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It’s The Journey
(The following is a guest post written by Ms. Carol Green of San Diego, CA, describing her own working vacations and their impact on her family. She can be reached at cphgreen@hotmail.com)
When we began our working travels more than five years ago we knew that living abroad would be a wonderful experience. What we did not anticipate was how our cultural perspectives and vision of the world would be forever changed, not only by the places we saw but also by the people we met and the friendships we formed, friendships that continue to this very day.
Anyone who has traveled knows what a superb learning experience it can be. However, settling into an overseas community and living and working with people from around the world makes that learning experience even more pronounced. Since it would be impossible to describe our six summers of travel in a single guest post I’ll simply share stories of that first working vacation in 2007 and describe how the impact of our trip continued long after we returned.
My husband Jonathan accepted a two-month teaching position at an international school in England. The school covered a portion of his plane ticket, provided housing and meals, and paid a small stipend. This income made it possible to bring our family of five across the pond and, while it was not exactly free, it certainly qualifies as traveling “on the other guy’s dime.” (Note: Coincidentally, England was my first overseas working vacation as well. GMS)
In preparation for the trip we read dozens of books and highlighted places we wanted to see and things we wanted to do. We also had to make travel arrangements, find someone to stay in our house, take care of our dogs, and make plans for schooling our children. (Note: All topics covered in my book. GMS) After some frenzied preparations and a few passport scares, we were off on our first working vacation. We arrived at Heathrow and were met by a colleague who took us to our temporary home–a lovely English cottage just a block from the school. It was small but had everything we would need for our stay. This was our family’s first lesson in living abroad—you really don’t need all that “stuff” we typically have in the U.S.
Early the next morning we awoke to our first look around. It was rainy and green. The pebbled driveway was puddled with water, and the smell of lavender filled the air. Ancient brick walls surrounded the school–some of them hundreds of years old. The cottage was quaint and very British; we learned later it was the servant’s cottage for the large main house that was converted into apartments for school staff. There was no television, no radio, a small refrigerator, and a washing machine in the kitchen.
Over the next few days we met the multinational faculty that hailed from around the globe, many of whom stay in touch and still influence our daily lives. Before the end of that first day I learned another important lesson–the international people we would meet and the stories they would share would transport us far beyond England–to distant lands like Belarus, Latvia, and Kazakhstan.
Our Visit to the “Departure Terminal” of Hogwarts School
Over the next two months we leisurely toured many other English landmarks, big and small, famous and obscure. This was the part of the trip we had envisioned—visiting landmarks, getting a sense of history, and experiencing a new place. But it was the people we met–neighbors, shopkeepers, students, colleagues–that made the biggest and most lasting impact.
As we settled into our life in the English countryside we learned to live, eat, and shop like Brits–Jonathan became comfortable driving on the “wrong” side of the road. I learned to do laundry in a small washer in my kitchen and put the clothes out to dry in the rain (which meant they did not dry). I met a lady who grew vegetables in her backyard and sold them to her neighbors. I learned that eggs are not refrigerated; cookies are biscuits, and the local convenience store closes whenever the people who work there feel like it. The owners were a lovely family from India, and over the next five summers we stayed in touch as their daughters grew and went off to college.
While I was shopping and doing laundry and Jonathan was off teaching, our children were in class making friends. They met youngsters from Italy, Spain, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Thailand, Kazakhstan, and Korea, and over the years they remained friends with many former school chums. They listened to stories about what other students did for fun, what they ate, and what their clothes, houses and cars were like. Religious and political differences were discussed in ways that opened up our children’s eyes to the enormous cultural diversity of our world. (Note: The effect that working vacations have on children can be even more dramatic than the effect on you and your spouse. Check out “Do It For The Children.” GMS)
We left that summer with tears in our eyes. We knew this had been a special trip and we were eager to go back. If that had been the end of our adventures it still would have been worth it but, fortunately, it was not. Over the next four summers we returned to England and took side trips to Germany, France, and Belgium. Because we were visiting for a few months, rather than a few days, we had a chance to explore interesting sights well off the beaten path. We scaled the grassy hills of Beachy Head, searched for a sandwich in Sandwich, explored the war tunnels in the White Cliffs of Dover, watched the sunrise at Stonehenge, and got lost on a hike on the Isle of White.
