Toto, I've a Feeling We're not in Kansas any More"

Living and working in another country, as you have already realized, bears little resemblance to being a tourist. By now, you have unpacked the boxes, put the suitcases away, and learned where to buy eggs and milk. This is that future you dreamed about. This experience will change your life.

Your journey actually began awhile ago, with the search for that perfect job. Maybe you went to an overseas recruiting fair and found yourself intrigued by two or three different schools. You came home feeling both blessed and cursed: blessed to have discovered so many places that seemed a great fit, and cursed to have to prioritize your options.

If you had your heart set on moving to Casablanca or Hong Kong or Rio, the phone call offering you one of those jobs was incredible. But the likelihood of all three phoning with good offers on the same day is… slim. It never happens that way. More likely, you received an offer and had to accept or refuse, not knowing whether the phone would ring again or just sit there smirking at you. The meaning of Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” becomes very clear when you go job-hunting.

Or maybe it did not go that smoothly. The recruiting fair may not have produced the offers you hoped for. Perhaps you went home with nothing, grateful you had not handed in your resignation at your current school. But then the phone rang, and the school head from Dhaka or Tashkent or Bamako told you he had seen your resume from the fair and thought you might be interested. He began to talk about his school and its community with such passion that you knew you wanted to teach those children and make that place your home – all while Googling a world map to figure out just where that place is.

Once you had made up your mind, accepted the job, applied for a visa and started mentally packing, it was time to tell family and friends the big news. I do not know your family or your friends, but I bet their reactions fell into roughly two categories. Some responded with an excitement and enthusiasm that mirrored your own. They had always known you would take off on a grand adventure and envied you the chance. You probably invited them to visit and you know they will.

But others looked at you in disbelief, and subtly (or not so subtly) questioned your sanity. “You have quit your job to move where?” they asked. “You can’t just move halfway around the world!” “Can I do this?” you asked yourself in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. “Should I do this?” Your confidence felt a little shaky. Moving is gut-wrenching and exhausting, no matter the destination.

Unless you are Saint Francis, owning nothing more than you can carry on your back, you found yourself surrounded by heaps of possessions: things to pack, things to give away, things to sell, trash to haul away.

It is hard to know what you might need in a new home. Hundreds of questions drive both you and your new-school mentor mad. "Should I bring sheets?" "What sizes are the beds?" "Are there food items I should stock up on?" "Can I find contact lens solution and teeth-whitening toothpaste?" You begin to reassess your relationship with brand names, as you contemplate a year or two or three without Cheerios, Skippy’s and Tampax.

Now that you are there and starting to feel a bit settled, you will reexamine those issues. The local grocery may be full of familiar products and brands at double (or triple) the price, causing you to realize you can live without them. Or you may wander down aisles filled with undecipherable labels, wondering if you will starve before you figure out this stuff.

Sometimes it is the little things that overwhelm you, unless you laugh. Our family moved to Poland in 1976, before the birth of the modern supermarket. Most goods in Warsaw, whether tricycles or socks or apples, were kept behind counters, and had to be identified or pointed at. Food, just to complicate things, was usually sold by weight. We had mastered a few nouns and basic numbers in Polish and could easily come home with kilos of carrots or apples – but the smallest weight we could order was a half kilo.

That’s a lot of garlic.

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