Let the Adventure Begin! A Week-by-Week Guide to Moving Abroad
32 Weeks Until Overseas Move: A Glimpse of Your New Life Abroad - The "Look-See" Trip & Using a Relocation Company
The Expat "Look-See" Trip
The "Look-See" Trip sometimes comes before a family has decided whether or not to accept an overseas assignment. For others, it comes after they've decided to move abroad. Either way, the "Look-See" trip does just that -- it gives you a chance to get a glimpse of your new life abroad.
You've probably done a great deal of research online about your destination and talked with a few expats prior to this insightful trip. Your "Look-See" trip is a great time to narrow down school and neighborhood choices, meet future colleagues and find short-term housing.
If you're going to be working with a relocation agent, he/she can be extremely helpful during this visit -- planning school visits, walking you through different neighborhoods, scheduling apartment and home tours and more.
Hopefully, you'll come away from the "Look-See" trip armed with valuable insight into schools and neighborhoods. You may feel more confused and overwhelmed, because the school or neighborhood your research showed would be best may not be right after all. Try to make lists of pros and cons for neighborhoods and schools while you're visiting. These lists can be very helpful if you have to make decisions before you move. In the next two issues, we'll be delving into neighborhood and school selection, which often go hand-in-hand.
We encourage you to use our Country Discussion Forums to talk with other expats about life in your future destination. Maybe you can plan to meet an expat that you've met on our site for coffee or attend a local get together for expats (please always meet in a public place). Post a question to other members of the forum asking if there are any expat social events during the time that you'll be visiting. Making a few expat or local contacts can give you a tremendous sense of security as you prepare to make the move abroad.
Relocating should be one of the most rewarding and exciting experiences of our lives. We have the chance to explore new places, make new friends and reinvent ourselves! Often, however, what started as the adventure of a lifetime can deteriorate into a time consuming slog!
That is where a good relocation consultant can assist. Long before your arrival date your consultant will get in touch with you to find out what makes your family tick, what your hopes are for your new destination and to work out how best to help you. They can talk to you about suitable suburbs and explain the subtle differences between one place and another. If you need assistance with education, they will be able to give you an honest rundown of the options.
By the time you arrive you will already be quite familiar with your destination city and clear about the kind of choices that are ahead of you. The consultant will also be prepared with suitable home and school options so that those choices are as easy as possible. A good consultant will have excellent relationships with real estate agents and it is likely that some of what you see will not yet be officially listed. The consultant will also give you the best possible opportunity of having your application on any rental accepted.... The result of this is that you spend the least time possible in short term accommmodation and the cost of the relocation in time and money is minimised.
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Betsy Burlingame is the founder of ExpatExchange.com. She launched ExpatExchange.com in 1997 as her Master's thesis project at New York University. Over the last 11+ years, ExpatExchange.com has become one of the largest and most well-respected online communities for expatriates and international transferees.
This is an excerpt of our free e-newsletter, Let the Adventure Begin!. For full access, please subscribe to the e-version of Let the Adventure Begin! (free). You'll receive (free) weekly e-newsletters starting 8 months before your approximate move date and running through your first four months abroad.