When we returned home after that first working vacation I noticed what I call a “ripple effect.” First there was the direct impact–when we read a newspaper the places they talked about were no longer strange, far off lands; instead, they were locales where colleagues lived. Natural disasters, political uprisings, financial impacts took on a more personal tone. Where there were fires in Greece we thought of friends who lived there and emailed them “Are you OK?” When we heard about financial meltdowns in Spain and Greece we knew people personally impacted and sent out messages asking, “How are you?”
Then there were the indirect effects–the dramatic change in the cultural attitudes of our children and ourselves. Both our daughters described their experiences living abroad in their college essays and told how it had changed their view of the world. Our daughter, Kristen, now 20, spent last summer in Chile on an international journalism grant where she wrote for an English language online magazine. My husband participated in an educational and cultural bridge program to China and Hong Kong in 2011 and this past summer I worked with international students just 30 miles from home for British Study Centers America. Because of these working vacations, and hopefully many more to come, our family is far more comfortable interacting with people of widely differing religious, racial, and political orientations. Diversity is to be savored, not feared.
(If you would like to learn how to have a working vacation experience of your own, take a look at my “how-to” travel book On The Other Guy’s Dime: A Professional’s Guide To Traveling Without Paying.)
Having Your Own Travel Epiphany
In May, 1980 I took my first working vacation to London, England–an experience described in London Epiphany and Living and Learning in Chiswick. At the time I was an inexperienced traveler who had barely laid eyes on other regions of the U.S., let alone the world. However, in spite of all my doubts and fears, the posting ended up being a professional, financial, and personal success. In those three-plus months I started the transformation from someone far too insular, closed-minded, and comfortable with his surroundings into, if not yet an experienced world traveler, at least someone open to new experiences and no longer afraid to venture beyond self-imposed boundaries.
I realized this was not a once-in-a-lifetime adventure that came about because of miraculous good fortune, and it did not happen because I am a world-class scholar with one-of-a-kind skills. It occurred simply because I was willing to take a risk and experience something new and different in my life. I came to understand that, even though I was an unheralded and little known academic from a small Midwestern liberal-arts college, my skills could be of use to not only Imperial College (where I worked) but other schools around the world. This realization was a travel epiphany that changed my life forever. With a little bit of planning and effort I was able to locate other opportunities to combine work and travel, mix professional, personal, and cultural growth, and contribute to and learn from others, all at no cost to me or my family. What is so stunningly obvious today—that I possess skills of sufficient interest to overseas institutions that they would pay me to temporarily live and work in their country—struck like a thunderbolt thirty years ago.
My Wife Teaching Young Buddhist Monks During Our Working Vacation At Thimphu College in Thimphu, Bhutan
Since that initial posting my wife and I have lived overseas fifteen separate times, for periods ranging from one to eight months, never quitting our day jobs and never once reaching too deeply into our wallets. We have gazed at Everest, traveled the Gobi by camel, lived among indigenous tribes of Borneo, viewed the wildlife of Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, frolicked on the beaches of Mauritius, and shared the hospitality of Buddhist monks in Bhutan, with all expenses happily and willingly paid for by others.
On Our Drive From Kathmandu, Nepal to Lhasa, Tibet During My Working Vacation At The University of Kathmandu.
My goal in this blog is for you to have that same epiphany–to realize that living and working overseas is a doable, affordable, and intellectually exhilarating experience whether for a month or a year; whether teaching, engaging in research, or consulting; whether in Asia, Africa, Europe, or the Americas; with or without family. You don’t need to be a superstar, and you don’t have to be in one specific area. Institutions around the world are eager to host professionals for short-term stays in fields such as business, IT, infrastructure development, education, economics, women’s rights, law, family medicine, urban planning, community theater, and conflict resolution, to name but a few.
You need to discard the incorrect belief that the only way to work overseas is to quit your job, kiss friends good-bye, and head out for an extended, multi-year stay. You need to discard the mistaken belief that you have neither the résumé nor the reputation to apply for and secure a short-term international position. What is important is not your wealth, pedigree, or specialization but a sense of adventure and a willingness to open your mind to the possibility of a temporary sojourn in a new and exotic locale.
