Posts Tagged ‘live abroad’
Travel is good training for politics
I’m a big believer in the benefits of spending time abroad. I think it’s pretty much a necessity nowadays for anyone who wants to work at the top echelons of a major corporation, and it really should be a requirement for anyone who aspires to national political office. Here is what I wrote about the topic in my travel memoir: [...]
Culture shock for expats
An overseas assignment can be an exciting adventure for business executives and their families. Unfortunately, it can also be a confusing, stressful experience for families who have difficulty adapting to a different culture or to sharp changes in one’s social network and identity. Proper preparation before heading abroad, including cross-cultural training, can be the difference between [...]
Exploring Mexico
Mexico seems to have caught the attention of the New York Times. In the past week, the newspaper has published two in-depth feature stories about the country. Luckily, this enables us to vicariously explore two distinct regions of that nation. First, the travel section published a story on travel in Chiapas as part of its [...]
Life in Afghanistan
What is life like for expatriates in Afghanistan? There is an interesting feature in the Financial Times today – an interview with Belinda Bowling, a South African lawyer who currently lives in Kabul. An excerpt: What brought you to Afghanistan? When I turned 30 I decided to take a year’s career break from my law firm and explore my [...]
Eating scorpions with your kids
Yeah, I know, not a likely activity. Unless you’re like Matthew Forney, who lives with his wife and two children in Beijing – where they have acquired tastes for decidedly non-Western cuisine. Forney wrote an amusing story about his family’s culinary adventures for the NY Times. In Beijing, where my family lives, I once returned [...]
Inspired by Guatemala
So, what’s a reasonably successful, fiftysomething writer to do when her kids are grown and she finds herself falling in love with Guatemala? Well, buy a house and move there for part of the year. Why not? That’s the somewhat surprising turn that Joyce Maynard’s life took a few years ago, as described in this story. [...]
Expat artists transforming Buenos Aires
There has been no shortage of press coverage in the past year or two extolling the virtues of Argentina, and specifically of Buenos Aires, which many have labeled as the hip destination of choice for current expats. The New York Times also just published a story along those lines and explored the city’s unique cultural and artistic mix. [...]
A new world for business expats
The world of the business expatriate is not what it was a decade or two ago. The destinations are different, the cultural challenges have changed, and new business skills are needed for success abroad. That’s the opinion, at least, of this interesting article in Time magazine, which focuses especially on executives who work in China and [...]
Making a home in Shanghai
Talk about a change in lifestyle. Emily Prager just wrote an interesting story for the NY Times about her decision to uproot her life and leave New York City in order to move to Shanghai. I left Manhattan a year ago, after a lifetime there…I decided to move myself and my 12-year-old daughter, Lulu – whom I [...]
Traveling by teaching
Everyone who loves to travel and who isn’t independently wealthy tends to be engaged in a constant search for new ways to see the world without busting the bank account. Marc Levitt discovered a solution that works for him, as he teaches and consults at international schools. I was always fascinated by travel. To pass the time [...]
Expats in Krakow
From early 20th century Paris to late 20th century Prague, there is a long history of trying to discover cheap, trendy international outposts for expatriates. Some regard Buenos Aires as a hip and contemporary expat haven, and now the NY Times has labeled Krakow, Poland, as a popular international city for young Westerners. “There’s a lot of [...]
Buenos Aires becomes hip
It somtimes appears as if there’s a never-ending quest to find and label the new, hip international city. Paris in the 1920′s set the gold standard for this vision, which always includes cheap housing for expatriates, abundant cafes, a thriving arts scene and, of course, the newest incarnations of Hemingway and Fitzgerald chipping away at a literary masterpiece. [...]
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Bob Riel is a writer and a traveler. Go here to read more about Bob, his work and the Travels in the Riel World blog.
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