I’m about to embark on my own journey as an expat. I’ll be living in Paris with my EU husband.
I speak good French and having lived in France twice before for 9-mo stints each, I am familiar enough with French culture to empathize with the negative and positive critiques that people share on this subreddit. In other words, I know what to expect.
Nonetheless I am still nervous about the move; fitting in, finding a community, finding my tribe. I’m nervous about feeling like I’ve made a colossal mistake to sell everything and move here.
The truth is is that reading this subreddit does not make me féel very optimistic. I read posts lamenting the move abroad, the regrets you have, the challenge adapting, and none of which are unwarranted! I get it Expat life is difficult!
……But my question is…is there anyone here who is happy with their decision to have moved abroad?
Left the US in 2003 and you couldn’t pay me to go back. I spent part of that time in France, too.
one of the things for me is i bounced around like four countries and im burnt out on adapting now, im going to stay where I am at, at least until I retire. If the climate wars or ww3 haven’t started I will probably retire in France.
every time I go back to the us I am struck at how hard it is. receiving healthcare in the US is like a full time job trying to find network providers and pharmacies and whatever, I don’t understand it and wouldn’t if I went back. Car centric culture also is annoying to me now.
the only thing I miss about the USare extended store hours but France and Germany have almost caught up, especially in big cities. Oh I miss OTC meds too, having to resort to hostage negotiation tactics to get Imodium from a pharmacy is a lot more involved than shoving a couple equate boxes in my cart.