Ever since I was a kid, I was always interested in traveling, foreign countries, cultures and languages, so I guess living and working abroad just came natural to me. I took as many trips abroad as possible during high school, including an exchange program when I spent a month in Lyon, France, with a host family. It has also recently included spending several years in Krakow, Poland, teaching English, as well as a year studying abroad in Berlin before that. All throughout this time, there were moments of pure joy and ecstasy at the experience, as well as moments when I found myself cursing the country I was living in and wondering what I was doing there. To me, there is a fine line between the two kinds of experiences and there is also a rationale which makes one or the other true.

One thing that I noticed, as much as I loved the idea of traveling and living abroad from the beginning, was that it got easier and easier to keep going abroad the more that I did it. In other words, the more you get out of your country, the more you can get out of the limiting mindset that most people tend to have from birth. Where I was from, the American Midwest, there is generally very little interest in traveling or living abroad, except for those who might go to Europe during the summer holidays, and there is not very much knowledge of foreign countries either. Apart from this, is not so much thes mindset, but just the little things that you are used to having at home and the challenges that living abroad brings with it, that pose the biggest problems later.

The older I got, and the more I traveled and spent time abroad, the more I realized how great of an experience can be.

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About the Author Contributed by James Beckley, who is 24 years old and from America. He spent the last two years teaching english and living in Krakow, a city he has grown to love. Very fond of Europe, he has been coming there since he was 13, speaks several of its languages, and has lived in many of its countries, including France, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland. He has decided to write a guide to help anyone like him who is interested in coming to Europe and making a living by teaching english, as well as many other things, and in helping people relocate to many countries there, which can be found at: europeonmymind.com.

First Published: Oct 06, 2007