Reply to Did you live abroad for a few years in childhood?

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[quote=Anonymous]I lived in Kuwait for 6 years from age 3 to mid-4th grade.  This was in the late-70s to mid-80s so at that time, no one in the US had ever heard of Kuwait and my dad's employer considered it a hardship tour.  This meant that they paid for unlimited trips back to the US and two yearly trips to wherever we wanted to go, so we got to travel around the world.

We did go to an American school but I'd say most of the people who attended were NOT Americans and we lived in an international compound.  We made many friends that we keep in touch with 40 years later.  You won't have this problem as you're going to live in a nice part of Europe, but I'd say the downside was that traveling back to the US was complicated and long, so my dad only went back once a year, at Christmas, with all of us.  My sister, mom, and I spent our summers back in the US with grandparents because Kuwait was really hot in the summer and my mom missed her family.

There was definitely culture shock each time we visited the US, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.  In Kuwait, weekends were Thursday and Friday, so that's the norm that my sister and I grew up. What I wish we'd done was learn Arabic; it was mandatory in 4th grade at our school but we moved in the middle of 4th so never really learned anything. I'd definitely make my kids learn the local language if we were to move abroad.

My mom was able to run a small preschool, but I don't think any of her expat friends worked.[/quote]

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