(Read about our fifteen working adventures and learn how to do the same for yourself and family in my travel “how-to” book: On The Other Guy’s Dime: A Professional’s Guide To Traveling Without Paying.)
A Driver’s License Economy
Last year my wife and I had the good fortune to visit the Cook Islands, a South Pacific paradise untouched by the ravages of large-scale Western tourism. It is a tiny nation (population < 20,000) with no five-star hotels, championship golf courses, casinos, or expensive restaurants. Instead, it is a laid back place where visitors stay in beach bungalows, eat at locally owned mom-and-pop restaurants, enjoy the white sand and turquoise waters, and retire not long after the sun sets. Its residents lead a traditional Polynesian lifestyle where women dress in flowered sarong, men still fish by hand in the lagoons, and people prefer their local language, Cook Island Maori, to English. I imagine this is what Hawaii was like in the 1920s and 30s, before the appearance of Sheraton, Hilton, and Hyatt.
When we arrived (on a once-a-week flight from Los Angeles) we decided to rent a car rather than rely on the lone bus that circles the main island. However, when I went to the rental office and showed them my Minnesota license the clerk smiled and said “Sorry, we don’t accept this.” I was ready, though, and pulled out the International License I had purchased before departure. He again smiled and repeated “Sorry, we don’t accept this.” Now out of licenses, I could only stare blankly and ask “what am I supposed to do?” at which point he told me I had to apply for a Cook Island permit at the police post down the street. I drove there (they let me take the rental car even though I was technically “illegal”) and took a road test–my first in over fifty years. I nervously drove the officer up and down the highway going ever so slowly, carefully signaling turns, and staying well clear of all other traffic. When we returned and he told me I had passed I could not have been any happier than when I got my first license at age 16. I was photographed and documented, paid the $25 fee (in U.S. dollars), and was handed an official license from my new Pacific home.
My Official Cook Island Driver’s License
A week later, as Ruth and I waited for our flight to Sydney, Australia, I was chatting with one of the clerks about how this small island nation, with so little in the way of natural resources and population, could generate enough income to support itself. He replied that they export mangos, coconuts, and fish and generate a small amount of foreign income from tourism. But then he smiled and told me that, surprisingly, one of their most reliable sources of hard currency came from the sale of Cook Island driver’s licenses! The reason for my road test a week earlier had suddenly become much clearer.
Oh, well, that little piece of plastic has become one of my favorite travel souvenirs, and if I get stopped by a local cop (at least before 2013) I plan to hand him my perfectly valid Cook Island license just to see the look on his face.
(Read more vignettes about our life overseas in my book On The Other Guy’s Dime: A Professional’s Guide To Traveling Without Paying.)
Posted in Working Vacation
Tagged Cook Island, Cultural Experiences, Immersion Travel, Living Abroad
It’s Not Either-Or. It’s Both.
Important decisions don’t have to be “either-or” affairs: black-and-white with no middle ground. We don’t tell women they must choose between children or working outside the home–many do both by going part-time, hiring outside help, or having a spouse take on the duties of child rearing. Following graduation we don’t tell our children they must go to college or find full-time work. Many young people spend a “gap year” seeing the world while others opt for short-term stints in the military, Peace Corps, or with charitable groups.
The same is true about living and working overseas. It isn’t a black-and-white choice between blindly remaining in your day job or having amazing travel adventures. People mistakenly assume the only possible way to live overseas is to sell the house, kiss friends and family good-bye, and head out with no set return date. This is fueled by books and movies that describe what I call the “Wandering Nomad” mode of travel. Most of us have read stories like Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence, or have seen movies like Eat, Pray, Love that glorify the ex-pat who leaves the cubicle behind for exotic adventures across the ocean.
I just finished a popular travel book that fits perfectly into this genre–Wondrous Journeys: The World is Waiting for You by Dean Jacobs. Dean was a marketing specialist who, after a decade of success at his chosen occupation, gave it all up to see the world. He bought a travel hat and a world map, spread the map out and said, “I can go anywhere I want. Where do I begin? What have I always wanted to see?” His dreams resulted in a two-year journey to 28 countries. Today he is still traveling and giving talks to audiences around the U.S. Sounds great, right? Yes, but let’s be brutally honest. Many of us enjoy the jobs we have and the financial security they afford. We love the communities we live in, and the friends and family near us. We have important commitments we will not throw under the bus. We can’t simply chuck everything we have, but we would love to add something new and exciting to our daily routine.
