If you’ve lived in American all your life, there might be a part of you that yearns to know what it’s like to live beyond the borders of the U.S. Especially if you love to travel and have already spent some time in other countries, living abroad for a while might seem like the logical next step to you. And who knows, you might even choose to stay permanently. But if you’re just starting off on this journey, there are likely a few things you’re unsure about or that are concerning to you. So to help make this process a little easier to bear, here are three tips for preparing to live outside the U.S. for the first time.

Set Up For Your New Life Abroad

Before you decide that you’re going to move to a particular country, it’s a good idea to begin setting up your life there, including finding a job and a decent place that you might like to live. According to Jennifer Lachs, a contributor to GoAbroad.com, there are tons of work abroad programs available that can help you line up a job while you’re living in this new country. If you work for a large company in the U.S., you might want to see if there’s a chance for simply transferring to an office in another country. And since it can be hard to find a place to live merely by looking online, you may want to book a hotel for the first few nights that you’ll be in this new country so you can get a first-hand look at a few places you’ve been considering before you make a permanent choice.

Prepare The Legal Logistics

Living in a different country is very different from just visiting that country for a short period of time, especially if you don’t necessarily have a timeframe of when you may or may not be leaving the country. Because of this, it’s important that you get all the legal logistics taken care of before you arrive. According to Elizabeth Preske, a contributor to Travel and Leisure, this could include applying for or renewing your passport, securing a visa, setting up a bank account, finding the right medical insurance, and making copies of any important documents you may need to bring with you.

Get Ready For Potential Culture Shock

Even if you’ve been to this country before, living there could be a whole different ball game for you. With this in mind, Diane Schmidt, a contributor to The Spruce, suggests that you prepare yourself for potential culture shock. To best handle this, you may want to start learning any new languages as soon as you can, do as much research about the area and customs as you’re able to, and prepare yourself to be open-minded and accepting of things you may not be familiar with or easily understand.

If you’re considering moving outside of the U.S., use the tips mentioned above to prepare yourself for this new adventure.

I am not been active on blogging these past few weeks, most of my blogs was not updated in a month.  It is not because I am not interested in blogging anymore but because I am quite busy, it was been a month since we left Korea and it was been a month since we are travelling.  In one month, we have been to more than 5 countries already,  Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and now we are in Romania and I am looking forward to see Dracula. Haha!

I wake up this morning reading a message that my photo in this blog was stolen and used by someone in Facebook.  I felt a rushing feeling to my veins (thinking what photo) so I immediately went to my blog but I was welcomed by a note that my blog is suspended. Oh, I forgot the transfer process, I didn’t renew my hosting few days ago and I forgot to transfer my blogs to my other hosting.  I immediately started the transfer (from an old back-up) but because I am running out of time as we are living to do sightseeing I just log-out and continue the process when we returned to our hotel.

When I checked my FB page I have found out what photo was copied, I am thankful to the sender for letting me know and alerting me that I have to tighten the security (I mean to add more secure watermarked). I also found another message dated almost 2 months ago about the card recharge thingy (sorry was not around my FB pages that’s why late reply).

With this, the procrastinated me thought of updating this blog today! Thank you again for the helpful note (you know who you are)!

We left Korea on March 2nd, like expected we have to surrender our Alien Registration Card if we have no plans of coming back.  I felt sad thinking it is going to be my last time to come in and out of the airport, and seeing Korea.  With my almost 5 years of living in Korea I didn’t gained a lot of friends, if Cathlaine didn’t email me or show an interest to meet me after my blog help her on the visa requirements I probably didn’t have a friend at all in Korea,  she left ahead of me to US after her spousal visa was granted so I am left alone by myself although nothing has changed because we seldom met, we probably met 4 times in four years. Lol

Anyway, our flight to Moscow leaves at 12 something in the afternoon, we arrived at the airport around 10:45 in the morning but still we didn’t have a chance to roam around because there’s a long line in the check-in counter which took most of our time, so after we check-in we went directly went to the immigration, took the train to our gate and in few minutes boarding time.

From Moscow, we have connecting flight to Budapest, Hungary as expected we have to sit in the airport to wait for boarding time.  It was a tiring day, 2 long flights in one day!

We arrived in the evening in Budapest, we just slept for few hours and we started our first day of sight seeing early in the morning.