In the ten months I have been in Brussels, I have met a wide range of expats. I think I am a fairly good read of people and after meeting so many expats, I think a company should hire me to meet prospective expats and go on and tell the company whether they will survive living abroad or not to help save everyone money and heartache.
I can almost tell by meeting someone one time whether they will make it or not. It is so obvious in their demeanor and attitude as to how they are adjusting. The other day I was speaking with a woman who is working on her PhD relating to expats and she said that there is a high correlation to the failure rate (meaning the family goes home earlier than their expected return date) and the wife's resistance to moving in the first place. Basically, the wife is going to get her way one way or another, either by just never saying yes to an expat move, or causing such misery once they move that the family will move back earlier than expected. When the husband goes home every night to his wife complaining about how much she hates the country and horrible her day has been, I think he will eventually move them back just to shut her up.
I am not saying that I soley blame the wife for not adjusting. I partially blame the husband for refusing to accept the fact that the wife never wanted to move in the first place. And I will also note (and this is supported in a lot of literature about expats) that the trasition is much harder on the wife than it is is on the husband. Most often, the man gets to stay in his American bubble of English speakers and American internet for 10 hours a day at work, while the wife is going through the culture shock of buying food in a different language, helping the kids adjust to school, figuring out how to drive the kids everywhere, creating a new social circle, finding new doctors and pharmacies, and so many other little things necessary for life.
The bottom line is that neither person is to blame, it just all goes back to listening to your intuition and your gut feeling. When Kyle and I were travelling in Australia in 2001, I was never that gung-ho about scuba diving. I always had a slight hesitation about the idea. One day, at the spur of the moment, two spaces opened up for a four day scuba certification class. Two days were spent in the pool learning scuba technique and two days were spent actually scuba diving in the ocean. I was still hesitant about the idea, but we only had 5 minutes to decide and I thought since Kyle was doing it that I should too. After the first day I almost had a panic attack while I was under water (and this was just in the deep end of the pool!). I ended up dropping out of the class and losing my $200, but my peace of mind was worth it. Now I just regret that I didn't listen to myself before hand.
I am sure these families that have not had a good transition over here had some of those same warning signs and feelings, but they refused to listen to them. Now that mistake is costing the company over $300,000. Before telling our friends about the move, Kyle and I tried to predict each of their reactions. Sure enough, some of them thought it was the greatest thing in the world and were jealous of our opportunity, yet others were happy for us, but could never really grasp why we would want to do something like this. Hopefully the ones that could never really understand why we would want to do this will not eventually talk themselves into being expats too.
Another factor that I have found affects how people adjust to life abroad is if the idea of an international move was a possiblity before you got married. We didn't know we would be moving to Brussels before we got married, but we both knew that with Kyle's job as a journalist that an international move could be a possibility. When you think you will be in Sumter, SC the rest of your life and then all of the sudden you are in Brussels, Belgium, I can understand the shock to the system one might endure.
A third aspect of adjusting is how much the person clings to their life back in the States versus embracing their life and time in Europe. It is amazing when you meet people here that still continue to have such an American life while living in Europe. There are so many American women I meet that chose to spend all 3 months of summer vacation back in the States. Obviously I think the States are great, but if you are only going to be in Europe for 3-5 years, why spend an entire summer in Chicago when you could be in Rome?
A great quote I recently heard was, "Being happy doesn't mean everything's perfect. It means you've decided to see beyond the imperfections." If only some people here could realize that, I think they would be a lot happier.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
ARrrrrr Matey!
I just read this article on the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I guess pirates keep up with technology just like the rest of us!
MAHE, Seychelles — A cruise liner that was attacked by pirates over the weekend docked safely on this Indian Ocean archipelago Monday after changing its course to escape. Passengers described their horror as pirates in speedboats chased their luxury cruise liner at sea, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles — with smiles visible on faces otherwise hidden by ski masks. "I was scared, I was very scared," Jean Noll of Florida. But her husband said the experience was not likely to deter them from enjoying another cruise. "We cruise all the time," Clyde Noll said.
The Seabourn Spirit had been bound for Mombasa, Kenya, when it was attacked by pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns on Saturday about 100 miles off Somalia's lawless coast. The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course.
The gunmen never got close enough to board the cruise ship, but one member of the 161-person crew was injured by shrapnel, according to the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.
After docking at the Seychelles, passengers boarded two buses for a tour of two of the resort islands and reporters were kept away. Most passengers were to continue from the Seychelles to Singapore, company officials said, although some who planned to tour Mombasa were to fly there Tuesday aboard a chartered plane. Relieved holiday-makers praised the ship's captain for foiling the attack that lasted for more than 90 minutes, during which pirates fired their weapons on the bridge and elsewhere in an effort to cripple the vessel.
