Jill and me making a new friend. The life of an expat.
I’ve been traveling for 500 days now. Jill for about 465.
It has been a long road.
We’ve had some amazing times, met some amazing people, and seen a lot of amazing things.
We’ve also had hardships and tough times.
We’ve already had great friends leave and that is one of the really tough parts of being an expat.
The people you meet, and love, move on. And so do you.
And so will we.
It is a matter of time, as an expat, before you leave and end up somewhere else.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because we get to experience a lot of new people, new places and new adventures, but it can be tiring after a while.
It is something that I deal with, with my clients at work, at different times.
People don’t seem to understand how tough it is to make really close friends, but also know they, or you, will be leaving and that you have to rebuild your support system over and over again.
On the positive side of things you then meet all kinds of new people but on the negative side you lose contact with all kinds of people you care about and want to stay in touch with over time.
This is where this blog, Twitter, Facebook and other methods of social media help out a lot.
As we know, where Jill and I are living, makes it quite difficult to use these social media sites without a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and that makes the internet move very very very very slowly here.
There are times when we are using a VPN but still can’t get on to the social media sites and this affects Jill in a very difficult way since she needs the internet to run all her online businesses.
However, we are dealing with it as best we can and these are just part of the trials, and tribulations, of living in China and living overseas.
Jill and I actually read a book, on our kindles, while on this trip called, “Happier Than A Billionaire” by Nadine Hays Pisani. It is all about chucking your job, doing something somewhat crazy and moving to another country, and then seeing what can happen.
It is probably one of the funniest travelogues I’ve read and Jill and I were literally laughing so hard we started to cry at times.
After we finished the trip to Turkey and Greece, we ended up liking “Happier Than a Billionaire” on Facebook and are now friends with Nadine.
We talk to her almost daily about living overseas, each other’s dreams and desires in life, and how we can make them happen.
This probably never would have happened if I hadn’t met Jill 8 days before leaving for China and her taking a chance to spend the next 465 days with me, a guy she barely knew, in a country (multiple countries if you count our travels) that she knew nothing about, and our desire to meet interesting people, live a life less ordinary and take a chance on life.
By the way, if I can put a plug out for Nadine’s book, please click this link and buy it: Happier Than A Billionaire. It is on amazon and you will thank yourself for it.
Looking forward to what tomorrow brings.