There is a solution to this conundrum, and it is based on the original premise of my post: Living and working overseas does NOT have to be an either-or proposition. You don’t have to choose between 40-years and a gold watch vs. pulling a Dean Jacobs, selling everything, and sailing a 36-footer around the world. In short, you don’t have to become a wandering nomad. There is a reasonable middle ground–a middle ground that I call a working vacation–a short-term job (typically 2-6 months) that affords you the cultural and social benefits of a typical overseas posting without having to burn bridges behind you. It allows you to refresh and renew your daily routine and your professional career while allowing you to return to your home, job, and regular paycheck when finished. Working vacations are a realistic option for any skilled professional with the desire to see the world and become a more informed global citizen. I know from what I speak as my wife and I have been on 15 of these amazing adventures in the past 30 years–Mauritius to Mongolia, Turkey to Tibet, Borneo to Bhutan–without ever having to open up my wallet or quit my day job. No matter how much you enjoy your current position a working vacation can be a truly transformative personal experience, and it is something you should seriously consider. Please let me teach you how.
(Read about Michael and Ruth Schneider’s working vacations around the world, and learn how to have these amazing adventures for yourself in his travel “how-to” book: On The Other Guy’s Dime: A Professional’s Guide to Traveling Without Paying.)
Monkey Business (Quite Literally)
(Note: This is a reprint of one of my most popular posts which first appeared on November 21, 2010. A number of readers asked me to reprise it so, as a favor to them, here it is. Enjoy.)
One of the pleasures of extended travel is the chance to get off the beaten path; to see unusual and wacky sights not included in Fodor’s or Frommer’s but which remain in your mind long after the “biggies” of the local travel scene have faded into oblivion. That is exactly what happened to Ruthie and me on our visit to the Kayabukiya Tavern in Utsunomiya, Japan, 50 miles north of Tokyo.
Fuku-chan Serving My Wife Sake
We were told about this unusual tavern by our son, Ben, who saw it on the ABC-TV series, I Survived A Japanese Game Show. It is a sake house where the waiters are, honestly, macaque monkeys. The animals bring hot towels to your table, as is traditional in Japan, serve beer, sake, and hot tea, collect the bill, and bring change. They also accept tips, but not cash–only edamame (soy beans). The monkeys are actual employees whose hours and working conditions have been vetted and approved by both local authorities and Japanese animal rights organizations. When we saw these furry waiters on a You Tube video we knew this was something we had to experience for ourselves.
Fuku-chan Joining Us at the Dinner Table
We stopped at the restaurant on our return from Nikko, a major tourist center near Utsunomiya and had the privilege of enjoying drinks and dinner served by Fuku-chan (F) and Yat-chan (M) as well as meeting their two young off-spring being groomed as the next generation of waiters–when it comes to monkeys, it appears it is easier to breed new employees rather than hire them.
Yat-chan Serving Customers Wearing a Fright Mask
In addition to bringing drinks and collecting the tab, these hairy denizens also entertain guests in typical monkey style–doing back flips and balancing on balls. However, the most unusual (and weird) part of the evening is when they don their “fright masks.” It is strange enough to be waited on by a monkey; now imagine being served by a monkey dressed as a two-foot tall replica of Jason from the horror movie “Halloween.” Trust me when I say this was a unique experience, and one of the reasons Ruthie and I so enjoy living and working abroad. The Kayabukiya Tavern would certainly not be part of your standard two-week “Highlights of Japan” tour. However, when you are overseas for two or three months, rather than two or three weeks, you have time to discover these little known tourism gems. Yet another reason for taking a working vacation.
If you will be going to Japan in the near future, please stop by Utsunomiya and give our regards to Fuku-chan and Yat-chan. And don’t forget the edemame.
(Read about our life and times in Japan and more than a dozen other exotic working vacation destinations in On The Other Guy’s Dime.)
