Survival Kit for Overseas Living

Shipping Out, Are You?So you’re going to accept the chance to go abroad to live and work. Life won’t be quite what you’re used to experiencing. Other countries are different in big and small ways. To be effective in a new environment, prepare. It’s not so much that you need to understand the other country better. That won’t be hard. The difficult part will be understanding yourself, particularly if you are an American who has to function in an un-American environment — an environment, in fact, where being un-American isn’t even vaguely suspicious.Rest assured, you are not entering virgin territory. You may not know what to expect from your new host country, but its residents know what to expect from you. They’ve seen American movies and American TV. They listen to American movies and pop music. They know just what to expect. Isn’t that comforting?In fact, your hosts have formed stereotypes and prejudices. These concepts may differ somewhat from country to country because stereotypes and prejudices take a lot of their color from the culture of the people who form them. For example, the Dutch do not think of Americans in quite the same way that the Syrians do. But it’s safe to suppose...