Exploring the Appeal of Living Abroad

We tell family and friends that we are thinking about living in a foreign country for a year or longer--perhaps even retiring abroad someday!--and they are puzzled.  Why leave the convenience of living in a country where we have our closest relatives and friends, customs of a country we spent a lifetime becoming familiar with, benefits of a country that we have paid taxes for?

They're right, of course, to raise concerns.  But we are also considering the upside of living abroad, something we plan to pursue at some point.

Learning a New Language

We know that most people are petrified about the idea of not understanding their surroundings and not being understood by others.  We're not exactly looking forward to communication barriers either.

However, we actually LIKE the idea of learning a new language.  Admittedly we are not fluent in any language other than English (despite our months in Montreal taking classes).  But we do have a smattering of languages: Will knows some Japanese, and I can speak Korean like a 5-year old child (only useful in an emergency...); Will can make hotel reservations in Spanish (very helpful on the Camino de Santiago), and I can order cafe cremes with reasonable facility in French.  We somehow even got by on guidebook Italian during a "pub crawl" in Venice!

When Will read somewhere that learning a new language is a way to keep our brains active and a good pathway to stave off Alzheimer's and other mentally degenerative maladies, my response was immediate and emphatic: Sign me up for language classes!  Best way to learn a new language?  Live in a foreign country.

Immersing Ourselves in a Different Culture

Besides which, even aside from our most recent stint of four months in Montreal, Will and I have a history of enjoying living in foreign countries.  My family emigrated from South Korea to the US when I was very young.  In college, Will spent a summer in Colombia and a study-abroad year in Manchester, UK; and then he lived in both rural and urban locations within Japan after college.  During an expat assignment of Will's, we both lived in the UK for a year as well, commuting often between his work base in Leeds and our rented house in Cambridge.

When we travel in Europe, we skip hotels and instead choose to stay at private apartments or places like agriturismos (house we rented with friends in Tuscany, below) and actually attempt to keep pace with the lifestyles of full-time residents, even if we are only visiting for a week or two.

Having already visited most tourist sights (now that we're no longer on our first youthful trips!), we can dispense with the usual over-packed itineraries.  Instead we become fixtures at local cafes and smaller parks.  We take in a movie at the cinema.  We walk down the block (as we did every day in Le Marais) for Paris's best butter croissant (photo below), shop at the corner grocery store or the weekly market (see medieval Sarlat's wonderful market at the top of this post), prepare our own meals in our rented kitchens, etc.  And we LOVE it!

Discovering or Trying Out Different Versions of Ourselves

While it's scary to think about NOT being near familiar people, places, and things (especially U.S. washing and drying machines!!), it's also exciting to think about how liberating it might be to find ourselves in novel settings.

Small case in point.  I've asked Will why it is that he insists on wearing baseball caps during the summer and ski wool caps in winter instead of more formal and stylish (and less screamingly American) Panama hats or fedoras.  He said that living in the U.S., he feels uncomfortable being anything other than the midwesterner that he is--and is expected to be.  Yet if we were living elsewhere, he would feel more comfortable trying out new clothes, new hobbies, new images.  In fact, he would have to try out a new version of himself if he is to fit in.  (As you can see below, his months in Quebec resulted in his adopting a Panama hat.)

I cannot blame Will for not wanting to step outside his comfort zone since I feel the same way.  It seems that we all get into a rut (or a groove, depending on how you see it) where we end up trying to maintain the image others already have of us--even in something as trivial as what kinds of hats we might wear.

So Where?

When we came across a list of best places to retire abroad a few years ago, it seemed like something clicked for us.  Somehow, the idea of retiring to France or Italy or Portugal was something we didn't realize we were interested in until we were introduced to the notion of it.  The first summer after we saw that list, we spent some time in an apartment in Montpellier (one of the French towns mentioned in the list, and pictured below) and enjoyed this beautiful town very much.

We think we have narrowed down our choice to someplace in France, and we will spend the years until our retirement trying to pinpoint exactly where we want to settle, and we're planning on enjoying every day of that arduous research!

(ps--There will be much more to come on this topic in future posts.)