Grabbing Life By The Short Hairs
I just finished The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau, a book that spoke to me like few others. As the author says on his Amazon page, “You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to. Those who are open-minded, ready to challenge the status quo, are hard-working, and personally responsible can lead lives of rare authenticity.” Reading these words made me feel like I have shared the writings of a “soul mate.”
My colleagues at work would often inquire how my wife and I were able to take working vacations to such exotic places as Mauritius, Borneo, Bhutan, Kenya, Australia, and Mongolia. I would respond that most of our travel took place during the three-month summer hiatus when school was not in session. “But isn’t that when you are supposed to do your research, write books, and prepare lecture notes?” they would ask. “Yes, but I don’t need every single summer for these tasks and, besides, there are other ways to grow and improve as an academic professional–for example, working overseas and living and learning about new cultures. “Oh, that sounds great, but I could never do that.” Sadly, when I hear them utter those words, I know they never will.
That, dear friends, is the crux of the problem faced by Chris and myself: Namely, there are so many people who allow the scope of their dreams to be set by others; who routinely follow the expected path through life; who believe that other people’s perceptions of them, rather than their own desires, are what count the most. Let me give an example of this.
In early 1990 my school, Macalester College, signed an educational and cultural exchange with Miyagi University in Sendai, Japan. The agreement specified that every August two Miyagi faculty would visit Macalester, while every January two staff from Macalester would spend one month overseas. Visitors would stay on campus for about ten days meeting with faculty and students, giving public talks, and presenting guest lectures–not a burdensome load. The remaining 20 days would be spent traveling the country and learning about its people, history, and culture, with all expenses covered by the host institution. In simple terms the agreement traded one-and-a-half weeks of light academic work for a fully paid two-and-a-half week Japanese holiday! This was a unique travel opportunity, and I submitted my application on the first day they were accepted.
Macalester has 160 full-time staff, with two selected each year. With 80:1 odds against me I doubted I would be in the initial group and was simply hoping the exchange program would last long enough for me to reach the front of the line. However, I had not accounted for the lethargy and lassitude of so many of my colleagues who were content following their unchanging daily routine–work, eat dinner, play with the kids, go to bed. They watched football on Monday, bowled every other Thursday, had sex on Saturday night, and spent a week or two each summer “up at the lake.” It is so easy to fall into this rut and, once in, so awfully hard to get out. The end result of their inertia was that of the 160 eligible faculty ONLY THREE APPLIED, MYSELF INCLUDED! (Sorry for shouting.) That is so sad because reading someone else’s adventure stories may be a pleasant diversion, but it is nothing like having these adventures yourself. Four months after submitting my application, I headed to the airport for a flight to Tokyo and four glorious weeks touring this fascinating country–all on the other guy’s dime.
For those readers who might now be willing to consider a dive into the deep end of the pool, I would like to make the following two recommendations: First, read Chris Guillebeau’s book to inspire you to live life with gusto and bring more excitement and adventure into your daily routine. Second, read my book, On The Other Guy’s Dime, to learn the nitty-gritty details of exactly how you can do this. Trust me, you won’t be sorry.
(Get On The Other Guy’s Dime to read about our 15 working vacations and how you and your family can duplicate these adventures for yourself.)
Posted in Benefits, Fears and Doubts, Working Vacation
Tagged Career break, Chris Guillebeau, Cultural Experiences, Family Travel, Immersion Travel, Living Abroad, overseas work, The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules Live the Life You Want and Change the World, Travel, Working Abroad, Working Vacation
Why oh Why?
In my last post, Don’t Fear It; Don’t Fight It, I described the excitement that comes from taking short-term working vacations. My wife and I have been on 15 of these adventures in the past 30 years, loving (and benefiting from) every one. However, not all readers were convinced, and some expressed rather negative opinions about this type of life-style travel. In this post let me address a simple question before moving on, and that simple question is “Why?”
My Wife And Students In Her Third-Grade Classroom In Thimphu, Bhutan
One reader states he does not consider any trip that includes work to be a vacation. You can purchase a nice 10-day excursion to London, so why complicate things with a job? Another writes he has a comfortable home with many friends and family nearby, so why jettison all this to live overseas? Another states he already travels quite a bit, enjoying beach holidays in Jamaica and B & Bs in the south of France. What does a working vacation offer that these trips do not? All reasonable questions, so let me try to offer some reasonable answers.
