 One of the joys of friendship is laughing together over goofy greeting cards. I love this greeting card but have to admit I’m puzzled; who are you supposed to send it to? A friend or relative who identifies as a psychopath? Your barista, with a note thanking her for not shooting your companion when he actually did order a quad shot, non fat, vanilla soy, extra foam light whip with caramel drizzle? Even as I pondered this mystery, I knew exactly what to do with the photo of this card when a friend sent it to me. I printed it out and taped it up in my kitchen, on the cupboard door where I keep a motley collection of cartoons, memes, and sayings. It sits just above this one.  “Laughter is an instant vacation,” said comedian Milton Berle. And couldn’t we all use a little time off from the world right now? “Happiness is laughter that’s shared,” observed Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. And that’s why our friendships are so precious. I no longer remember the details of the flamingo-covered moment shown below, but I vividly recall collapsing into helpless laughter with our friend Pete.  Karen, Rich, Pete, and a flock of feathered friends make merry. . Sharing loony moments with pals is one of life’s great pleasures. “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows you are slightly cracked,” said radio host Bernard Meltzer. Or as Groucho Marx put it, “When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun.'” But how do you form that kind of closeness in a foreign country, when you arrive alone, knowing nobody? It’s all about reaching out to those you find around you. Eleven years ago, Donna Wolski was a 62-year-old widow living alone in Florida. When a vacation brought her to Seville for three days, she suddenly saw a way to build a new life and realized she was ready to make a bold change. “On my flight home, I said to myself, ‘I think I’ll move to Seville,’” she told me.  It's not hard to see why Donna fell in love with Seville. Friends urged her to make a second visit to the city before doing anything rash. “I came back in September; it was hot as holy hell, and I was staying in an apartment with no air conditioning. And despite that, I went home, put my house on the market, and sold or gave away everything. I was back in a couple of months with two big suitcases and that’s all. I came intending to be here the rest of my life.” “Did your family and friends think you were nuts?” I asked. “They were happy that I was doing something with my life. My really good friend said to me, the last day I was there, ‘Go to Spain and live Donna 2.0. Leave the rest behind you.’ And that’s what I’ve done.” To connect with people in the community, she joined the American Women’s Club of Seville, a lively social group open to all English-speaking women. (Similar clubs exist in 45 cities around the world.) Donna became the AWC’s Membership Coordinator, helping people sign up and pay the modest annual fee. “For me it was great, because it meant I met everybody. Being alone, I would always say, ‘You want to meet for coffee?’”   Donna dressed for Seville's Feria de Abril (April Fair) Social friends soon became a lifesaving support network. “At the end of my first year here, I had spine surgery,” Donna said. That’s terrifying under any circumstances, let alone when you don’t speak the language or have experience navigating the medical system. Her AWC friend Christie stepped up, saying, “I'm going to put together a group of people who will help.” She reached out to bi-lingual members of the AWC and began organizing a timetable. Throughout her five-day stay, “these incredible women would just show up in my hospital room; five of them volunteered to spend the night," said Donna. "In the US you’d be lucky to get a family member to do that, let alone strangers.” In the decade that followed, Donna became an integral part of the community, serving four years as AWC president and creating a strong, active friendship circle. Last December, while she was on vacation in Morocco, a dog ran out of nowhere, tangled in Donna’s feet, and sent her tumbling hard onto stone paving, breaking her knee in three places. For the past two months her friends have been showing up daily, bringing groceries, translating medical advice, taking her out for coffee, keeping her involved and cheerful. “My brother said to me tonight, ‘Donna, what would you do if you were in the States and you were laid out for twelve weeks with a broken knee? Your friends are still going to work, they live in different suburbs. You wouldn't get that kind of daily support.’”  I always tell newcomers, and snowbirds who winter in Seville, about the AWC. And they nearly always draw back, saying, “I’m not a joiner.” Neither was Donna, I point out. Neither was I. But you’re here now. This is You 2.0, capable of great changes. Isn’t that why we travel? When I’m on the road, one way I like to connect with people is via EatWith, an organization often called “the Airbnb of dining.” Local (carefully vetted) chefs invite you to their home for a meal; an app shows the menu, cost, and setting. My hosts have always provided great food and conversation; some have become friends.  