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    What Changed Our Lives: An Expat Adventure
    What Changed Our Lives: An Expat Adventure
    What Changed Our Lives: An Expat Adventure
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    What Changed Our Lives: An Expat Adventure

    By Rudolf Hartong

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    About this ebook

    What Changed Our Lives: An Expat Adventure is written based on the real experiences of Rudolf Hartong, his wife, and their five children during their travelling and moving around as expatriates. They lived in seven countries over a period of twenty-four years. The book has therefore autobiographical elements in it. The aim of the work is for existing expatriate families to recognise themselves in the descriptions as well as and more importantly that it can be used as guidance by families who are making decisions with respect to moving around.
    The book is covering the period of making the decision as to whether or not to take a position abroad and making preparations in this respect. It mentions the difficult process of saying farewell, especially if young adults are involved. It covers the issue of making the right choice of school system. It looks at how the decision to move can bring extra bonding in a family and a change in their perceptions of the world and life in particular, which will make them citizens of the world.
    It contains real descriptions of events that Rudolf and his family experienced in moving through seven countries. Perhaps as the most important contribution, it provides, first-hand, the observations of the five children positive and negative. It describes the exposure to culture shocks and the process of adaptation. The book ends covering the period of leaving an international school and making decisions as to where to continue to study and with the philosophical approach to life of parents when their children have left home.
    Rudolf Hartong has also published two other books: Human Resources in Crisis, published January 25, 2013, and General Management for Operational Managers, published May 23, 2013. Both books are published by AuthorHouse and cover his experiences in human resources and general management during his career of forty years.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse UK
    Release dateOct 29, 2013
    ISBN9781491883112
    What Changed Our Lives: An Expat Adventure
    Author

    Rudolf Hartong

    Rudolf Hartong was born in 1947. His education is in human resources, and he worked for forty years in human resources and general management positions – twenty-two in the former and eighteen in the latter. He worked in the Netherlands as a human resources professional until 1988. After that, for the following twenty-four years, he and his wife and their five children lived in seven different countries, where they encountered and experienced various cultures, religions, and situations that changed their lives. Having retired in 2012, he has written this book based on his and his family’s own experiences in the hope that it can help new expatriate families in their decisions and preparations for working abroad. Existing expatriate families will probably recognise the situations that he describes and realise that they are not alone. Rudolf and his wife currently reside in Switzerland. For comments and remarks, you may contact Rudolf via email: rudolfhartong@yahoo.com You can follow Rudolf on his blog: www.rudolfhartong.com

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      Book preview

      What Changed Our Lives - Rudolf Hartong

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Preface

      Acknowledgements

      Chapter 1:   Before Accepting a Position Abroad

      1.1   Considerations

      1.2   The Preparation

      1.3   The Children

      Chapter 2:   Change of Countries

      2.1   One Works; One Stays at Home

      2.2   Our Experiences

      2.3   The Next Move

      2.4   Our Moves

      Chapter 3:   Culture (Shock)

      3.1   The Mindset

      3.2   Our Experiences

      3.3   Intercultural Influences

      Chapter 4:   Spoiled Children

      Chapter 5:   What can Happen after Your Children Leave Home?

      Chapter 6:   Let Our Children Speak

      6.1   Suzanne

      6.2   Maarten

      6.3   Frank

      6.4   Irene

      6.5   Paul

      Chapter 7:   Citizens of the World

      Citizen of the World: a song by Ellis Paul

      About the Author

      This booklet is based on the real story of an expatriate

      family with five children.

      For Arjan, Michelle, Shinta, Kyle, and Emily

      PREFACE

      This book describes the experiences of our family, composed of a mother and father with five children, who kept moving around the world, living over time in seven different countries. Each time one of our children finished high school, having been studying for the International Baccalaureate, being eighteen or nineteen years old, we had to say goodbye to them, as they continued their studies in another country (and sometimes in another language). As parents, this was not always an easy period, but that is also the case for every parent who is not living an expatriate life but who has to say goodbye to a child who moves away from home; the same feelings are involved. Having accepted our last assignment (in country number seven), we found ourselves starting life as a couple again, as we did when we were just married.

      We have learned a lot, and we have experienced many situations which we would like to share with you in these pages. Each country that we resided in is of course different from any other, as it is also determined by time and place, but there are many experiences to share.

      Each of our five children will explain about his or her personal experiences—positive and negative—in Chapter 6 (Let Our Children Speak): Each of our children discusses at what age and how he or she started the expatriate life as well as how he or she coped with what the change brought. I felt it was better to let them explain in their own words what they felt and what they did in this important part in their lives.

      Now, as all of them are married or have partners, and as they are spread around the world (which is a consequence of the life that we chose to live), we offer this book to their partners to—I hope—enable them to better understand the lives that our sons and daughters lived during their younger years.

      Before I go any further, I would like to clarify the term expatriate, because it can cause some confusion nowadays. According to the dictionary: An expatriate is someone who lives in a country which is not their own. (Source: BBC, English Dictionary. Harper Collins Publishers.) That is the meaning behind my use of the word in this publication. In some organisations, European people moving inside of the European Union (EU) are not called expatriates any more but are rather referred to as transferees or as short-term assignment contractors. For me, they are also expatriates because these people move to different cultures and often to different language situations.

      Maybe their financial compensation package has been changed with the creation of the EU and will often be based on the same level as their European colleagues (or maybe a bit more), but much less than moving to a hardship country or a country in an emerging market. Often people in Europe who stay in a country that is not their own for a long time cannot be called expatriates any more, as they have adapted themselves to the culture and the language of the country that they are now living in. This development you see also in hardship countries or emerging markets where expatriates and their families live for many years and become local. Sometimes they marry a local person and have a family in the country to which they moved. Often multinational companies use the term expatriate when the employee has been staying in the same country for a certain length of time—typically up to five or seven years. After that, the person is considered to have become local, and his or her financial compensation package will be based on local compensation norms. It can differ from country to country, financial compensation being also based on the laws in the country. Some countries have special tax regulations for expatriates, for example, tax deductions of up to 25 per cent. You can obtain relevant information from your international human resources department and from the embassy of the country to which you plan to move. The Internet, and particularly search engines such as Google for example, is a helpful information tool.

      In my earlier published book, General Management for Operational Managers (published May 23, 2013, by AuthorHouse), I wrote a small chapter concerned with how to settle in as a family in a new country. This book, however, goes into much greater detail on this subject and covers the whole range of experience from starting in a new country until the moment that the children leave home. Each move means a loss of valuable emotional memories and experiences, which is the case for everybody who moves. It is painful to say goodbye to colleagues you worked with—sometimes in difficult circumstances—and to friends with whom you bonded very closely in a school. As the title to this work suggests, it changed our lives.

      Rudolf Hartong

      September 2013

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      I would very much like to thank Annette Dill-Andree, Rose Gan, Cameron Skandarioon, Barbara and Hendrik Wittenberg, my wife, Johanna, our children, and my in-laws for their valuable contributions, comments, and reactions that have made this book what it is now.

      Johanna took the pictures that appear in this book.

      CHAPTER 1

      Before Accepting a Position Abroad

      1.1   Considerations

      Before you accept a position abroad, it is important to consider why you may wish to move abroad. Below are some common reasons:

      Do you wish to move because of the money? Yes, it could be. In general, expatriate jobs

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