The Year Abroad

No surprise, all the photos you share via WhatsApp are stored and viewable for later perusal. And since Talia and I hardly ever used this service before moving back to NL, and used it constantly while there, the photos we shared with each other provide a handy visual history of the year just past. A selection below, not quite chronologically ordered, and followed by a few thoughts on it all:

 

A treasure trove of memories, thus! What a wonderful year! But let's not forget these important facts:

• Spending a year abroad is both too long and too short. Too long: you likely must pack up your house, change your phone, arrange a visa and employment and make many changes in your risk and insurance profiles, create a financial and bureaucratic existence abroad (which, once created, may not be so easy to dispel)...in short, there is huge overhead. And yet too short: you're only just feeling integrated and it's time to go, you've not done half the nearby travel you'd meant to and sampled only a fraction of what's to be seen, heard, and tasted, and, by the way, the state of California does not consider you non-resident unless you are out-of-state for more than 18 months, the tax implications of which are not insignificant.
• If your intention is to give your children the experience of learning a second language then a carefully planned summer will suffice. And if your intention is to give them not just the experience but a lasting fluency then you either need more than a year to really embed it or a plan for periodic immersive refreshers thereafter.
• Contrary to naive assumption, living abroad is a very expensive way to do a lot of travel. You will probably be paid less (and taxed more), your partner may be unable or less able to work, the overhead of moving (as opposed to just traveling) overseas is costly, and so on. What you save on airfare you will lose many times over on everything else.

Worth it? For us, certainly, if for no other reason than the chance we had to deepen our many friendships there and to appreciate from afar our friends here. But for most I bet the summer abroad will be much the better choice.