Paolo and Carlotta, our EatWith hosts in Turin, Italy, later visited us in Seville. Traveling through Greece a few years ago, I met two sisters (siblings, not nuns) who had just spent a day working in a soup kitchen in Athens. I asked how they’d arranged it. “We found them online,” one explained, “and just wrote and told them we wanted to come by and make a small donation. And while we were there, we’d like to volunteer for a day.” Rich and I did the same and were welcomed with open arms. My post Breaking Bread with Strangers in Athens describes that experience, an unforgettable mix of comfort, heartbreak, good food, and hard work. It not only reminded me to count my blessings, it gave me the deep satisfaction of knowing I was doing a (tiny) bit of good in the world. It was the kind of day, as Rich put it, “that lets you know that you are useful, that you matter, that your actions count for something.”  At the Athens soup kitchen, my main job was scrubbing trays for reuse. Not exactly glamorous, but hey, somebody had to do it. We live in an age of isolation and loneliness, so any chance to connect is heartening — and can be a lifesaver. “A new study suggests that lifestyle and living conditions affect aging significantly more than genetics,” reported Nice News, quoting a major Oxford University study of the “architecture of aging.” Life operates on the buddy system. We all need convivial companions to help us navigate traumas, celebrate joys, and send us silly greeting cards that spark laughter. Fortunately, we can build a friendship circle at any age, wherever we are. “If I can do it,” said Donna, “so can others.” And the effort is richly rewarded. As Salman Rushdie so wisely observed, “In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.”  Monday, August 4 is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. It's not too soon to start training for it! THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how to enrich our lives while living or traveling abroad, finding new ways of avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. GOOD NEWS! YOU ASKED FOR A PAPERBACK EDITION OF MY NEW BOOK AND IT'S HERE! FIND IT ON AMAZON WORLDWIDE  DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. [email protected] FOR FURTHER READING My upcoming book on San Francisco My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Ten books? Are they kidding? I'd need at least this many! If you were marooned on a desert island, what ten books would you bring along? Besides, obviously, Raft-Building for Dummies, Six Easy Ways to Catch Fish with Your Bare Hands, and How to Send Up a Humongous Smoke Signal Without Setting Fire to the Trees. A surprising number of people — asked this question online — choose Stephen King novels such as The Stand, It, and The Shining. For a start, each of these books is enormous enough to occupy countless hours. “Plus,” as one Reddit reader notes, “you could kill food with it.” A Quora reader picked the Oxford English Dictionary, and while I generally prefer my books with a more compelling plotline, an unabridged dictionary does have its advantages for clobbering prey.  A fearsome hunting tool indeed! This morning I pulled out my favorite dictionary, the battered Español-Inglés Diccionario, faithful companion of many hours of mind-bending labor during my early days in Seville. It wouldn’t be much use in hunting animals for food, but it did help me slay a lot of dragons, such as the two different verbs “to be” (ser and estar) and the slippery subjunctive used to express hypotheticals (“If you were marooned on a desert island…”). My dictionary lives on a shelf alongside Spanish translations of many old favorites, the ones I ran across in Seville bookstores and rejoiced to own again, albeit in slightly different form.  Mine is what Susan Sontag calls “a book-drenched life.” It’s a rare and satisfying pleasure to find others who are equally as smitten with the written word, which is what drew me to Seville’s new English-language book club this winter. The Any Book Book Club was launched a year ago by newly arrived author Angela Atkins. Born in the UK, she came of age in New Zealand, where she married and built a company with her husband. Since then they’ve lived in the UK, New Zealand, California, France, Valencia, and Madrid; currently they’re dividing their time between France and Seville. She’s published several bestselling books, holds writing workshops, and runs the book club, many of whose members are writers and editors.  The Any Book Book Club last Saturday I was curious about Angela’s intensely literary life and invited her out to lunch after book club last Saturday. We ate gorgeous Peruvian arroz chaufa (fried rice) and causa a la limeña (Lima-style potatoes) at one of El Cevichano’s sidewalk tables. (Yes, it’s warm enough to eat outside in Seville right now. Please don’t hate us.) I asked her about the book club’s unusual format: we pick a theme (mysteries, for instance, or Asian authors) and everyone brings a favorite work in that genre. “I love this format,” I told her. “Having slogged through countless book club selections that didn’t work for me at all, it’s a pleasure to talk about a book I truly love. And you go around the circle, so everyone has a chance to speak about the one they brought. Did you dream this up yourself?” “Actually….. I went to a similar one in Valencia and loved the format too.” That made me think of the Oscar Wilde quote, “Talent borrows, genius steals!” — which is also attributed to T. S. Elliot, Pablo Picasso, and others, thus neatly proving its own point.  