Here are some more thoughts as we were preparing our move overseas:
1) Health Insurance
This one can be difficult and it takes time. If you go through a third-party organization, they’ll most likely provide you with a healthcare plan.
But since we’re not going through an outside organization, we had to do some research on our own. Friends suggested using Pacific Prime as a means to get our best options for international health insurance. Ultimately we ended up choosing IMGlobal because we’ve used their services in the past. We felt that they provided the best options at a reasonable price for a family of three.
One thing to note for families wanting to have more kids, most international health insurances do not allow the maternity benefits to kick in until after one full year. Some may be more flexible, but from what we’ve heard and experienced, that seems to be the case. Let us know if you’ve experienced something different.
2) Housing
This is difficult to prepare for if you are doing it alone. This is where having good friends comes into play.
You can find websites that show rental properties in your destination country, but sometimes pictures and prices can be deceiving. And those good friends are able to check things out on your behalf.
However, there are a lot of factors to consider when finding housing. Location, price, suitability, and many other factors come into play. If you can find a place to live that matches all the factors, then that’s great. Other than that, try to fit it best because its not always going to be perfect.
3) Job
If you are planning to be a tentmaker, then looking for a job will be important. A few things to be aware of when preparing for a job:
- You may need to bring some original documents (such as your diploma(s), letters of clearance) and letters of references. You’ll also need to update your resume. Always better to be prepared.
- Job searching in another country is no different than in America. You have the normal means of websites that contain job postings. Or you can see if your friends overseas can help with finding job openings. Just because you’re moving to another country doesn’t mean you’re completely helpless. With the internet, you can find almost anything.
4) Day to Day Living
One of the dangers and frustrations a family moving overseas faces is doing normal day-to-day activities. In what could take several minutes to accomplish could now take half a day. Let me give you a recent example of this:
We need cell phone plans for our time overseas and needed to purchase SIM cards from a local carrier. I researched on their website (as I normally would do) but realized the website didn’ have any of the information I needed. So the next step was to actually travel to a shop that sells SIM cards for local carriers. We walked to the nearby market to get pricing for a SIM card and plan. We realized that we didn’t want to rush in, so we checked out another store. We walked over to another store and they gave us different pricing. Finally we walked over to an official cell carrier store and the plan was better than the previous two stores.
By the time we got everyone’s cell phones squared away, it took an entire day. Again, it is indicative of barriers that foreigners face when living in a new country.
Hopefully we’ll gain more insight the longer we stay out here!