Some passengers were lucky to escape with their lives, said Charles Forsdick, from Durban, South Africa. A woman survived an explosion in her stateroom simply because she was taking a bath at the time. Others flung themselves to the floor to avoid bullets that were zipping through the ship, Forsdick told Associated Press Television News.
"I tell you, it was a very frightening experience," WWII veteran Charles Supple, of Fiddletown, Calif., recalled by phone after the liner dropped anchor off Seychelles. The retired physician and World War II veteran said said he started to take a photograph of a pirate craft, and "the man with the bazooka aimed it right at me and I saw a big flash. Needless to say, I dropped the camera and dived. The grenade struck two decks above and about four rooms further forward," Supple said. "I could tell the guy firing the bazooka was smiling."
Bob Meagher of Sydney, Australia, said he climbed out of bed and went to the door of his cabin shortly before 6 a.m. after hearing a commotion outside. "I saw a white-hulled boat with men in it waving various things and shooting at the ship — at that stage it appeared to be rifle fire," he told Australian radio. "My wife said `look, they're loading a bazooka,' which we later discovered was called an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) launcher." "There was a flash of flame and then a huge boom — a terrible boom sound," he said, adding the grenade hit about 10 feet from where they were.
The liner had been at the end of a 16-day voyage from Alexandria, Egypt. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Monday that the attackers might have been terrorists. But others said the attack bore the hallmarks of pirates who have become increasingly active off Somalia, which has no navy and has not had an effective central government since 1991.
Judging by the location of the attack, the pirates likely were from the same group that hijacked a U.N.-chartered aid ship in June and held its crew and food cargo hostage for 100 days, said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program.
That gang is one of three well-organized pirate groups on the 1,880-mile coast of Somalia, which has had no effective government since opposition leaders ousted a dictatorship in 1991 and then turned on each other, leaving the nation of 7 million a patchwork of warlord fiefdoms.
Somalia's Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has long urged neighboring countries to send warships to patrol Somalia's coast, which is Africa's longest and lies along key shipping lanes linking the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. U.S. and NATO warships patrol the region to protect vessels in deeper waters farther out, but they are not permitted in Somali territorial waters. The International Maritime Bureau has for several months warned ships to stay at least 150 miles away from Somalia's coast, citing 25 pirate attacks in those waters since March 15 — compared with just two for all of 2004. The 440-foot-long, 10,000-ton cruise ship, which is registered in the Bahamas, sustained minor damage, the cruise company said.
MAHE, Seychelles — A cruise liner that was attacked by pirates over the weekend docked safely on this Indian Ocean archipelago Monday after changing its course to escape. Passengers described their horror as pirates in speedboats chased their luxury cruise liner at sea, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles — with smiles visible on faces otherwise hidden by ski masks. "I was scared, I was very scared," Jean Noll of Florida. But her husband said the experience was not likely to deter them from enjoying another cruise. "We cruise all the time," Clyde Noll said.
The Seabourn Spirit had been bound for Mombasa, Kenya, when it was attacked by pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns on Saturday about 100 miles off Somalia's lawless coast. The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course.
The gunmen never got close enough to board the cruise ship, but one member of the 161-person crew was injured by shrapnel, according to the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.
After docking at the Seychelles, passengers boarded two buses for a tour of two of the resort islands and reporters were kept away. Most passengers were to continue from the Seychelles to Singapore, company officials said, although some who planned to tour Mombasa were to fly there Tuesday aboard a chartered plane. Relieved holiday-makers praised the ship's captain for foiling the attack that lasted for more than 90 minutes, during which pirates fired their weapons on the bridge and elsewhere in an effort to cripple the vessel.
Some passengers were lucky to escape with their lives, said Charles Forsdick, from Durban, South Africa. A woman survived an explosion in her stateroom simply because she was taking a bath at the time. Others flung themselves to the floor to avoid bullets that were zipping through the ship, Forsdick told Associated Press Television News.
"I tell you, it was a very frightening experience," WWII veteran Charles Supple, of Fiddletown, Calif., recalled by phone after the liner dropped anchor off Seychelles. The retired physician and World War II veteran said said he started to take a photograph of a pirate craft, and "the man with the bazooka aimed it right at me and I saw a big flash. Needless to say, I dropped the camera and dived. The grenade struck two decks above and about four rooms further forward," Supple said. "I could tell the guy firing the bazooka was smiling."