Bestselling author Angela Atkins at El Cevichano on Saturday “What advice do you give to budding writers?” I asked. “Read, read, read, read, read, read,” she said. “And then write: journal, write short stories, experiment. Be part of a writers group, or meet somebody who you can get some guidance from.” It’s tempting to rush headlong from manuscript to submission or self-publication, but Angela advises patience. As a reminder, she keeps the 1000-page handwritten manuscript of her first novel, composed at age 14, at back of her closet, where she feels it belongs. “The first thing you write is not going to be publishable,” she says. “If you want it to be good, you need to write, and you need to edit, and you need to get feedback. Every successful novelist has written one or two or three novels before the first novel was published — just for fun, just to practice writing.” Not everyone bothers to edit or proofread. In these self-publishing times, it's not uncommon to stumble across works riddled with typos and errors. I find myself muttering furiously and reaching for an editor’s blue pencil, which is, of course, useless on a Kindle. As Stephen King wisely says, “To write is human, to edit is divine.”  “When the books are finally ready to make their way in the world,” I said, “what do you tell fledgling writers about marketing them?” I’m now in the marketing stage with my new book, and it’s always a struggle. “The younger generations are much more comfortable with social media and promoting themselves,” Angela said. “They've been doing it all their life. Gen X and boomers are perhaps less comfortable with it.” This is certainly true for me. I often have the disconcerting feeling that my mother is watching from beyond the grave, giving me her trademark disapproving look to suggest I’m putting myself forward in an unbecoming manner. Sorry, Mom. It’s all part of an author’s life these days.   To launch my new book, I’ve been busy for many weeks drafting media releases, updating mailing lists, designing the cover, tweaking the text, and sorting out formatting. Meanwhile Rich plunged into the Byzantine complexity of Amazon’s marketing algorithms, which have to be propitiated like ancient gods, with strict adherence to esoteric commandments. To our astonishment, before the book was even officially published, your pre-orders made it shoot up to #1 in multiple travel categories. It was an instant bestseller before it was even live — yay! A thousand thanks, everyone! My San Francisco: 20 Extraordinary Walks in America’s Quirkiest City went live on Amazon today. If you are thinking of buying a copy, be sure to do it this week, while the launch price is 99 cents; as of Monday, February 24, the book will cost $5.99. At the moment, My San Francisco is only available on Amazon Kindle, which publishes the majority (72%) of e-books and offers the most efficient way to release a new work. I realize not everyone has a Kindle, so if you’d like to see the book in a different format, such as a paperback or another kind of e-book, please let me know. If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll certainly look into other options.  My first travel memoir A big part of the fun of publishing is getting feedback from the reader universe. I'd love to have you share your thoughts in a customer review on Amazon after you read My San Francisco. My first travel book, Dancing in the Fountain, now has more than 500 reviews. Most are extremely kind, although years ago one reader wrote grumpily, “The author talks about herself way too much.” Hey, it’s a memoir. Isn’t that the idea? In the end, as Angela points out, writing is about having fun. We don’t do it for reviews or sales or ranking but because it is who we are. “I write for the same reason I breathe,” said Isaac Asimov. “Because if I didn’t, I would die.” So I’ve finally decided what survival books I’m bringing to that desert island: ten blank notebooks and dozens and dozens of pens.  On a desert island, books come in handy for all sorts of activities. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how to enrich our lives while living or traveling abroad, finding new ways of avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. [email protected] FOR FURTHER READING My upcoming book on San Francisco My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  As the old joke goes, "Sure I let Rex fly the plane. But don't worry, I keep him on the leash every second!" Our pets are, of course, cherished members of the family, and bringing them with us when we move adds a whole extra layer of excitement. I’ll never forget the sensation Rich caused in the security line at Chicago O’Hare Airport when he revealed his tote bag held live goldfish, swimming around in a plastic water bowl. Incredibly, some of our less sensitive friends had suggested we simply flush the little dears down the toilet and buy new ones when we got to Ohio. What kind of fiend would do that?  After the entire O'Hare security staff had chuckled and exclaimed over the unusual carry-on, Rich, the fish, and I were waived through. That was before 9/11; today, of course, those fish would be arrested and probably end their days swimming in Guantanamo Bay. On another occasion, a Dutch friend brought a miniature dachshund puppy from Amsterdam to San Francisco as cabin baggage. Somewhere over the Atlantic she took the puppy out of his cage for a snuggle. When she dozed off, the puppy climbed down off her lap and proceeded to scamper joyfully up and down the aisle, causing pandemonium throughout the plane while my friend slumbered on, oblivious. Then there’s my harrowing dog-lost-at-the-airport tale. Don’t worry, it has a happy ending, and no humans or animals were harmed. Upset, yes. Stunned by the callous indifference and staggering incompetence of a major international airline, you bet. Here’s what happened. It was late November and we were moving to Spain with our dog, Eskimo Pie.  