Living Abroad Isn’t What You Think! 7 Realities I Never Saw Coming!
“Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face”- Mike Tyson. Expat life sounds like living the dream…until you actually live it. Here’s what you won’t see on Instagram.
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1. Goodbye Comfort Zone, Hello, “Where the Hell Am I Going?”
I arrived in 1999 Ukraine, suitcase packed and ready to conquer the world, until the local transport system knocked me down a few pegs.
Store signs looked like cryptic puzzles, and the Cyrillic alphabet? Pure hieroglyphics.
With no Google Maps, every trip was a scavenger hunt, where the “prize” was simply finding my destination without a city-wide detour to nowhere.
Then there were the taxi drivers. They could spot a clueless foreigner from a mile away, grinning like they’d hit the jackpot as they calculated my inflated fare.
Asking for directions didn’t help much either. I’d attempt my best Russian, only to get squints that suggested I’d just requested a trip to Mars.
Navigating Kyiv wasn’t…
