Happy Abroad Summit by Woman Expat. WTF is this?!

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Winston
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Happy Abroad Summit by Woman Expat. WTF is this?!

Post by Winston »

Check this out. Apparently some woman named Franziska Luxhøj is running a Happy Abroad website and selling summits and coaching and counseling so expats don't feel alone and frustrated. lol. WTF is this? Doesn't she know that outside of America in most countries, it's a lot easier to meet people and make friends so you don't feel isolated? In most other countries you meet people naturally, just like you see in the movies. So what is she offering exactly? Just common sense advice and cliched pep talk? I ought to do something like that too. See her links below.

https://behappyabroad.com/

https://behappyabroad.com/summit2020/

Here is what's at the top of her home page:
You moved abroad, but instead of creating a fantastic life with your loved ones, you find yourself alone, overwhelmed and frustrated.
https://behappyabroad.com/about/
You often feel alone, unsupported and misunderstood. By your partner, your environment, your friends back home.
Sometimes you don’t even feel like you’re real partners any more. You feel a growing disconnection.
Yes, you’re still a family and sharing a roof – but so often it’s just about the practicalities.
Where does she get that? I don't know any expats who feel that way, unless they move to the wrong country. If you're in the right country, don't things happen naturally? What is she smoking? What are her qualifications anyway?
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MrMan
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Re: Happy Abroad Summit by Woman Expat. WTF is this?!

Post by MrMan »

It's culture shock. If you take a one-month tour of a foreign country, especially on vacation, everything is new and exciting. If you live in a foreign country for two or three months, you may experience culture shock. Those little different ways of doing thing--social interactions, customs, manners, expectations, etc. start to become a little frustrating and it can build up. The frustration may cause one to feel disconnected and lonely or whatever else. I went through culture shock in Korea. Part of it was the lousy split shift schedule that kept me from being able to sleep, combined with frustration with a number of things. Part of it was what seemed like dishonesty. I did not realize that 'Let me think about that' meant 'no', and so did a lot of other phrases.

After six months, I was cool with the place. When I went to Indonesia, even though Jakarta was a lot more polluted and untamed in some ways than South Korea, I don't remember experiencing culture shock. Stuff was exciting and new at first, and then I just settled in. I think having done the culture shock thing and having developed friendships helped the transition to Indonesia easier. There were plenty of friendly Koreans, but in general, Indonesia seemed friendlier. It is also mutli-cultural, so it wasn't a case of my trying to figure out one rigid culture. People were laid back about cultural differences, and just laid back in general.

Some of the expats who work abroad aren't as enthusiastic about going abroad as some of our posters here. Maybe the money was so good they took it, even though they did not like the location, or their position in the US was ending and something opened up overseas.

A friend of mine owns a real estate company that also offers classes help expats adjust, but I think theirs is more cross cultural training. I knew one of the trainers. Some cities have expats working for large companies, and there is a niche for this kind of training. Overcoming culture shock can be a part of the services offered.
fdiv
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Re: Happy Abroad Summit by Woman Expat. WTF is this?!

Post by fdiv »

It very well could be because she is a western woman living abroad in a non-western country, and expects everybody to worship the ground she walks on, just as she has done all her life in the west. I bet that would create an isolating and hostile vibe for her, LOL
options in the US: maybe have a shot at a angry bluehaired landwhale and then, prison :roll:
options abroad: limitless 8)
MrMan
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Re: Happy Abroad Summit by Woman Expat. WTF is this?!

Post by MrMan »

Winston wrote:
June 16th, 2020, 5:44 am
Check this out. Apparently some woman named Franziska Luxhøj is running a Happy Abroad website and selling summits and coaching and counseling so expats don't feel alone and frustrated. lol. WTF is this? Doesn't she know that outside of America in most countries, it's a lot easier to meet people and make friends so you don't feel isolated? In most other countries you meet people naturally, just like you see in the movies. So what is she offering exactly? Just common sense advice and cliched pep talk? I ought to do something like that too. See her links below.

https://behappyabroad.com/

https://behappyabroad.com/summit2020/

Here is what's at the top of her home page:
You moved abroad, but instead of creating a fantastic life with your loved ones, you find yourself alone, overwhelmed and frustrated.
https://behappyabroad.com/about/
You often feel alone, unsupported and misunderstood. By your partner, your environment, your friends back home.
Sometimes you don’t even feel like you’re real partners any more. You feel a growing disconnection.
Yes, you’re still a family and sharing a roof – but so often it’s just about the practicalities.
Where does she get that? I don't know any expats who feel that way, unless they move to the wrong country. If you're in the right country, don't things happen naturally? What is she smoking? What are her qualifications anyway?
I think the problem she is addressing is real and something she could probably make more money off of if she has a good service and finds the right clients. There might be more money in it than in the foreign romance/foreign dating type industry.