Eskimo Pie in our Ohio garden She was too large for cabin travel and had to go in the cargo hold, so I bought a roomy crate and researched pet-friendly airlines with heated cargo areas. I got her vaccines updated, had a tracking chip injected into her shoulder, and filled out reams of paperwork. When the day came, I watched her crate being loaded onto the plane. So far so good. I stepped off the plane in Madrid and asked the first airline representative I saw where I could go collect her. “A dog? Here?” the woman exclaimed incredulously. Clearly she’d never heard anything so absurd. What next? Asking directions to the nearest flying saucer? She had no idea where I could find Pie. She almost seemed offended that I’d asked. I spent four hours showing Pie's documents and photo around Madrid’s five terminals, and then, having rented a car, half a dozen outlying cargo areas.  Eventually Pie’s crate was discovered on top of a 20-foot stack of wooden pallets. Her nose was pressed against the bars, she had a fierce gleam in her eye, and I could almost hear her thinking, “You’ve a lot of explaining to do.” Pie was an old country dog, and while she loved many things about our urban Seville lifestyle — the perros in the dog park, late night walks through the city, jamón (ham) — she had some trouble adjusting. I turned for help to Spanish veterinarians, and I have to say they were wonderful: clinically savvy, compassionate, and emotionally invested. It was like being in an episode of All Creatures Great and Small. I’ve lost touch with those particular vets, but this week I had a chance to chat with two bright, dedicated young women who recently opened Clínica Veterinaria Pets&Co in Sevilla Este, six miles east of downtown Seville. I knew at once the vet Cristina and her assistant Sara — who have been friends since they were five — were my kind of animal lovers. “We love our dogs. We really do,” said Sara. “We go home thinking, ‘How is Mini? Did it work? Are they feeling better?’” Cristina nodded. “This is something you take home when you leave. You take home your animals. I say to clients, ‘This pet is yours, but a little bit of him or her is mine.’ And when the animals are ill or when we have to do something that we don’t want to think about, I cry a lot.” Despite the occasional sympathetic tears, a cheerful atmosphere prevails, thanks in part to the lively presence of Roxy, Sara’s pug (listed on the website as “the Boss”) and Cristina’s two rescues, Gordo and Margarita. The clinic is sparkling clean, modern, fully equipped, and very innovative. The two species they serve, dogs and cats, each get their own separate entrance, waiting room, and examination area to reduce stress (and avoid possible bloodshed) among the patients. The clinic offers a health plan so pets with chronic or complicated conditions can access services without running up unexpected bills. Both women speak English and French as well as Spanish. Most unusually for a Spanish vet, they offer online consultations via Zoom or WhatsApp.  “Imagine someone is thinking about flying over,” said Sara, “and needs to chat with a vet for peace of mind. ‘What am I going to face there? Which is the vaccination protocol?’ If you have a worry, you can ask Cristina.” Cristina’s best advice? Allow enough time. She’s so right. It can take months to figure out the rules, sort out the paperwork, and schedule vaccines and tests — some of which need to take place a specific number of days before the flight. In many countries, including Spain, pets don’t need to be quarantined so long as they’re vaccinated, microchipped, and documented. Be sure to check US re-entry requirements as well.  Service animals and emotional support animals require special documentation; just saying you want your Best Friend with you onboard won't cut it. Photo: DoD News I can hear you thinking, “Yikes! Where do I find all this info?” Below are handy places to start. This is the most current information available, but I don’t need to tell you that America is in a state of flux, with laws changing in the blink of an eye. Re-check often to make sure there are no last-minute surprises. US State Department Pets & International Travel (what's required to transport pets into and out of America) About the Destination Country’s Policies (pet entry requirements, quarantine rules, and application forms for dozens of nations) Pet Policy Guide for all US Airlines Transporting Animals in the Aircraft (tips from Lufthansa, winner of the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association award) USDA Pet Travel Guidance from the USA to Another Country Traveling with Pets in the EU Navigating a Pet Friendly Journey (best airports, railway rules, and more)  Here a friend tries to teach Pie to read Spanish. I'm not saying she mastered it, but she did move her lips. Is your pet worth all the fuss? Mine sure was. Pie sustained me through the upheavals of the transition, introduced me to countless canine neighbors, and inspired