1) Making friends. On a working vacation you make new international friendships that can last a lifetime. My wife and I are regularly in contact with a young woman we first met in Mauritius. Recently, we had friends from Australia, a couple I worked with 20 years ago, visit us in New York. These relationships have become an important part of our lives.
2) Living in a different culture. On a typical 1- or 2-week family holiday you go on tours, visit historical and cultural sites, eat well, and relax. Fun, yes, but you rarely have an opportunity to spend time with locals, participate in their cultural and religious activities, or get involved with community organizations. The country is defined by the airport, hotel, and views from a bus window. The locals you meet are often limited to those serving you meals or cleaning your room.
3) Children. The personal growth and maturity from living overseas can be even more pronounced in young children. Just as we know that youngsters are more adept at learning a foreign language or mastering a musical instrument, they are like living sponges soaking up the lessons of overseas life. Being part of another culture, even for a few months, is not only an exhilarating experience for parents, it is a transformative experience for their children.
4) Getting off the beaten path. When you have three to six months, not just a few days or weeks, to explore a country you have time to discover hidden gems often overlooked in the hectic schedule of a one or two-week tour. On a working vacation you can chat with colleagues and neighbors and learn about places that may not be in Frommer’s or the Lonely Planet but which give you an appreciation for a region and its culture–just as my wife and I learned in the Istanbul adventure described in Yogurt To Die For.
5) Becoming a more informed American. One’s own social and political orientation can be profoundly influenced by working vacations as you not only expand your understanding of the world but gain greater insight into what is happening right here in the U.S. For example, travel to countries with deep-seated religious strife makes you acutely aware of the terrible societal damage caused by our own homegrown zealots. Living in the midst of a culture struggling with racial and tribal hatreds sensitizes you to the hurt arising from intolerance, bigotry, and segregation. Working in a developing nation whose economic policies exacerbate the gap between rich and poor opens one’s eyes to the ugliness of greed and the shame of our society’s tolerance of poverty amidst widespread wealth. It’s startling to see the differences in racial, cultural, and religious tolerance between those who have lived overseas and those whose excursions are limited to a week at their cabin on the lake.
For many professionals these are compelling reasons for working vacations. As Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely.” A working vacation is a wonderful way to combine the relaxation and enjoyment of a holiday with the intellectual growth that comes from interacting with and learning from other cultures. And all this on the other guy’s dime!
(Discover additional reasons for working vacations and learn how to do it yourself in On The Other Guy’s Dime.)
Don’t Fear It; Don’t Fight It; Do Enjoy It!
My wife and I have been on 15 working vacations in the last 32 years–from Australia to Zimbabwe, Mauritius to Mongolia, Borneo to Bhutan–and I consider myself a “gold medalist” in the overseas work arena. However, at the start I certainly did not have that kind of global curiosity; heck, I had never even been more than a few hundred miles from home. I was a reluctant traveler frightened by the prospect of living in a strange new place, so when I received an invitation to spend a summer teaching at Imperial College, London I immediately came up with dozens of reasons why this cockamamie idea wouldn’t work. Thank God my wife was far more adventurous and convinced me to give it a try, a decision I have never come to regret.
The most common problem I encounter when talking with friends and colleagues about working vacations is their fear of doing something totally different; the uncertainty that comes from pulling up roots, even for a few months, to become part of a new and different culture. Overcoming those initial fears is the biggest impediment to working travel because once you have done it you appreciate how rewarding, invigorating, and personally exciting it can be. Then the only issue becomes how to do it again. Let me illustrate.
Imperial College, London Where I Taught For 3.5 Months On My Very First Working Vacation
When we returned from that amazing 3+ month stay in England I asked myself why I had waited so long to attempt something like this. My accounting of income and expenses, completed for tax purposes the following April, showed that this English adventure had cost us a grand total of $1,500 in out-of-pocket expenses, about $3,800 in today’s dollars. Our stay in London had been a break-even proposition, perhaps even generating a small surplus, due to my Imperial College living allowance, summer paychecks (I have a 9-month teaching job, but I spread the income over 12 checks), and rental income from our home in the US. The extra costs came from our many family excursions throughout the region. We could only marvel at how many things we had seen and how well we had lived at a cost that probably would not cover a two-week family stay at an upscale Caribbean resort.
