When you travel overseas on vacation, you’re usually so busy that you don’t ever think about the things you’re missing from home. However, when you move overseas for months or years, you’ll find that it’s often the little things you miss the most.

If you talk with most expats about what they’re homesick for, most of them will mention some kind of food. Whether it’s their favorite spice, or a full holiday meal, they just can’t find a good substitute in their new country.

Before you move to a new country, look in your refrigerator, spice rack, and pantry. What are you constantly missing or refilling? Make a list of those items and head over to the blogs and forums for expats who are already living in your destination country. Find out if you can get the items you want at the local stores, and how expensive they are. You really won’t want to spend twelve dollars just to get a small jar of peanut butter.

Think about your favorite holiday meals, and what ingredients you need to make them. The holidays are often when expats really miss their friends, families, and traditions from their home country.

Before moving to Uruguay, I found out that they don’t really have spicy food there. As a former Texan, that’s kind of like saying that they don’t have water. Hot sauce on scrambled eggs is the best way to start my day, so I made sure to bring several bottles of hot sauce with me.

Those bottles also became a good way to make friends. You probably won’t be the only person missing a certain food from back home. Once the other expats from your home country hear that you have a rare and precious jar of Jif peanut butter, or Vegemite, or HP Sauce, you’ll have more dinner invitations than you can handle.

Unfortunately, you’ll probably only be able to bring over canned or bottled foods. So if your favorite food is a type of sausage or cured ham, you’re going to need to find a local substitute. If you’re thinking of bringing some seeds to grow your favorite vegetable, be aware that most countries don’t allow that.

When you’re getting ready to pack for your move overseas, remember that you can always buy more socks once you get there. Save some of your valuable luggage space for the foods that will remind you of home.

Scott Lilly writes about his experiences and tips for moving overseas at his blog MovingOverseasBook.com. You can discover all the things he wishes someone had told him before moving overseas in the expat guidebooks he has written.

Being faced with a move overseas can be daunting, but if you plan ahead and do the right amount of research, you can find dependable, affordable international moving companies that will help you get your belongings from one place to another. You can either pack the items yourself, or you can have the moving company do it for you. Either way, you can be reassured that your things will get from your old place to your new one, shipped in shipping containers designed for this very thing.

If you opt to do the packing yourself, there are a number of things you should keep in mind so your items are packed well and can withstand the journey overseas. In all, there are seven simple tips that you can follow to ensure all your personal belongings will be shipped safely and securely.

1. Make sure you do not get the boxes too full. Keep each box around 50 lbs. This way, one individual will be able to lift, transport, and load each box by themselves.

2. Try to put items inside one another. If you nest your items of various sizes, you will be able to conserve space within the box, and you will reduce the possibility of items breaking.

3. Attempt to pack your belongings as tightly as possible. Because items can shift during transport, and especially during international shipping, you will diminish the likelihood that your things will get damaged if they do not have much room to move around.

4. Use a variety of packing materials to keep your breakables cushioned. There are a lot of different things you can use to wrap fragile items, including tissue paper, newspapers, wadded paper, towels, magazine pages. You should also line the bottom and sides of every box to make sure these items will be cushioned if the boxes are shifted by movers.

5. Load your boxes with the heaviest items first. Then, you can place the lighter items on top these.

6. Plan how you will pack your things before you actually pack them. This way, you can pack similar items together, such as kitchen utensils and dishes, books and magazines, and other accessories. This will make unpacking easier, and it will also help you to find the things you have the most immediate need for.

7. Use a marker to plainly label all of your cartons. This is an important step because you can notate which end of a box needs to be upright, and you can classify some boxes as fragile if there are particularly breakable items in one of them.

Moving can be a stressful experience, especially if you are moving overseas. So if you employ the moving services of a moving company with expertise in overseas shipping, you will have the peace of mind that once you get there, all of your things will already be as well. A good mover will be able to help you with any phase of packing and loading, and they will make sure that your items arrive safe and sound at your new home.

by Chantal Panozzo

So you’ve lived abroad for a good amount of time. Maybe for a year, maybe for three, maybe for ten. But how do you know when you’ve reached the point of no return? In other words, when do you know you’ve become addicted to expatriate life?

Actually, it’s not that hard to tell. Here are 10 Ways You Know You’re a Perpetual Expat:

-People ask where you’re from and you finally have an answer. You say, “It’s complicated.” And you like it that way.

-The thought of moving back to your home country makes you cringe because that would be boring.

-You no longer talk about what’s bad about your adopted country, you focus on what’s bad about your home country.

-The thought of going on a “permanent contract” no longer scares you. It just means you’ll have to find another place to live.

-You think it would be great to have multi-cultural and multi-lingual children.

-You enjoy the challenge of figuring things out and feel that you would be bored otherwise. A country with four official languages and many more dialects, bring it on!

-You enjoy your status of being different. It makes you feel special.

-You feel like you are leading an exciting life even if the reality is lots of packing and unpacking.

-You are addicted to travel. You travel more in one year than most of your friends back home do in a lifetime.

-You feel a thrill thinking about where you could go next. And it never includes the place you came from before.

-You want to read more about this topic. Andrea Martins, co-founder of ExpatWomen, wrote an article for the Telegraph about why some of us become addicted to the overseas lifestyle. Enjoy.

Are you addicted to living abroad? Why or why not?

Chantal Panozzo is a writer in Switzerland who has written for a variety of publications on two continents. She’s the author of One Big Yodel, a blog about life in Switzerland and moving abroad, and also discusses living abroad as a freelancer at Writer Abroad.

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