I moved from the US to Europe and I keep joking that the largest QoL upgrade has been my unbelievably dumb microwave. It has a power knob, a timer knob that is spring wound, and when it hits 0 it physically hits a bell like an older toaster.

I fucking love it. It was like 20€

FEIE is like $125k usd

Yeah, certainly depends exactly where you go. A capital city and a rural town will feel extremely different on English speaking (and cultural/political views at that).

I think it’s quite possible to do though. Happy to chat or answer any specific questions you have, especially if they’re Scandinavia based.

It’s a tough choice to do something like you’re talking about but extremely fulfilling. I wouldn’t trade the decision for the world at this point. I wish you the best of luck!

US ex pat here:

I think you will find more success in this if you find a place or two you want to live in and run TO something instead of AWAY from something. It’ll always be a bit of both, but this post reads more like (very understandably) “get me out of here” than “I want to be somewhere new”.

Being an ex pat has plenty of hard aspects of course. I think some of them are made quite a bit easier when you passionately dive into the culture and life in a new place. At least to me it would be impossible if my head was still in the US.

Of course you’re doing nothing wrong! Just some advice if it gets a bit more serious.

Like many in the thread: Canada, Australia/New Zealand, Scandinavia, Germany, UK (not that they’re doing fantastic right now), Netherlands would be my top choices with your criteria. Most large companies will be more likely to have English speaking as the working language and you’ll learn the local language (s) while living there. Best of luck!

How has it been to find friend circles and such with being ostracized by the church/your community?

Glad to hear you and your son are out

Met my coworkers after work yesterday. 21 minute bike or car ride by the GPS. By the time they parked downtown it was 35 mins, meanwhile I shaved a minute off the GPS :) feels goooood

Southern Scandinavia checking in with 13 and sunny with a light breeze

Diez :)

10 is optimistic imo

I couldn’t find any properly dumb tvs in a recent search and got a Google TV. You can set it up in “dumb mode” at startup and it never does a thing online. Can even do firmware vis USB if you felt like it for some reason.

Happy with it so far! 4k and OLED, a decent price imo as well. I’d rather it be fully dumb but this is close enough.

They’re efficient and have no sense of humor

Wait you cut them all? You don’t just tear the bananas apart from each other?

Cutting, a stand, all feels like an overcomplication of a simple fruit

Dave not coming back

I have a bit of an ocean/diving fear and some mild claustrophobia, so this is the perfect doc to scare the crap out of me

Usually the small regional airports aren’t indexed in large search tools like Kayak or Google or anything.

I recommend looking up directly what small airlines fly between those regional airports and seeing their flight schedules directly

Totally agree, but you really never know where would be insulated from everything

I mean surely in the 1930s Hawaii felt like an excellent place to be insulated from war…

Totally. But “down pat” and conversational are a bit different.

US ex pat here:

I agree with a big decision, but I strongly disagree with needing the language down pat before you go. You should know some for sure, and mostly have a willingness to learn it. You’re going to learn so much faster while there than you will studying in the US.

Just need enough language to get by at first

Better late than never?

Does… Does this person reach through the legs from the front?

And dont bring hair dryer!