had a copy of the schematic. He went inside to get it to show to the Cable & Wireless guy, who was dumbfounded by what it indicated. Finally, the cable guy left in a huff. Our neighbor said not to worry, though, because he has a friend at Cable & Wireless who should be able to sort us out.”
Indeed—except that, when we inquired, our neighbor’s friend at Cable & Wireless was away on vacation, meaning we went two weeks more without internet at home.
So it goes in paradise.
The key is to keep paradise in perspective. Remember, for example, that Panama is a Spanish-speaking country in the tropics. That means the people in this country speak Spanish, and the weather is hot.
Roatan, Honduras, is an island in the Caribbean. That means its sandy beaches sometimes swarm with insects.
Here are other fundamental truisms it can be helpful to remember as you prepare for your adventures overseas:
Nicaragua is a Third World country. That means that sometimes the electricity goes out—why, nobody can explain, and for how long, nobody can predict. The people in Nicaragua, like those throughout the developing world and, in fact, all Europe, don’t see ice in your drink as a requirement.
The French invented the word for “bureaucracy.” That means that, to address any administrative task in France, you’re going to have to wade through a lot of it.
In France, as in most of the world (unlike in the United States), renters are favored over landlords, and employers are assumed to be in the wrong if an employee dispute arises.
Latinos are loud. Their parties are loud. They play their music loud. They honk their car horns…loud.
There are snakes in the jungle but not, typically, cell towers (your cell phone probably won’t work).
Although it’s the country’s capital and seat of government, there are few street signs in San José, Costa Rica. The Costa Ricans are not bothered by this. There are few street signs in all Ireland. The Irish don’t mind. There’s no national to-your-door mail delivery service in Panama. The Panamanians don’t give this a second thought. In some parts of the world, banks and other businesses close for lunch. Some have siesta hours off in the afternoon. In some places, things close from noon to four or five, only open in mornings and late into the evening. Most countries have yet to embrace the idea of 24-hour grocery and convenience stores. Almost all of non-tourist Paris shuts down for the entire month of August. For those four weeks, good luck finding a plumber who’ll take your call or a notaire who’ll schedule your apartment closing.
Unlike the United States, the rest of the world takes its holidays seriously. Latin America is a Catholic region, which means that, in addition to all other holidays, the people in this part of the world also take off Catholic feast days.
And not only do the countries of Latin America and Europe have more holidays than the United States, but they extend them. As the French put it, they faire le pont—that is, they “make the bridge” between the actual holiday and the nearest weekend. In Panama, the bridge can extend through an entire week. During Carnaval and other important celebrations the entire country shuts down. You aren’t going to be able to conduct any business. I’ve found that the wisest strategy is to give up trying. Join the rest of the country out in the streets for the fiesta.
My friend Paul tells a great “when in the land of fiesta, join the party” story…
“I wanted the 4:30 p.m. bus to Mendoza,” Paul begins, “and, as I boarded, my watch showed it was 4:20. I said to the driver, ‘This is the 4:30 bus to Mendoza, right?’”
The driver: “This is the 3:30 bus to Mendoza.”
Paul: “But it’s already 4:20.”
The driver, after a few moments of reflection: “Well, you could say this is the 4:30 bus.”
“Argentina,” Paul continues, “had just switched to daylight savings time. Unlike in the United States, though, or in, say, France or England, in Argentina, some people go along with the new time, others don’t. The way Argentines look at it, it’s a matter of personal choice. You have your time. I have my time. And on that bus to Mendoza, the driver had his.
“When we arrived at our destination in Mendoza, the monitors in the terminal, like the bus driver, were on old time. However, the buses leaving that terminal ran on new time.
“The next day,” Paul continues, “I was in a wine shop that was about to close for the midday siesta. I asked, ‘What time do you reopen?’ The owner replied, ‘6:30.’ As I was leaving, I noticed the sign on his door. It indicated he intended to reopen at 5:30.
“Last week a friend was scheduled to drop by at 11 a.m. He came at noon. ‘When we scheduled the appointment,’ he explained, ‘we were on old time. So I figured you’d want me to show up on old time.’”
