I’ve been an expat spouse for two years now. I have to admit, it’s going much better than I thought it was going to be.
At the beginning, when you first come to your host country and you watch your partner leave for work, your first instinct is DON’T LEAVE ME! The door to the apartment/house closes and the place is still. The phone doesn’t ring because your friends and family are probably in a different time zone and therefore sleeping. Not to mention they are a bit irked that you left in the first place. The TV or radio isn’t on because you can’t understand the garble coming out of it anyway. You ask yourself in the quietness around you, Now what?
Put your shoes on and go explore your new city. Find out if there are language courses available. Educate yourself on how you can get a job. Can’t get a job? Ask yourself what your dream has always really been and start your own business.
I’ve been pretty lucky. I speak the local language and I am a European citizen. Getting a job was fast and easy for me. I do have a terrible sense of direction (I blame this on being born and raised on a peninsula and always being told that the ocean is west. You see the problem) so exploring my new city was a bit intimidating. I get lost easily. Even with a map. So I got a cell phone/mobile with a GPS/tomtom/navi in it. Freedom of movement!
I also started this blog to entertain myself and meet people =)
I started my own business http://www.taschenhalter.at/
I joined two professional networking groups and am debating about a third.
The point is, while your spouse is off doing his/her thing, you’re left with time on your hands. Do something with it! Take an underwater basket weaving course. Play with mud (ceramics) or even go back to school. A lot of international universities would be pleased to have you.
The possibilities are endless.
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Nice site. There?s some good information on here. I?ll be checking back regularly.
Great advice. May I just add something that I found extremely helpful? I joined a choir which gave me an instant social life and was a great way of improving my German very rapidly as well as learning songs in the local dialect. I moved from the UK to a village in Salzburg Land 6 months ago and while having a decent knowledge of German before arriving, was completely baffled by the dialect. The choir has really helped with that and I can now understand most of what they are talking about except when they are all babbling at once! Because you are having so much fun singing, you don’t realize what an incredible amount of vocabulary you are picking up with minimal effort required.
Emily, that’s wonderful. What a great, fun way to integrate into the culture