May 2021 Archives

The Most Successful Expat Is the One Having the Most Fun

Soft, huge, and splattered with a pattern of red and blue palm fronds, my new surfboard arrived a few days ago. It’s not a high-performance piece of precision watercraft, made to tackle the heaving reef waves of Hawaii’s north shore or the pounding beach breaks of western Portugal. Quite the contrary—think of it more as an oversized swim float with keel fins.

Nevertheless, it’s perfectly suited to the waist-high curlers that are most common at the beach where I live. I’ve been snobbish about such things until now, choosing only the best, most perfect conditions to surf in. The kind of waves that happen only once or twice a year.

Perhaps you can see the flaw in that approach—it meant that I got in the water only once or twice a year. The interesting thing is, now that I’ve decided to be less elitist, I’m having an awful lot more fun.

This is not a surfing magazine, yet a lesson I learned from my new toy is that there’s a great store of joy to be wrung from the places we find ourselves, as long as we’re willing to grasp it.

This, in a roundabout way, relates to the title: International Living. The “International” part is, actually, quite easy to arrange. We can help you with that. But “Living”—and particularly living well—that’s where you come in.

For me, today, it’s all about getting into the ocean and riding waves (even tiny ones). But on a bigger scale, it’s about all of us getting the most out of our surroundings. It’s about taking the decision to stop simply existing, and to start living.

A day hike in the Ecuadorian Andes; strolling the Roman ruins of Croatia; or tucking into the street food of highland Mexico—it’s not so much about the place as the attitude. Adventure is there for the taking. Turn the page to start.