The personal stories of Americans who decided to leave their country to discover the world.
By Marilia Gordinho
Living abroad can be an exciting adventure. The idea of exploring other cultures and languages, getting to know people and also working in a different setting, is so appealing that it is sending many Americans abroad.
According to the most recent estimates by the U.S. State Department, almost 4.8 million Americans, not including the military personnel, are living overseas, a number slightly bigger than the entire population of Massachusetts.
The challenges expatriates face are many. Americans who live abroad not only have to learn to communicate, most of the times in a different language than English, but also adjust to the food, the people and the way of life in the new country.
Some Americans, like Alan Clendenning, move abroad because of a career opportunity. Amanda Macchi, on the other hand, decided to leave the U.S. to help those in need. And there are also the students. Just as thousands of foreign students come to the U.S. every year to go to college, Americans also travel abroad to study. And that is what Noel Keady did.
For the last 7 years Alan Clendenning's has been a citizen of the world, or at least of South America.
Originally from Bethesda, Md., and raised in Hanover, NH, Clendenning started working as a reporter for the Associated Press in 1998, in New Orleans.
He spent many years learning Spanish, hoping to be assigned for AP in a Spanish speaking country. The first assignment that came up that he was qualified for was in Brazil.
Clendenning moved to Brazil in 2002 to work as a business reporter in the country's biggest city, São Paulo.
By that time he already knew how to speak Spanish, the problem was he needed to learn Portuguese, the language spoken there, so he could interview sources for his stories.
"I told the AP I thought I could quickly learn Portuguese, and managed to do so after being assigned," he said.
It turned out learning Portuguese was tougher than he thought it would be. It took him three months to learn how to effectively conduct a phone interview in the language.
"Before that time I was using the mixture of Portuguese and Spanish that is known here as Portuñol. Luckily, all the Brazilians understand it. The problem is, you don't understand everything they say."
Clendenning had to make friends at press conferences so they could confirm that what he was actually hearing what he thought he was. "With a lot of work, I didn't make any blunders," he said.
But he has no regrets. "Brazil is a fascinating place, and I've been fortunate to have been reporting from Brazil as the nation becomes a much more important country in the world. The stories fall off trees here."
The CultureAdjusting to the culture wasn't a problem for him. "The Brazilians are warm and friendly and the food is good." However, he struggled with the bureaucracy, from getting a residency card to opening up a bank account.
"Adapting to the bureaucracy is part of adapting to the culture, all the Brazilians do, so you as an expat must do likewise, or you won't get anything done," he said. He had to learn to navigate it, and not to get angry with Brazilians when it happens.
He also said he is still trying to get used with the traffic in São Paulo. "It is absolutely horrendous, so nothing ever starts on time."
Clendenning also said that in Brazil it works to your disadvantage to get ticked off at people quickly when you don't get what you need to get the job done.
"You have to be nice for a while and use the angry card only as a total last resort," he said. "If you do it too early, you'll never get done what needs getting done. It's part of the culture."
Clendenning was promoted to Brazil's AP bureau chief in 2007. His job is to make sure the world knows what is going on in Brazil, "which has its first working class president, a severe divide between rich and poor, a state of war between police and drug gangs in big city slums and the planet's biggest party, Carnival," he said.
Clendenning said he always wanted to live and work abroad, but wishes he had studied languages while he was still in college.
"It would have gotten me along in my career more quickly, and my language skills would be even better than they are now," he said. "The brain absorbs languages better earlier, as opposed to later."
He said it isn't enough to learn another language in the United States, "you have to go live in the country where it's spoken to learn to get true fluency, which applies to far more fields than just journalism," he said.
His advice to young 20-somethings thinking about working abroad is strict. "Learn as many languages as possible - fluently. Anything less doesn't cut it," he said.
The minimum requirement for reporters for AP in Brazil besides some experience is complete command of the language for interviewing fluency.
"Our current unpaid intern came from the U.S. already fluent in Portuguese, and I wouldn't accept any less. Conversational fluency doesn't cut it," he said. "When candidates come ringing to me I can test their fluency within 1 minute on the phone, and if they're not up to snuff, I just tell them they have to get more fluent before coming back."
Attending a boarding school changed Amanda Macchi's life.
"It helped me learn about people from Korea, Europe, South America. I would often take foreign exchange students home for breaks from school because they usually couldn't go home. I loved it," she said.
Being in contact with diversity and different cultures has been a constant in Macchi's life. "Ever since high school, I have really taken a liking to other cultures. It has made me who I am today," she said.
When Macchi graduated from college in Marketing, her life took an unexpected path after a trip to different places in the world.
In October of 2007, Macchi set out to travel South East Asia, Indonesia and the South Pacific.
After visiting Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, Macchi entered Cambodia. While in Phnom Penh, the capital, she came across an orphanage with 21 HIV positive children.
"They were all exceptionally malnourished and very ill. I became really concerned and decided to stay and raise money so that their situation could improve," she said.
Macchi, along with another American and two Australians she met while traveling, were able to raise a little over $4,000 to spend with the children.
"We took them to the beach and to the amusement park. We got them a washing machine and bought them bicycles to help them travel easier," she said.
