From Coping to Thriving

A Wealth of Tools for Living Overseas

By Gina Doggett

It’s Monday, and you have to go personally to hand in a deposit for your phone. "Why do they have to make everything so difficult?" you mutter. Cursing the rain, you head out to catch a bus. You brighten as the bus arrives. A few stops later, you realize that the bus is going in the wrong direction.

The swirl of thoughts and feelings that follow will be familiar to you if you have lived in a foreign country and can remember the exciting--but disorienting--first few weeks, when you were operating under the combined effects of euphoria, frustration, and culture shock. Achieving mental equilibrium is a subtle process with few obvious landmarks.

The following list of resources contains a wealth of tools for understanding a new culture and finding your place in it as a foreigner. If you can, you should start using them before you go. Several, such as the Culture Shock! series, are country- or culture-specific, while others, such as the Art of Crossing Cultures, provide general guidance for adapting to a new culture. And no matter how much assistance you receive from your employer or your sponsor, you will be hungry for the practical and logistical guidance contained in books such as the Living and Working in. . . series.

Obviously, the better your grasp of the local language, the easier you will find it to "get by." But language is far more than a practical tool. It’s the key to understanding the way people think and behave and thus your main gateway to feeling a part of the ambient culture. Even if you are nowhere near fluent, your faltering efforts to communicate--if just to say hello, please, and thank you--will ingratiate you to people almost anywhere in the world. Granted, the ability to learn a second language is not evenly distributed. If you are one of those who feel passed over by this gift, at least consider that a multitude of language-learning strategies exist that you may not have tried. Check out How to Learn a Foreign Language or How to Master Languages to discover the method--or methods--that might work best for you. And, if possible, start boning up before you go.

While you may be wrapped up in a work assignment, your partner and children are likely to have totally different experiences related to the move. Some excellent resources are available for helping your spouse and children cope with the peripatetic life style. The New Relocating Spouse’s Guide to Employment and Moving Your Family Overseas provide useful advice and inspiration. In addition, many local organizations offer help for trailing spouses.

For children, the workbook Of Many Lands: Journal of a Traveling Childhood offers exercises that will help them focus on experiences and transitions that they may otherwise suppress, to their detriment. Two other valuable resources in this domain are Notes from a Traveling Childhood and Where in the World Are You Going?

One day, no doubt, you will return home. Your reentry will be unique, but one that has bottom-line similarities with that of anyone else who has lived in, and returned from, a foreign culture: you will have a feeling of being different, even special, for having had the experience; of pride for the special knowledge you have acquired; and of strangeness for having missed out on the prevailing culture at home for the past (how many?) years--and for being unable to fully communicate your experience to a home-country audience whose attention, sharp at first, wanes quickly.

The stories you bring back are part and parcel of your life experience. This is crucially true for your children, thrown among peers who have difficulty fathoming a life in which samosas, falafel, or goat’s eyes are normal. Aletheia Publications specializes in books treating this topic, such as The Absentee American, based on interviews with former foreign service brats, and Strangers at Home.

If you have children, you will have noticed with a mixture of admiration and jealousy how easily they picked up the local language during your stay abroad. Their natural fluency is a treasure that should be preserved and protected in every way possible, not just because bilingualism is a highly marketable skill but also because a second language is an invaluable personal asset. You might even consider enrolling them in a bilingual school, if one exists in your community.

As for you, options include continuing education at the local university, getting involved with the local Italian or Thai or Ethiopian community, or using self-instructional tools such as a Champs-Elysées audio-cassette magazine. Strategies for maintaining a language should be just as personalized as those for learning one.

So, now you know the bus routes. You’ve made special friends whom you’ll always cherish. And you’ve had an experience that no one can take away from you. You’ve been challenged to tackle practicalities, to understand a foreign culture and language, and to abandon your native life. At the same time, through being away from home, you’ve learned things about your own culture. One way and another, living abroad has enriched your life. Bravo! Encore!

GINA DOGGETT was a Foreign Service brat, spent some years as a closet foreigner in Washington, and is now a journalist in Paris.