Why? A significant portion of expats return home before planned. (I saw the stats a few weeks ago, but can't remember them, and they are on my work laptop, which I don't feel like cracking open right now.) More US expats return home early than European. I think US expats outdo the Japanese for returning home early.

Family members not adjusting is one of the reasons. Imagine a reasonably high ranked oil company employee takes a white family out of the suburbs to bustling city in another country. I'll use Jakarta, Indonesia as an example because I live there.

First of all, everyone is jet lagged. They are probably excited about how new things are for a few weeks. But you might have that one teen kid who isn't because she left all her friends at home and walks around grumpy all the time. I knew an expat who lived in a small mansion provided by his company. He said that phone had a special plan on it to be able to call the US, maybe free per minute, so she could call her friends. Apparently that made the transition easier. I'm not saying any of his kids were grumpy, but throwing that out as a possible scenario.

Then the kids go to international school. The male employee, his wife, or the kids, during that first six months of culture shock might get stressed out. If his wife is stressed out, she might complain to him. If she is the loud, aggressive type, rather than the demure submissive type, this could be much worse. Stress could turn into arguing. If his kids have a bad attitude, that could also create problems as well.

I knew an Australian woman in Jakarta who worked for an expat-owned company whose job it was to give training to expatriates to help them adjust to the local environment. Part of that was cross-cultural training. I never took her course, but they may help them with practical issues. Some multi-nationals offer families language courses. Many of the larger US companies offer paying the children's international school tuition. Back in the day, the 'top' schools' charged about $20k her year (US). I have no idea what they charge now.

Some of these men are in pretty high positions and get paid a decent salary, a premium for working overseas and also housing. In Jakarta, it is fairly common they get access to a car and driver.

In my case, I finally got access to a car and driver-- actually an 8 passenger vehicle that was sort of like a short van-- but only during week days. We could run our driver around a little after office hours as long as we stayed within the 'budget', and we were never told what that was, so we'd do that maybe once or twice a week. It was good for my wife to have access to a car to take her grocery shopping.

I usually took the kids out to McDonald's or Pizza Hut for some American food on

My own kids are half white, but hadn't been to Indonesia, except two of them when they were really little. One was born there and couldn't remember it, unless she remembered a scene or two. She started speaking Indonesian as a baby, but doesn't know it. When we lived there when they were kids, they eventually adjusted. One of them occasionally asks to go live in that apartment we lived in and go to that school. It was a good apartment, smaller than where we live now. But the access to swimming pools, jacuzzis, fitness centers, and a dual purpose basketball and tennis court area and grocery store and food court in the complex made it a pretty nice place to live.

A word of warning for US persons who go live in foreign countries on these kind of deals. If the organization pays for international school, that is counted as cash income for US tax purposes. The exception is if you work at a school and every other employee's kids get free tuition. So if you read you get $105K or whatever earned income exemption and you make less than that, once you add in the tuition, your income may be higher, and you have to pay income tax at the normal rate over whatever that cutoff is. If you have lots of kids getting free tuition, your taxed income could be much greater than what you really made for tax purposes, and you may have to pay some taxes.

I spent many years in Indonesia and my wife is from there, so the chances of our having left over culture shock or the wife nagging me over not liking the country were not a big risk for my employer. Our kids aren't wild, either. That's another issue. I hear about people who sell alcohol serving kids who go to Jakarta International School. Alcohol is not a big part of the culture in Indonesia, but those who serve it may not mind selling it to just about anyone.

But I can see how the adjustment would be huge for a first-time white expatriate family. So a wife of an expat who comes across this woman's page might find it rather appealing and want what she is selling. A husband with an unhappy wife and kids, whose trying to get his work done and relax a bit when he gets home, and instead hears complaining, he may want it, too.
MrMan
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Re: Happy Abroad Summit by Woman Expat. WTF is this?!

Post by MrMan »

Btw, I believe the message you are promoting @Winston, might resonate with some men, too. But my guess is if some men live in very 'cold' parts of the country, culturally, where young women look at them angrily if they try to strike up a conversation could probably overcome that problem within the US. I suspect people from the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast, or Southern California could visit the rural south or maybe even the Midwest and find friendly females who would talk to them.

Or they could go abroad to a country where expats have high market value for dating, especially--for whites-- a country where whites were the colonial power for a long time like the Philippines or Indonesia where there is that residual effect left over of whites being the ruling class. A man's social awkwardness could be covered over by accents or excused because of his foreignness. His looks may be more 'exotic' to the women, so he gets more attention. If a girl wants to learn English and he's a native speaker, that could help him get attention. And women in more marriage-oriented cultures may take dating a man more seriously.

But I also think you might have damaged your brand just a bit by complaining about Taiwan so much. For most of us 'Taiwan' is abroad, and complaining about how cold the people is runs contrary to this broad brush picture you paint that 'abroad' women are friendly and will date you and people in general are friendlier and want to be your friend.
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