I was looking for a long lost friend on the Internet the other day when I stumbled across an article on her dad in a Swedish newspaper. Her dad was American and the article highlighted his 50th birthday with an interview discussing his life, how he had ended up in Sweden and what his wishes […]
“There’s no place like home for the holidays…” So true, but what about those of us whose home is across the ocean and a trip back is just not an option? You see extended families coming together to celebrate, cousins reuniting, old friends visiting, yet your own are far away… It’s hard not to feel […]
As more top managers seek to develop their global skills through going on international assignments, they must be aware that the definition of a strong leader is a matter of culture. Around the world good leadership is well-defined – but the definition itself differs from country to country. The same holds true for motivational factors as […]
Building new friendships as an adult can be difficult, and being a new arrival in a foreign country only adds to the difficulty. Ironically, this is also the time when you have a real need to meet people and make new friends. As a new arrival, you have left your support network of friends and […]
Danielle Kim has lived most of her adult life in the US. She has good friends here and her children were born here. She has a house and she likes her kids’ schools. Yet she is now in the process of planning her family’s move back to South Korea. Danielle grew up in Seoul and […]
In my home culture I am a professional with qualifications at the Master’s Degree level. I command a high salary and have the flexibility and autonomy to choose my hours and working conditions. I have operated my own business (a private Clinical Psychology practice) for the past four years. I am what most people would […]
As Globiana’s Cross Cultural Adaptation Lead and as a former expat herself, Lisa La Valle-Finan has a wealth of knowledge and personal experience on the topic of culture shock. Here, she explains what it is and how it feels, and she shares some of her own personal insights about what it was like to cope […]
I didn’t know it at the time, but thinking back, it is clear as day – when I first moved here I had a serious case of culture shock! As a newly arrived expat, I often struggled to parse the cultural cues and make sense of day-to-day life in an environment where I had yet […]
My first “expat job interview” took place when I was still fairly new to the country – it was terrifying, confusing AND a good learning experience. Even though I had been fortunate enough to get prepped by local friends, the whole thing ended up being a bit of a disaster. As great as it is to […]
Regardless of your educational goal — be it to update your current skills, explore a new career or culture, or just gain a better understanding of the world around you — online learning is a tool worth exploring. Online learning is a broad term that covers a range of approaches, from simply accessing topic material on the Web to joining virtual classrooms that provide a collaborative and interactive […]
Most people dread moving day. Moving day is the culmination of what has typically been a very stressful lead-up period where you’ve been trying to combine your regular everyday life with that of sorting, purging and packing. And if that isn’t enough, you’ve most likely had extra of everything else to do too, such as […]
In the span of our first few years in Silicon Valley, my husband and I ended up living in five different rentals. They were all in the same city and most of them in the same general neighborhood. Our problem clearly was not in finding the right spot. For us it was a matter of […]