Not only was the trip a financial success, it was a professional and cultural success as well. I initiated scholarly activities that helped me achieve tenure a few years later. My wife and I had an opportunity to be part of an international culture and make new friends with whom we are still in contact. My children had the chance to meet and play with British children raised in far different circumstances and, although they are now fully grown, they still fondly remember that first overseas adventure. Finally, given three-plus months, rather than just a week or two, we had plenty of time to discover the hidden gems of this wonderful city and enjoy spur of the moment weekends to Devon, Cornwall, the Lakes District, Scotland, and Paris.
Looking back on my imagined doubts and problems I now realize that they were just that–totally imagined. Not a single one of my deep-seated worries came to pass and none of my irrational arguments for foregoing this trip were valid. I can think of nothing I would have changed except, perhaps, to host fewer house guests. (Not only do I enjoy traveling on the other guy’s dime, so do friends, family, and neighbors!) It was such a transformative experience that after returning home I immediately began planning our next jaunt, which came only two years later and took my wife, two children, and me to Jerusalem. The pattern had been set.
So, please believe me when I say I understand your initial reluctance to give working vacations a try–I felt exactly the same way. However, also believe me when I say that taking a short-term working vacation is a decision you will never regret. It can make an enormous change in your view of the world (and your children’s) and give you a new and refreshing outlook on life. It certainly did with me.
(Read about that summer in England and our subsequent 14 working vacations in my book, On The Other Guy’s Dime: A Professional’s Guide To Traveling Without Paying. It also explains how you and your family can experience the same type of cost-free adventures.)
The Ex-Pat Life or Not?
Our most enjoyable working vacation was a one-semester visiting position at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Australia was as close as my wife and I have come to becoming permanent ex-pats–quitting our jobs, selling the house, kissing friends and neighbors good-bye, and pitching our family tent in a new country. It was that wonderful.
The Skyline of Downtown Sydney, Australia at Twilight
We found the quality of life in Sydney to be nigh-on perfect, which is saying a lot since we reside in Minneapolis, itself one of the most livable cities in North America. Australians know how to balance the stress of work and daily life with the pleasures of food, wine, relaxation, and time spent with friends and family. None of my colleagues gulped lunch at their desk, burned the midnight oil, stressed over research grants, or brought work home at night. When they left the office at the sensible hour of 5PM, they relaxed on their patio, opened a Fosters, enjoyed a leisurely dinner, and played with children or friends. Everything about this life style resonated with me, and it felt like the Aussies had discovered the secret of la bonne vie, the good life. However, when our visit ended my wife and I chose not to stay; not to pitch that tent. After four months in this heavenly city, our family boarded a plane for the long trek home. The obvious question is “Why?” If Australia held such fascination why did we choose to return?
A popular form of travel writing describes the roamings of stylishly elegant vagabonds who leave behind their home, family, and job for a new life overseas. The stories are a paean to their suddenly über-fashionable quality of life. For example, in A Year In Provence by Peter Mayle, a wealthy British businessman moves to the south of France to enjoy good food and wine, all the while restoring an elegant 19th century French country home. In Eat, Pray, Love an American divorcee seeks comfort and solace in Italy, India, and Bali. (Another possibility: Under the Tuscan Sun).
Stories of vagabond ex-pats make for superb reading and sell quite well–my readership would probably be far higher if I had stayed in Australia, bought a cattle ranch, and authored a book entitled A Year In The Outback. However, while enjoyable, these tales suffer from a serious problem–they are totally unrealistic. Like 99% of my readers, I have home, family, and job commitments that my wife and I either cannot or will not voluntarily abandon. In my case I love my teaching post and the security it affords. My children enjoy their classes, friends, and after-school activities, and our relatives live nearby, allowing us to participate in family life-cycle events. We have a great life in Minneapolis, and we chose not to give up these bird-in-the-hand pleasures for the two-in-the-bush possibilities of a new life in Australia.