Bob Meagher of Sydney, Australia, said he climbed out of bed and went to the door of his cabin shortly before 6 a.m. after hearing a commotion outside. "I saw a white-hulled boat with men in it waving various things and shooting at the ship — at that stage it appeared to be rifle fire," he told Australian radio. "My wife said `look, they're loading a bazooka,' which we later discovered was called an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) launcher." "There was a flash of flame and then a huge boom — a terrible boom sound," he said, adding the grenade hit about 10 feet from where they were.
The liner had been at the end of a 16-day voyage from Alexandria, Egypt. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Monday that the attackers might have been terrorists. But others said the attack bore the hallmarks of pirates who have become increasingly active off Somalia, which has no navy and has not had an effective central government since 1991.
Judging by the location of the attack, the pirates likely were from the same group that hijacked a U.N.-chartered aid ship in June and held its crew and food cargo hostage for 100 days, said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program.
That gang is one of three well-organized pirate groups on the 1,880-mile coast of Somalia, which has had no effective government since opposition leaders ousted a dictatorship in 1991 and then turned on each other, leaving the nation of 7 million a patchwork of warlord fiefdoms.
Somalia's Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has long urged neighboring countries to send warships to patrol Somalia's coast, which is Africa's longest and lies along key shipping lanes linking the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. U.S. and NATO warships patrol the region to protect vessels in deeper waters farther out, but they are not permitted in Somali territorial waters. The International Maritime Bureau has for several months warned ships to stay at least 150 miles away from Somalia's coast, citing 25 pirate attacks in those waters since March 15 — compared with just two for all of 2004. The 440-foot-long, 10,000-ton cruise ship, which is registered in the Bahamas, sustained minor damage, the cruise company said.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
The times they are a-changin'
Although Brussels is my first expat experience, I have spoken with enough other expats to know that we are living in the lap of luxury here. Other veteran expat wives have so many stories to tell of rats in their homes in Vietnam, seeing a live (yes, live) monkey's brains being eaten at the dinner table because it was the custom, and so many other things that can make your stomach turn. These women discreetly roll their eyes a lot when they hear new expat wives complain about how hard it is to get adjusted to Brussels. I think I caught on early to just how lucky we are:
- Even though French is prevalent here, we can still at least get by with our English.
- Even if a word is in French, we can at least read the letters and numbers. You can't quite do that with Arabic characters: ﮙﯟﯧﯚﯚﮱ.
- We live in a county where the majority of people are white, so you can at least blend in--talk about how I would stand out in Korea!
- The food here is wonderful, and besides the random calf's head or pig brains on a menu, you usually don't get too much of a surprise.
- We are here as expats in 2005, when Vonage, Skype, e-mail and Internet are better than they ever have been.
My friend Sue has served her fair share of time being an expat wife (13 cities in 26 years). She was recently reminiscing about when she lived in Naples, Italy, as recently as the mid-1980s. They were renting a home from someone who was fairly high up in the Italian telephone company. It was only for this reason that they even had a phone in their home. They were the only ones in the whole neighborhood with a phone in their house. Still, when Sue wanted to call her mom back in the States, she first had to dial the operator. The operator would tell her that she would ring her when she had an open line. And after that, Sue just had to wait by the phone for anywhere from 10 minutes to 4 hours. Once a line was finally available, there was no telling if her mom would actually be there to answer the call, and even if she was, they would have to keep the call short because of the cost.
All of this just blows my mind when I think of how easy life is for me over here. If I want to call someone, I just pick up my Vonage phone that has an Atlanta number and dial. The call is connected over the Internet, and I can call as much as I want for $25 a month! If I can't get in touch with someone, I just e-mail them. If I don't feel like talking on the phone, I can IM (instant message) them back and forth as much as I want.
And now the Wingfields, aka the Family of Technology, have just blown my mind yet again. Burt and Kyle have figured out the -- drumroll please...............Slingbox Recorder. Yes, I can now record any U.S. TV show that I want to and watch it at my leisure. Even more amazing is that the recorder is basically just like TiVo, so I can press one button and record as many Law & Orders as I want to. I can pause a live TV show, I can rewind a live TV show, I CAN DO ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Friday, November 04, 2005
What's in a name?
I am just now getting to the stage in life where some of my friends are having their first children. Among conversations of giving birth and finding out the gender, there has been a lot of discussion about names. This summer, while staying in Spain with Kelly and Rich, we were also there for a few days with their friends, Chris, Dorothy and their daughter Charlotte. Chris had some very specific rules for naming their child and I actually thought some of them were pretty good. So for all you expectant parents out there -- here is a little food for thought.
1. You child's name should not be in the top 10 of the Most Popular Names for That Year. This is because growing up with a name like Chris, throughout his life he was always identified as Chris T. On really bad days he was Chris Th.
2. However, you child's name should at least be in the top 100--meaning that is should be a name people have at least heard of.