chuckles every day. One of her favorite things was riding up in the elevator; she couldn’t get over the fact we went in one door and exited through another, on a whole different floor. Every single time, she looked up at me with astonished delight, as if to say, “Did you see that? It did it again!” She’s been gone for many years now, and I still miss her. It’s comforting to think that Robert Louis Stevenson might be right when he said, “You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.” If so, I picture Pie spending eternity making joyful noise like this dog, captured on a nanny cam after neighbors complained about the racket. HOT NEWS! My new e-book is now available for pre-order and goes on sale Monday, February 17. For the launch, I have temporarily reduced the price to 99 cents, to make sure it's totally accessible to all my readers, friends, and family. Enjoy!  This book is a love letter to my home city. When I sent out early review copies, the response was enthusiastic. “I loved this book! “Witty, wise, and informative” “An entertaining read and invaluable guide” “Captures both the soul and the stomach of San Francisco.” “You don’t need to visit San Francisco to enjoy this book!” My regular readers will find this goes far beyond the San Francisco stories from last summer’s blog posts. I’ve expanded and updated the practical information and mixed in even more offbeat historical tidbits, outrageous urban legends, and wacky anecdotes. Writing it was tremendous fun, and I hope you'll get the same rib-tickling pleasure from reading it. NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER ON AMAZON KINDLE THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how moving, living, and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us avoid the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. [email protected] FOR FURTHER READING My upcoming book on San Francisco My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  “And suddenly you just know… it’s time to start something new and trust in the magic of new beginnings.” — Meister Eckhart, 13th century German mystic The sentiment seems intensely romantic, especially in a flourishing font superimposed over an exotic landscape. Cast your fate to the winds! Live your life, take chances, don’t wait! Leap and the net will appear! Or will it? I hope I don’t have to tell you how much I love living in Seville, but occasionally I've watched aghast as someone arrives in starry-eyed haste only to repent at grumpy leisure. One woman spent a single sun-drenched, wine-soaked weekend here, went home, sold everything, came back, moved into an apartment … and was absolutely miserable.  "I can't complain. But I'm going to anyway." She found everything substandard, from the weather — too hot, too cold , too wet, too dull — to the people around her, who had the nerve to be busy with their own lives when she wanted to go out for tapas — which were never as tasty as she’d remembered. She had nothing to do, no place to go, and nobody eager to listen to her complaints. After a few months she took off for another country, where no doubt she’s learning to grumble in Arabic. In my experience, if you’re contemplating a leap to a new life, you want to look — long and hard — at where you’ll be landing. Before picking a forever home, it's wise to spend a year trying out the lifestyle. As blogger Kirsten Raccuia demonstrates in My Moving Abroad Regrets: How to Learn From My Mistakes, even expats who make a successful transition overseas have lists of “if I could do it overs.” Dancing in the Fountain, the book in which I describe my move to Seville, is brimming with faux pas and ridiculous misunderstandings. The object of the game is to keep the bloopers and regrets to a minimum. Which is why I compiled this checklist in consultation with my brother Mike and his wife, Deb. I’m not saying they’re obsessive compulsive, but they dotted every letter of the alphabet before moving to Seville for a year.  Deb and Mike, shortly after arriving in Seville This checklist uses some examples drawn from transitioning to Spain, but the advice applies wherever you go. THE YEAR-ABROAD PREPARATION CHECKLIST Define your goal or purpose. Is the trip about adventure? Learning a new language? Discovering the seediest dive bars? Finding a quiet place to write the Great American Novel? Choose a suitable destination. Have you been there before? Do you know anyone there? Will it support your goal? If you’ll be traveling, is transit convenient? Might violent conflict break out? No? Are you sure? You might want to check that out with a reliable source. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. I looked up Spain on the US State Department’s travel advisory webpage. It warned, “Exercise increased caution. Terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Spain. Terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets/shopping malls, local government facilities, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, major sporting and cultural events, educational institutions, airports, and other public areas.” Yikes! That’s everywhere I go! Was my life hanging by a thread? Before fleeing in panic, I decided to check the UK Travel Advice page for Spain. There was nothing beyond the lifting of the weather advisory after last fall’s flooding. The only thing missing was a yawn emoji. I figured it was safe to stay put.  