If you are considering teaching abroad, how do you make the decision if living abroad is for you?  How do you choose the country where you’d want to live and teach?  What do you need to consider before taking the plunge?

And while there will be a myriad of factors to take into account when making this important decision to expat or not, I’d like to offer you the three tips I find fundamental in such a big decision.

Tip 1.  Consider the “why”

What is calling you to move abroad?  What’s driving your desire to relocate?  Is it the friends who keep telling you to do it and the grass just always seems greener on the other side?  Or is it the feeling of newness and adventure that’s calling you forth?  Are your reasons purely financial?

Discovering the motivation behind the thought of moving is your most important step to undertake before making any decision.  When you discover your motivating factors, you zero in on which of your personal values you’ll be honoring and which ones you may be neglecting. Making sure your values do not suffer in the process of your move is instrumental in making your move a happy one.

A simple process of making the decision based on values (as opposed to pros and cons process that most of us use) is as follows:

Ø  (1) Identify your values.  What’s important to you in life?  Aside from food, water, and shelter what do you absolutely have to have in your life in order to be fulfilled?  Make a list of those values.

Ø  (2) Choose the ten values that seem most important.  Imagine you are moving and you are only allowed to take 10, what would they be?

Ø  (3) Plot the following table on a piece of paper and rate your chosen values on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best)...

Ø  What are you discovering?  What are your values telling you?

Tip 2.  Investigate

Learn your own cultural blueprint and learn about the prevalent cultural blueprint of the country you want to move to.  This learning goes beyond the traditional clichés and the do’s and don’ts – in fact, this learning will help you see how compatible (or not compatible) your cultural habits and values are with the cultural habits and values of the host country.  If your compatibility is closer to zero, you may be looking at years of frustration – so why do it?  You might be better off selecting another country if you set your mind on moving.

Let’s illustrate this with an example.  Our cultural blueprint is a collection of our cultural preferences on many variables – in our culture mastery module there are 11 variables.  Let’s take the variable of action as an example.  In that variable, there are “doing” cultures and there are “being” cultures.  The “doing” cultures are the ones that emphasize completing tasks and accomplishing things; and the “being” cultures emphasize establishing relationships before all else.  Are you more “being” or “doing”?  What would happen if you move to a culture that’s your complete opposite?  How would that affect your life?

Another good example is the variable of communication – there are several things that go into it, but for this example we can take the direct vs indirect communication.  In direct cultures conflict is handled in a direct and explicit  manner, whereas in indirect cultures, people tend to avoid confrontations to minimize appearance of conflicts, to save face, and to avoid criticism.  Again, if you and the culture you are going to are at the complete ends of the spectrum, how frustrating will it be for you to live and work there?

Of course you can learn to adjust your cultural preferences if it doesn’t infringe on your identity and on the core of who you are – so the fact that you may have some cultural gaps doesn’t mean you should not go to that country.  But learning and knowing about these cultural gaps will prepare you and will help in overcoming the challenges of adjustment.

Step 3.  Conduct proper reconnaissance

You are about to make a very important decision of your life, so consider spending a few months simply living in that country as a try out.  Feel what it’d be like for you to become the resident of that country for good.  Connect with other expats – those who are there for a short and a long run.  Connect with the locals.  Learn the life from the perspective of someone who lives there – not merely a tourist.  That will help you decide if this country is for you.

© Margarita Gokun Silver

Margarita Gokun Silver is a writer and an artist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and NPR, among others. Her essay collection I NAMED MY DOG PUSHKIN (AND OTHER IMMIGRANT TALES) is available on Amazon (https://buff.ly/39AsHhL) or wherever books are sold.

Note: this article was originally published in 2011 and updated in 2017