3. You must think of every single possible way other children can make fun of the name, because they will. Don't name your child Dick, Peter, Adrian, Madonna or any other name from a popular movie.
4. Don't try to do some crazy spelling of a normal name because throughout life the child will always either have a misspelled name, or will always be spelling their name for everyone. There are some great examples on this website. My favorite are Karrylline and Ginapher.
5. Put whatever name you want your child to be called as their first name, not their middle name. Otherwise, every single year they are in school (hopefully that will be at least 17 years) they will have to correct the teacher.
6. Even if you want your child to go by the name you give them, other children will most likely give them a nickname, so be sure the nickname goes with your last name. The most famous case of this rule is ole' Benjamin Dover, also known as Ben Dover.
7. Make sure the first name flows with your last name, however make sure it doesn't flow too much--like my first-grade classmate Andrew Andrews. Or better yet, my sister's high school classmate Richard Richardson, also known as Dick Dick.
8. Think of how your children's initials will work out. No one wants to be Ann Sarah Spencer.
9. Don't have all of your children's names starting with the same letter -- especially when you have 16 of them.
1. You child's name should not be in the top 10 of the Most Popular Names for That Year. This is because growing up with a name like Chris, throughout his life he was always identified as Chris T. On really bad days he was Chris Th.
2. However, you child's name should at least be in the top 100--meaning that is should be a name people have at least heard of.
3. You must think of every single possible way other children can make fun of the name, because they will. Don't name your child Dick, Peter, Adrian, Madonna or any other name from a popular movie.
4. Don't try to do some crazy spelling of a normal name because throughout life the child will always either have a misspelled name, or will always be spelling their name for everyone. There are some great examples on this website. My favorite are Karrylline and Ginapher.
5. Put whatever name you want your child to be called as their first name, not their middle name. Otherwise, every single year they are in school (hopefully that will be at least 17 years) they will have to correct the teacher.
6. Even if you want your child to go by the name you give them, other children will most likely give them a nickname, so be sure the nickname goes with your last name. The most famous case of this rule is ole' Benjamin Dover, also known as Ben Dover.
7. Make sure the first name flows with your last name, however make sure it doesn't flow too much--like my first-grade classmate Andrew Andrews. Or better yet, my sister's high school classmate Richard Richardson, also known as Dick Dick.
8. Think of how your children's initials will work out. No one wants to be Ann Sarah Spencer.
9. Don't have all of your children's names starting with the same letter -- especially when you have 16 of them.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Why do I need to learn this?
A woman in one of my Bunco groups home-schools her three children. I feel really bad for her because every time I have overheard her tell someone that she home-schools, they give her the same reaction that I gave her, "You home-school?!? Oh my gosh, I could never do that! How do you do it?" (And let me tell you, it isn't so much a "How do you do it, I am so impressed by you" tone as much as an "How do you do it, you must be crazy and now I don't know if I want to hang out with you" tone.)
I have a vivid memory of seeing my sister in tears, late at night, trying to figure out the literary meaning of The Grapes of Wrath. Next to her was my dad, who was close to tears himself, because he was so frustrated by the book, the homework, and the fact that he was searching his brain for his own high school English lessons to rememer the literary meaning of the book. One thing I dread about having children is having to help them with their homework. I made good grades in school, but I was always there for the social aspect, much more than the academic one. So when my kids ask me about square roots and gerunds, I am definitely going to have to point them Kyle's way.
In case you think you might be up for home-schooling, or are just wondering how much of your own schooling has stuck with you, take these tests...
Could You Pass Eighth Grade Math?
Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?
What Your SAT Score Means
(PS--According to this SAT test, I am smarter than Howard Stern, and Kyle is smarter than everyone on the list. Looks like he will definitely be the one helping the kids with their homework--just goes to show that it is not always best to be the smartest :))
I have a vivid memory of seeing my sister in tears, late at night, trying to figure out the literary meaning of The Grapes of Wrath. Next to her was my dad, who was close to tears himself, because he was so frustrated by the book, the homework, and the fact that he was searching his brain for his own high school English lessons to rememer the literary meaning of the book. One thing I dread about having children is having to help them with their homework. I made good grades in school, but I was always there for the social aspect, much more than the academic one. So when my kids ask me about square roots and gerunds, I am definitely going to have to point them Kyle's way.
In case you think you might be up for home-schooling, or are just wondering how much of your own schooling has stuck with you, take these tests...
Could You Pass Eighth Grade Math?
Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?
What Your SAT Score Means
(PS--According to this SAT test, I am smarter than Howard Stern, and Kyle is smarter than everyone on the list. Looks like he will definitely be the one helping the kids with their homework--just goes to show that it is not always best to be the smartest :))
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