What's the best bit of advice you were given? - Page 2

MichelleAlison · #11 (**permalink**) 6th January 2008, 12:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by synthia

You are right, it is comforting. Very, very comforting.

When I was in Japan, the ESL teachers that I met who were in the JET program, mostly recent college graduates, showed me some of the material they had been given. It pretty much gave them a week by week schedule, and told them how they would be feeling each week. Everyone I talked to was convinced that they had done so much research that it didn't apply to them. But, they told me, week by week, there they were, falling into the pattern.

So another piece of advice is this: Research is not the same as the real experience. This is good, because otherwise, why bother? No amount of research can prepare you, really. Not that you should arrive totally uninformed, but I've seen people who had minimal knowledge about their new home cope better than the well-researched transplant. They had no expectations, and expected it to be difficult, and that is part of the battle.

I agree research is not the same as the real experience. Before we left London everybody asked me the same questions i.e. have you arranged schools? do you have a house to go to? do you have jobs lined up? etc. etc. The answer to all these was no. How can you arrange all this from 8000 miles away? We didn't know what area we wanted to live in and we wanted to make sure that the schools were in walking distance etc.

We arrived here in a town we had viewed on the internet with only a hotel reservation for two weeks. We found our feet by asking questions upon questions. We found out about schools through an estate agent who was helping us to find a house. One step led to another. Found a school and then a house nearby.

You have to be prepared to take everything in your stride and not get stressed out. Everything is always done differently to what you are used to. We are now used to the manaña attitude, but it did take a while.

We certainly didn't get stressed out about everything before we left. We left England feeling very positive

synthia · #12 (**permalink**) 8th January 2008, 04:25 AM

There is a concept called 'analysis paralysis'. It is easy to get so much information and spend so much time trying to choose an optimal path, that you end up frozen, unable to go forward with anything.