Three West

For the past ten year, maybe even longer, I have been wanting to permanently leave the country. I have traveled outside of the country a little bit and absolutely love the huge difference in how other people live outside of the U.S. While each country has it’s own cultures, problems, and joys, there were still some very basic concepts in each one that I simply must have to live; a true love and connection to family, fresh food or a real effort to maintain safe, unaltered food supplies, a positive attitude towards providing health care to everyone, an environment relatively safe from criminal activity, and an atmosphere of family being more important than work. So, I’m definitely on my way out of the U.S. Besides, I saw an enormous amount of opportunity for me to further my education in a more timely fashion, to join an international community of Independent filmmakers, not to mention a tremendous amount of unique landscapes to film in, and more affordable means for opening my own businesses to support myself.

So where will I go? Anywhere the wind blows. *Smile* Seriously though, there are a few places I have in mind; Singapore, Thailand, Seychelles, Mozambique, Palau and Ireland. I’m also considering these places because of their close proximity to other cool places as well. I like the idea of being in areas where I can hop around to different countries with relative ease.

In this section of my blog, I will be writing about the whole relocation experience. In my own experience of researching places to move and the best way to do it, I find there isn’t enough concise help. That is, step by step instructions on the best way to go about the process, minus all the fluff and ranting. While I don’t deny forums and message boards are helpful, I feel they are only helpful to a point. Especially when you ask a question and you get several different answers and then the users launch into an all out argument over which is the right one or someone goes on a rant about where they are living and then someone jumps on their back about how wonderful the place really is, blah blah blah. So those forums can get useless really quick.

What I found to be most helpful to me were sites and connections to people who could break down the ultimate process of moving to whatever country they moved to. For instance, originally I wanted to move to New Zealand and there were quite a few individuals, couples and families who either set up free services to help new movers through the entire process or just offered their experiences to help folks get an idea of what would be involved in the move. I found this extremely helpful. Also connecting directly with a person or family who has made the move makes the path you are trying to take a lot less scary. Ultimately I decided New Zealand didn’t deserve me. *Smile*

Some of the things I would like to cover in this section are: Finances, Expectations, Goals, Education, Mental and Physical Wellness. I have a natural tendency to create concise skeleton plans for everything; the absolute basics needed to be successful. So what I’ve done for myself is pick out the topics I think are the most critical in making a move to another country.

My posts about relocating to a new country are aimed at single people(with the African American in mind) moving alone with no job in the new country and with very limited finances upon leaving. I will talk briefly about why I chose the countries I did, however it should not ultimately determine where you move to. You should move to where ever you feel will make you happy if you can afford to move and/or live there. So affordability and happiness are they keys here.

Cheers!