Macchi said the gratitude from the children was immeasurable. "Their smiles and excitement still resonates with me as I think about it now."
Macchi spent three months in Cambodia.
Back in New Jersey, Macchi got an email from the Cambodian orphanage's director saying he didn't want the responsibility of the children anymore. "I immediately decided that I wanted to take on the responsibility and asked for him to give the children to me."
Macchi moved to Cambodia last December to take care of the kids. There she started a non-profit organization, Cambodian Kids, dedicated to provide living and health costs for the children.
"I had never worked in non-profit before starting this project but it just spoke to me and I knew I had to do it," she said.
But since she moved to Phnom Penh, some unforeseen problems with the center's administration started to emerge. "Things turned really sour. I was asked to leave and then had my life threatened," she said.
She decided to stop funding the center. "I wasn't planning on settling down, but my plans changed, a common force of living in a foreign country," she said. "As sad as it is, to them the center is a business. These kids are profitable because they have HIV and are orphans."
She is now trying to move the 21 children to a new center, run by an American couple who have been in Cambodia for 9 years.
In the new center, every two kids would get their own room. They would also have an art room, a basketball court and a river with rope swings. "It is essentially a kids paradise," she said.
But the situation is still unresolved. "I am really upset and have found myself not knowing what to do with my days," she said.
Macchi ended up finding a part-time job in Phnom Penh at an international company that deals with government bids for jobs within Cambodia. She is training the Cambodian staff in customer service and marketing skills.
But she also said she is anxiously waiting to go back to take care of the kids that brought her to Cambodia. "I have a lot of strong ideas for non-profit in this country and I am taking my time in planning out my next move," she said.
Despite the hot weather, about 95 degrees every day, and eating white rice for every meal, Macchi said she loves Cambodia. "I love it to pieces here. The culture, the people, the food, the smells, the cities and the countryside's all fascinate me to no end," Macchi said.
She had to learn how to speak Khmer, the Cambodian's language, which is "certainly not an easy language to grasp. If your pronunciation is off by just a twinge, you get a look as if you are speaking Japanese," she said.
Facing the professional challenge of being successful not only working in a different country, but also with a non-profit organization, was hard for Macchi. "If you can make it work here, you can surely make it work anywhere," she said.
She said the amount of corruption that happens in Cambodia is "outrageous" and that working there is a true test of "how much you really want something to happen."
Among the challenges she had to face as an American living abroad, Macchi said she had to learn to slow down her expectations and accept failure.
"I had many obstacles right off the plane and I didn't overcome them all. It took me a good couple of weeks to accept I had failed and then to pick myself up off of the ground and regroup," she said.
Despite the adversities, Macchi said she wouldn't trade this life experience for nothing. "I will come back to America eventually, but I love living abroad. I will most likely live outside the US for the rest of my life," she said. "I will only return in November to see my family and eat turkey."
Want to live and work abroad? Here are some tips from Amanda:
1. Save Money before you leave.
2. Take the risk to get there without a job and find one after you arrive. For most of the jobs you will get, you must be in the country to interview for before they take you seriously.
3. Be prepared to do any job and roll with it. Every job in a foreign country is a learning experience no matter how small or strange.
4. Learn some important key phrases in the language before you depart. A little goes a long way and you will make fast friends with your local co workers if you do.
5. Spend some time volunteering. Give something back.
6. Dont get lost in the 'Expat' (Expatriate) scene. Make sure you still take part in local celebrations and immerse yourself in the culture.
7. Take time to travel around and see the country and neighboring countries.
8. Believe in the idea that you will succeed. Often times your friends or family won't really understand why you would want to work abroad or how it will logistically work. Don't feel disheartened by it. Keep up the fight.
9. Make sure you know which countries are easy to work in and which countries are difficult. Check up on the cost of work visas and try and find Web sites that will indicate just what kinds of jobs are available to do.
10. Know that you can always teach English. It usually pays well and because you are a native speaker you are in high demand. In most countries you don't need any certificates to teach.
He was the only Irish, blonde, blue-eyed member of the Asian Club at Boston College High School.
Noel Keady's love for the Chinese culture began early in his life. But in 2005 it got even stronger. He had the chance to go to Beijing and live there for 5 months with the Lu family, as part of a program in his school to promote diversity and culture exchange.
He spent his 18th birthday in China and even got a Chinese name of his own, Lu Xiang, which means 'strong'.
But 5 months were not enough for Keady. These months served only to entice him even more to live in China again.
"I've promised to myself that I'm going to live either in Beijing or Hong Kong for at least a year of my life," he said.
Keady speaks a little Mandarin and Cantonese, but wants to get better. "It is just such a big country. You really have a lot to learn from it," he said.
Keady's advice for a 20-something deciding to live abroad is to "put yourself outside of your comfort zone. Go as far out of what you know and think you can handle and dive headfirst into something foreign and new," he said."
"The only way you get the joy of actually discovering a new place and getting in touch with it is when you're not on the cushy tourist thing. It's the only way to make the unknown, familiar and exciting," he said.
To learn more about Noel Keady's trip to China, check out the slideshow.
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