No matter how much you may love your job after a few years everyone begins to get feelings of “being in a rut.” It is a natural human response to doing the same thing day after day. These feelings are what fuel the dreams of wanderers like Peter Mayle and motivate them to leave everything behind. But if most of us cannot, or will not, plunge into the ex-pat pool, what are we to do? How do we dig out from a trench of monotony and boredom? How do we scratch our “wanderers itch?”
The answers to these questions are the raison d’être for this blog. For some people a week at a ski lodge or beach resort is sufficient to refresh the soul and rekindle the fires in the belly. For the rest of us, though, it takes more– something along the lines of the temporary two- to four-month working vacations that my wife and I have done on 15 occasions–from Australia to Zimbabwe, Mauritius to Mongolia, Turkey to Tibet. Best of all, when we are finished with a posting, we return refreshed and reinvigorated to our home, friends, family, job and regular paycheck. No bridge burning required.
So, if you have a yearning for something a little bit different, please don’t think the only cure is to chuck it all and sail around the world, live in an Indonesian rainforest, or buy a vineyard in the south of France. You don’t need years to renew the soul; a few months living and working overseas–i.e., a working vacation–is every bit as good a medicine for what ails you. And if you read any of the other 128 posts on this blog you can learn exactly how to do it!
(Read more about our working vacation adventures in my book On The Other Guy’s Dime, and learn how to do it for yourself and your family.)
More Than Just Big Game
Mention Kenya to just about anyone and one word comes to mind–safari. Most packaged tours of this East African nation consist of an endless series of visits to big game parks, with perhaps a day or two in Nairobi for souvenir shopping and nightlife. Sadly, these types of tours overlook a superb opportunity available to the African traveler–learning first-hand about the evolution of Homo erectus, the ancestor of modern man.
Anthropologists generally agree that humans first appeared on Earth in the Great Rift Valley, a scar on the landscape running more than 1,500 miles from the Middle East to southern Africa. Most important hominid remains were unearthed in the East African section, which bisects Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Numerous archeological sites are located in this region, and they are often staffed by professionals eager to explain to the visitor how finds from this site contributed to our knowledge of human evolution. Given that my wife and I were in Kenya on a working vacation and would be there for well over three months, we were not about to make this mistake. We talked to my faculty colleagues at the University of Nairobi who suggested a few important historical sites that would be both fun and informative.
So, with our trusty road map and spare auto parts in hand, Ruth and I piled into our 10-year old rented Nissan, hoping that the engine was in better shape than the bald tires and rusted body. We headed out from Nairobi deep into the Rift Valley to visit Olorgesailie Prehistoric Site, a 52-acre national park built around an archeological dig first excavated by Drs. Louis and Mary Leakey in the 1940s. Only 60 miles from Nairobi, it has been lovingly preserved as a field museum, complete with early hominid tools and fossils of extinct animals displayed in situ–exactly as they appeared when first uncovered. A wooden catwalk encircles a prehistoric living area that includes a fire pit and the fossil remains of a 1.2 million year old hominid dinner. Paleontology students from the University of Nairobi conduct tours of the site explaining the significance of the artifacts and fossils on display. Since so few tourists make it this way (Ruth and I were the only visitors that entire day) the student guides will spend as much time with you as you want and will even invite you to join them for lunch–an offer we happily accepted. Similar prehistoric sites are found throughout the region, including Kariandusi, Koobi Fora, and Olduvai, across the border in Tanzania).
All too often African guided tours are geared for what a tour agency believes visitor want to see, not what they actually might like to see if they were aware of all available options. Many places believe that if you photograph the big five (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, rhino) your African trip has been a complete success, regardless of what other possibilities were overlooked. One of the great thing about a working vacation is that your itinerary is not predetermined; instead, you have time to meet and talk with locals, learn about the country and what it has to offer, and discover some interesting, but perhaps lesser known, tourism gems. That is exactly what happened to us as we enjoyed some of the amazing archeological venues of East Africa. Combining these visits with our tours of Kenya’s superb game parks (yes, we did see the big five and much more) added greatly to the joys of our 3+ month Kenyan working vacation.
(Read more about our adventures living and working in Kenya in On The Other Guy’s Dime: A Professional’s Guide To Traveling Without Paying.)
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