Travel and the Life Abroad | Expat Sam

Living the American Dream

I was loving my job as a paralegal, working for a really great attorney. My husband, Zach, had just graduated with a degree in psychology and was working at a behavioral center. Fresh out of university, and we both had jobs in our fields. That’s the dream, right?! One evening, we were watching a television show where an elderly woman had a houseful of jars of mementos from her travels. I turned to Zach and casually said, “You know, I don’t think I could pass that up if given an opportunity to travel like that.” Well, that’s all he needed to hear.

You see, growing up, neither of us were really what you would call travelers. He took the occasional family vacation, and so did I, but we never went very far. My first plane ride was when I was about fifteen to sixteen years old. I flew to Miami with my mom and sister for a cruise, which was the first time any of us had left the United States. Zach’s first plane ride was to the Bahamas for our honeymoon. When I was younger, I thought travel was only for the wealthy.

Getting ESOL Certified

One of Zach’s professors in university had been talking to him about teaching English abroad. He had been waiting for just the right moment to talk to me about it, but didn’t know how or when to bring it up. I don’t know when we both became so adventurous, but somehow we knew that this was something we needed to do. So, we enrolled in an Oxford Seminars TESOL/TESL/TEFL Certification Course (https://www.oxfordseminars.com/), and within months of deciding to embark on this journey, we were looking for jobs. As I remember it, this was only going to be a one-year commitment, similar to a gap year.

Two months after getting our certificate, we were offered a job and would be leaving for Korea within two months of that job offer. Therefore, we quickly sold many of our belongings and put the rest in storage. We said goodbye to our family and friends, and told them not to worry, because we would be back after one year. I mean, come on, we had only been married one year. We didn’t have children yet and we had wonderful jobs. How could we give all of that up?

The Journey to a New Land

Somehow, these two rookie travelers fit our whole lives into four suitcases, and we headed off to Korea. Having never been on an airplane for more than six hours at a time, that first fourteen-hour flight was both extremely exciting and excruciating.

Starting our lives in Korea, we were eager to start exploring our new city and meet new people. We were able to make some friends who had lived abroad longer than the few weeks we had, and our minds were immediately opened to all of our possibilities now that we were officially “expats”.

But, What About Student Loans and Bills?

Being new to this lifestyle, Zach and I were introduced to the world of airline miles and points. We each had one credit card through our local bank, not even a nationally known bank. Did it have travel rewards? Definitely not! Our minds were swimming with stories of far-away travels, cheap flights, airline rewards, no transaction fee credit cards, and so much more that I could not comprehend at the time. But, didn’t these people have student loans and other bills to pay back home? Moving to Korea was our travel experience. Was there more, travel-wise, that we could do?

Abstaining From Travel While Living Abroad

While listening to all of the stories of our new, world-traveling friends, we hung our heads in shame. Zach and I made the decision that we would not travel internationally until our student loans were paid off. Thankfully, we were part of the minority of Americans who did not have tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt. We could pay it off in just under a year if we didn’t travel and sent most of our paychecks back home. We stuck to our plan and paid off our loans before our self-induced deadline. Though, it wasn’t without feeling like we were “bad expats”. Jealousy hit us hard.

Returning “Home”

Our contract came to an end with no chance for renewal, because our company was down-sizing. We wanted to continue living abroad, but we didn’t have any plans or prospects. So, with heavy hearts, we went back to the States and spent Christmas with our families. But, we had caught the bug and didn’t want to be home for long. We poured ourselves into finding jobs and agreed to a six-month, or one semester, teaching position in Beijing, China.

Was Travel Finally in Our Future?

We finished our contract in China. While we did some sight-seeing within Beijing, we did not travel outside of that area. I’m sure this sounds like first-world problems: “We only travelled in Beijing.” Before moving abroad, going to Beijing and seeing The Great Wall of China was only a dream. Here we were, complaining that that’s all we did. Our problem was that we were comparing ourselves to other expats’ travels. And by that standard, we were severely behind.

A Dream Come True

After our six-month stint in China, we wound up back in Korea. Our first foray into international travel ended in disaster. We did a visa run to Japan, but we had barely any money and it rained the entire time. This was not how our friends and fellow expats’ vacations went. What were we doing wrong? We spent another year in Korea listening to all of our friends’ travel stories. That’s when we decided enough was enough. We had to plan a trip whether we were ready for it or not. Thank goodness we did! That first official international vacation was enough to jumpstart our love of travel, not just living abroad.

Is Living Abroad and Traveling One in the Same?

In the beginning, living abroad and traveling were two separate things to us. The first time we moved to Korea, we didn’t feel like world travelers. We were just two people moving to a foreign country. Now, I would definitely say, yes, living abroad is considered traveling. We have a little more experience under our belts, and we stopped, or at least slowed down, in trying to compete with others. We have no plans of quitting traveling in the near future, and we are excited to share our journey with all of you.