Ridiculous? Absolutely. I think life becomes simpler if we agree on a common time. But Argentines place no value on simple, no importance on order, efficiency, agreement, or uniformity. None.
So it never occurs to an Argentine that, for the sake of simplicity, we should agree on a common time, vocabulary, currency, handwriting, or weights and measures. Simplicity doesn’t matter. Argentines value other things, like honor, friendship, and, most important, individuality and personal whim.
“Several years ago,” Paul goes on, “my wife Vicki and I spent the summer on a ranch in Uruguay with several Argentine families. In those days, Uruguayan time was an hour ahead of Argentine time, yet I heard the kids referring to Argentine time. I found the confusion intolerable and called everyone together.
‘Let’s decide,’ I proposed. ‘Should we use Uruguayan time? Or should we stay on Argentine time?’ The kids unanimously chose to stay on Argentine time (that is, another country’s time). Fine. We were all agreed.
“The next morning, someone proposed going to town at 10 a.m. The response from the group? ‘Argentine time… or Uruguayan time?’ In only 24 hours, the agreement had fallen apart. I surrendered. Finally I saw the wisdom in Vicki’s way of dealing with things like time in places like Argentina. When invited for dinner, Vicki cheerfully asks, ‘American time’ (that is, roughly on time) ‘or Argentine time?’ (that is, an hour or so late). Now, with daylight savings time, she asks, ‘American time or Argentine time—new or old?’ My advice: When in Argentina, tell time like the Argentines.”
Often it can be the things that first drew you to a place that cause you the greatest levels of frustration in the long run. A friend in Panama explains that, when she told her family back in Canada she intended to make this move, her mother wanted to know why Panama.
“I explained to her,” Rebecca says, “that I appreciated the way Panamanians approach life. They work because they have to, and they make it a point to enjoy their time off. They don’t take work as seriously as we do in North America, and they don’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses.”
Rebecca’s position today? “In the beginning, I found this charming, but not anymore,” she admits. “Today this aspect of Panamanian life drives me up the wall!”
On that note… you’re off!
As I’ve said, I believe I’ve armed you with everything you need to commence this next, exciting stage of your life.
If, though, you think of a question I haven’t addressed in these 52 days, I’m only an email away. The program is complete… but your adventure is just beginning. And I understand that, as you embark on it, you may encounter situations or challenges that I somehow overlooked. In that case, please, let me hear from you.
And, please, let me know how things turn out. Keep in touch from wherever in the world your new life overseas takes you. I’ll be very interested to hear the details.
Bon voyage.
Kathleen Peddicord
Your New Life Overseas Coach
P.S. I’d like to offer you a graduation present.
This program has armed you with a step-by-step plan for how to reinvent your life in your chosen overseas Shangri-la. However, as I’ve explained, there’s one thing this program can’t do for you—it can’t bring the countries you’re considering to you.
You’ve got to get on a plane and go see them for yourself.
If one or more of the countries you’re considering is a place where we host a conference, I strongly recommend that you try to coordinate your scouting expeditions with the dates of our next event. These live meetings that we hold are a chance to meet with every resource and expert you’d need to know to establish yourself in that country—including attorneys, bankers, real estate professionals, businesspeople, logistics experts, insurance brokers, doctors…
Our conferences are also a chance to spend a few days speaking candidly and one-on-one with expats who’ve already made that place their adopted home. There’s no better source, really, for the real skinny on what expat life is like anywhere in the world than an expat currently residing there.
To commemorate your graduation from my “52 Days To Your New Life Overseas” program, therefore, I’d like to give you a special Graduation Voucher good for a full US$150 off any conference on our calendar.
This is a much bigger discount than we make available under any other circumstances. And it never expires. You can use it anytime… to join us anywhere in the world where we’re holding an event.
Your Graduation Voucher saves you US$150 off the best price currently on offer for that event at the time you register.
Your final assignment, as a 52 Days graduate, therefore, is to go here now to download your Graduation Voucher, print it out, and file it away for future reference.
Pull it out to put it to good use whenever you’re ready to join us for a few days in one of the world’s top overseas havens.
We’ll very much look forward to meeting you then.
P.P.S. You can access our current calendar, to see what events we have coming up over the next several months, here.