A safe and peaceful atmosphere prevails during a festival at Seville's Plaza de España. Check out your destination’s entry requirements, visa regulations, and tax laws. Start with their government’s official website, and thank your lucky stars most countries now provide English translations. Consider consulting an immigration lawyer, as Deb and Mike did. “We Googled immigration lawyers in our area and her name came up: Debora Eizips-Dreymann,” Mike told me. “At first we kept saying, ‘Yeah, that’s good advice but we could have figured it out ourselves.’ By the end of the process, we were saying, ‘Wow, absolutely worth it!’” For details, see my post How to Get a Residency Visa Without Losing Your Mind.  Rich in 2015, with a backpack full of documents on his way to Plaza de España's Foreigner's Office where our residency visas are processed. Make sure your passport’s good for at least six months. Allow plenty of time for renewing. Review your finances and work situation. Planning to work online? Organize everything in advance; learn how and why in my post Is Remote Working More Fun Overseas? Hoping to work locally? Check out options on job sites such as GoOverseas. Living on your savings? Be realistic about how long your money will last. Your new home may be cheaper, but it’s not free. Set up an international bank account. I use Wise, a London-based financial technology company specializing in international money transfers. Keep your old account for online bill paying. Opening an account in your new home might involve surprising complications; see my post Five Things I’ve Learned About Moving Abroad. Make arrangements for your home and pets. Don’t sell up until you’re comfortably ensconced in your new life. Find a renter or hire a house/pet sitter.  Deb's niece Allie rented their house and fell in love with their dog, Django. Research medical insurance. Medicare won’t cover you abroad, and you may not qualify for the national health service. Find out the reimbursement policy of your existing insurer. Need more? Sanitas is popular with expats worldwide. Make sure you’re covered! Get medical records, renew prescriptions, discuss vaccines. Research health resources as discussed in my post In a Medical Emergency Abroad, Where Do You Go? Update your Covid vaccine and find out if other vaccines or meds are recommended for your destination. Visit the CDC Traveler’s Health page; get a second opinion from the UK’s National Health Service. “Go see your doctor shortly before you go,” Deb advised. “Make sure your prescriptions won’t expire.”  In Spain, if you have a copy of a valid prescription or the medicine's container, pharmacies can often dispense medications that require a prescription in the US. Arrange mail forwarding. The US Post Office only pauses mail up to 30 days for free but now offers a Premium Forwarding Service for a fee. Adapt your phone or get another. You’ll want an unlocked phone with e-sim cards and an international plan. Register with the US Embassy. The Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) enables consular agents to update you about health and security concerns. Lease before you buy. Study neighborhoods, prices, and tax implications before you even think about committing to any form of real estate. Get set up to watch US TV. I use Express VPN to access entertainment in my own language. Bring a few small things that remind you of home. Don’t ship cars, furniture, or appliances, but photos and mementos will make your new place feel cozier. Once you’re sure, ignore the naysayers. “When setting out on a journey,” said the poet Rumi, “do not seek advice from those who have never left home.” As the gag gifts below suggest, sometimes your plucky decision may inspire jealousy and passive-aggression in others. “So what was your goal in moving to Spain for a year?” I asked my brother. “Our goal was to travel around Europe and see if there was some place that we would ever consider living permanently.” “And did you accomplish that?” I asked, and we all laughed. Because no, of course they didn’t. Five weeks after they arrived in Seville, Covid hit and the world went into lockdown. Which just goes to show that you can never prepare for every possibility. But they made the most of their year abroad anyway, touring Spain and Portugal when lockdown loosened, creating vivid memories of a remarkable moment in world history. And isn’t that really why we move abroad — to plunge into unexpected adventures and to experience, as Anthony Bourdain put it, “the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown”?  The final item on your move abroad checklist: When it's all over, kick back and enjoy yourself, like my friend Joel and his cat, shown here on their deck in a Greek village. WANT TO KNOW MORE? For easy reference, I've compiled a list of the links included in this story. Find those links here. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us avoid the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. [email protected] FOR FURTHER READING My upcoming book on San Francisco My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. |
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I'm an American travel writer dividing my time between California and Seville, Spain. I travel the world seeking intriguing people, quirky places, and outrageously delicious food so I can have the fun of writing about them here.
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