February Recap & What's to Come

Long mortgage talks, plenty of snowboarding, and friends visiting made for a very complete month

I feel like a little bit of everything was checked off in February.

I started going to a Pilates Reformer class (I’m still sore from Tuesday), went back to see the apartment we bought in November (luckily we still like it), finalized our mortgage info in Italian (and didn’t fall asleep even after 2 hours in the bank), spent a week snowboarding (while balancing work to make myself extra tired), had a friend come and visit (one I met during our time in Bosnia), and finished knitting my first ever sweater (and it’s even sweater shaped!).

That about covers it. For it being a shorter month, we certainly squeezed a lot in.

It was certainly a fun month but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was looking for a weekend full of lounging around rather than one full of plans.

February in a nutshell

The Expat Bubble Continued

My post from last week had a lot of interesting conversations around it, both in the comments and sent personally via email.

It left me wanting to say a few more things. For starters, I’m actually feeling pretty anxious about our upcoming move to Belluno because there’s no expat community. While I can’t remember the last expat aperitivo I went to here in Trieste, events like these are a really nice starting place when you’re somewhere new.

While I’ve lived all around, some with big international communities and some with none, it is something I look for whenever we’re arriving somewhere new.

I just wanted to be transparent that while I 100% think a balance, one skewing more towards the local life, is the best way to go, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t go to a meet-up if we had one right after arriving to a new place.

Honestly, most of my best friends, the ones that I’ve been able to better keep up with after leaving a place, have been other expats, often from all corners of the world. One is currently sitting on my couch while I write this - a German I met during our 6 months in Bosnia. She still lives there but thanks to voice notes, we’ve kept in close contact and have seen each other a few times after we moved on.

I don’t want to demonize befriending other expats or finding an international community when you move. These communities are really wonderful.

What I want to deter you from is relying completely on these communities, where your urge for making your native language-speaking friends stretches into all corners of your life abroad - where you don’t try to learn the local language, stick with the tourists haunts, and don’t make a true effort into integration.

That’s where the situation gets sticky.

Some countries, cities, or towns will be easier to integrate into than others - that’s just the reality of culture - but it’s also a part of the package when you sign up to move there. Even if the hurdle is high, do your best to practice your jumps or find a way around it.

For me, this has always been through sports - soccer, running, boxing, rowing, and now pilates. It’s a space I feel comfortable and you can join in on, even if you’re just learning the language. Another person in the comments said that music was her way into meeting locals in Shanghai. You might just need to get creative and push yourself to take the 1st step (or 10).

New on the Site

This month was a shorter yet well-rounded one on the site, with content covering a variety of continents. Don’t miss:

• How to Move to New Zealand: The Ultimate Guide

• A Beginner’s Guide to Living in Bonnieux, France

• How to Move to Malaysia: The Ultimate Guide

Tomorrow, I have an article scheduled on the Digital Nomad Visa in Thailand. I’ll share the link on Substack tomorrow and within March’s summary.

Coming Up in March

Later in March, I have an in-depth guide on moving to Spain in the queue. From there, I’d also like to spend some time updating a few of the bigger guides I wrote a few years ago covering the best places to move abroad.

If there are any places that you think deserve to be on these lists, let me know! I’d love to hear any input, especially from people who have lived in multiple places.

For Substack/these emails, I’m torn between a few different topics for the month but that’s likely because I’m pretty exhausted right now. We’ll see where my brain takes me next week but if there’s any topic you’d like to hear more on, let me know and I can prioritize.

And now, to rest.

xx,
Kat