26 Things You Can Learn by Living Abroad for a Year

26 Things You Can Learn by
Living Abroad for a Year
Etienne Garbugli
Product Design & Marketing Consultant
What I learned and how it changed me

I moved to
Singapore in
July 2011
I moved to
Beijing in
January
2011
I arrived in
Hong Kong
in October
2010
I moved back to
Canada in
October 2011
Note: The plane
probably doesn’t go
in this direction. :)

To travel
To evaluate if where I was born is where I wanted to live
To take a step back and discover what I want to do
To come up with a great business idea
To work on myself
To take some distance
To discover and understand another culture
To get some experience working abroad
To learn
To experience life somewhere else
To meet people

What I learned. // Life lessons.

It’s fairly easy to move and take a
new place as your home
1

It’s also easy to meet people2

Some relationships last, others
are just circumstantial
3

Expat friends are easy to find.
Local friends much harder
4

Without speaking the language,
it’s hard to fully understand and
integrate a culture
5

It’s also very hard to avoid
isolation
6

But, you’ll never be as local as the
local people; keep your identity
7

People are surprisingly nice and
helpful everywhere
8

But, sense of humor & metaphors
can easily be misunderstood
9

You soon realize that being
abroad changes your perspective
of where you come from
10

And that life goes on with (or
without) you
11

We don’t change too much when
travelling but, things change
even less back home
12

You’ll probably miss your friends
and family; it’s much harder to
center your life without them
13

But, having things or people
waiting for you somewhere else
makes it easy to give up
14

Comfort comes when you get
your own place
15

But, like everywhere else, routine
sets in as you work
16

And you realize that it’s hard to
have time AND money to travel
no matter where you are
17

AND that, being close to a
destination does not necessarily
mean you’ll actually get to see it
18

Abroad, the most dangerous
thing is the downward spiral;
when everything starts to suck
19

It can be frustrating dealing with
and understanding people from
another culture but, people are
rarely racist
20

It’s just naturally harder to trust
and understand people from
another culture
21

Since we naturally see things
through our own culture’s eyes
22

Which doesn’t mean that you’ll
automatically be friends with
people from your home culture
(many seem to think so)
23

But, ultimately, there’s good and
bad things everywhere; maybe
another city would suit you better
24

Moving away is not about having
fears or not; it’s about how well
you face your fears…
25

Life is more flexible than we think;
with enough work, almost
everything in life can be changed
26

Thank you.
Etienne Garbugli
Product Design Consultant
Answer
?
Phone
514-298-7102
Availabl
e to
meet?
Email
etienne@leanb2bbook.com
Enough
info?Yes
No Yes
No
Yes
No
Blog
leanb2bbook.com
Twitter
@egarbugli
LinkedIn
/in/egarbugli

26 Things You Can Learn by Living Abroad for a Year

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