In this article, you will learn: How to find the right way for you to stay connected Top tips on how you can approach managing your remote relationships I asked you on Instagram lately about how as an expat you make sure to stay connected and manage these remote relationships with friends and family. Interestingly […]
Addressing doubts around workplace diversity
It is not uncommon to hear people questioning the idea of workforce diversity – whether that relates to ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. When I talk to people, read articles in the internet or watch news or YouTube videos, I stumble across multiple comments, which question the whole movement around the topic of diverse and […]
What if Santa is travelling by plane? – 15 tips on planning Christmas gifts when living abroad
So… you decided to go home for the Christmas break. Sounds great! You can spend this holiday period with people you love, with people you have been missing for so long! But wait, does that mean buying gifts for all? So many people to think of! So much stuff to take! What about the airline […]
Expat vs. Tourist experience of a country
So many times I’ve read or heard people who have visited 50+ countries and claimed to know so much about the various cultures of the world. However, I’ve also met so many people who haven’t had the chance to travel so much but are great intercultural specialists. So what’s the deal here? What’s better for your […]
Discovering your expat identity
You moved abroad. You experience all these various different (weird?) things. People tell you to adapt to the new culture. You feel uncomfortable, not even sure if you are you anymore. Everyone else around you seems to know better what you should do, how you should adapt, how quickly you should do it (surely if […]
Getting closer to the local community
There are various ways of getting to know the local culture, people and customs. You can read about it, you can go to all the recommended places, but you can also learn more about the parts that are forgotten also by some locals… I’m writing this having just come back from a really great and […]
How to survive Christmas at home
If you live in the UK, whether you celebrate Christmas or not doesn’t really matter. Christmas is all around. All around to the point when you start thinking about killing yourself. I love Christmas, don’t get me wrong! 🙂 But the amount of things happening around it gets a bit overwhelming sometimes. I love the […]
The Culture Map – summary and applications
I hope you enjoyed the series of posts about one of the approaches to identifying dimensions of cultures, created by Erin Meyer. This post is supposed to provide a brief summary of the dimensions so that you have them in one place as well as encourage you to explore the dimensions in more detail.
What’s it like to be an introvert expat?
Going abroad is a great opportunity to learn a foreign language, try working in a new environment, meet new people, grow as a person in general. It seems like a perfect thing for extroverts – lots of new things, lots of new people, lots of uncertainty, and lots of energy that you need to put […]
The Culture Map – How to build trust while working across cultures
As difficult as it is to discuss trust, I’d like to touch upon the Trusting dimension of the Culture Map created by Erin Meyer. As always, I’ll start by briefly explaining what the two dimensions of this scale are and then deep dive into some examples from Meyer’s book as well as my own thoughts […]