International Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
India
Thanks, ladies. Your comments really helped yesterday. DH and I had a long talk last night and basically we need more information both in terms of his career and support for us.
BTW, Rpics, I saw your comments and totally agree! I also posted this on the MM board and the responses were exactly the opposite of the IN board. As a rudimentary science experience on human behaviour, I think it is very interesting. If your interested, here is the link: http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/59286200.aspx
International Nesties June Siggy Challenge: Place I would like to visit.... Dead Sea, Jordan! Only a few more months!
Re: India
Duke's House: Eating and Running with the Big Dog in Chennai: eatrunbrit.com
2010 Race PRs:
5K - 24:57 10M - 1:28:20 13.1M - 1:57:29 26.2M - 4:28:29
I just read through both now (missed the India post yesterday somehow) and definitely find the drastic differences in viewpoints interesting. Some of the responses over there did seem a little ott, but I can understand it's not something most people would ever consider. It's pretty far out of most people's comfort zone.
I didn't respond yesterday, but I'm with most of the other INs. It's an incredible opportunity for a big adventure, but I can understand your concerns about pregnancy and community there. GL deciding what to do! I know we'd all love to follow your story if you do decide to try it!
I think that there are two types of people--those who are willing to live their lives with all that it entails in a place entirely separate from their families and support networks and those who are not. I think for those who are not it's difficult to see past that to offer advice to someone who is--hence all of the "I wouldn't want to have a baby so far from my family" comments.
BTW--you're doing exactly what I would. I'd be willing to move to India but it would entirely depend upon the benefits package and the career opportunities it would bring about for your H. Good luck with everything.
How interesting the different responses are! Our biggest consideration moving here was healthcare for Otto and TTC#2 and community for me. I have to be honest, the healthcare here sometimes leaves me cold but your community which is amazing here will soon fill you in on where to go and who to see. Everyone here has loved helping the "newbie" on the block and I have so much good information.
Go with what works for you and your DH.
Interesting difference of opinions!
Sorry I didn't see your post yesterday, because I've been kind crazy busy at work. ExH is from Bombay, so I've been a few times and did a 6-week medical tourism visit for ear surgery. I didn't even go to the top hospitals, because we were paying completely out of pocket, and while it was a little unnerving, it was fine. The hospital had older equipment (my hospital bed was a metal thing with a crank like in the old WWII films), but everything was clean and efficient. I'm not sure how I'd feel about giving birth, but I think it's a personal choice. I kind of feel like so many middle class people give birth in India every day that there's not too much to worry about.
In general, the traffic and pollution in Bombay are both terrible. And you need to have a hard shell to cope with the poverty, because it's very visible there. But the middle class is getting huge, and the city is relatively more affluent than other parts of India. There are plenty of shopping malls and high-end stores and nice restaurants, and you have all the Bollywood celebs and lots of wealthy business people living in the city (since it's the commercial capital), so there are proportionally a lot more of the wealthy people as well.
I think it really depends a lot on your benefits package. If they're paying a healthy housing allowance (Housing prices are ridiculous. My Ex-ILs live in a tiny apartment that's worth a fortune these days.) and you'd be able to afford a driver (Dealing with traffic there is not something I would want to do. Some people can handle the chaos, but not me. And the old taxis can be kind of dingy and have no AC, so being able to take someone's private car around town was always a treat for me.), it could be a great adventure. It's one of those places where you are a still a true expat, and it has a bit of the colonial feel to it, because you're not going to be living like most locals. You have all the headaches of boiling/filtering water or drinking bottled, and dealing with getting sick (because face it - when you live in that kind of environment, you're going to get sick every so often), and having no freakin' idea how things work, it can be fun and exciting.
From my time there, I always felt like living in India would be a lot like living in China but with a little less of a language barrier (learning some Hindi would still be very useful) but with a warmer climate and less government control (The government really doesn't seem to have a lot of control, and sometimes I swear the way to get elected in Maharashtra is to focus your campaign on renaming things with British names. Seriously. And the only name they have is Chatrapathi Shivaji, which is obnoxious - and he wasn't that great a historical figure anyway!)
Okay, this is getting long. Summary: If you think you'll enjoy the adventure enough to overcome the hard days, you should go for it.
Having lived in both a "good" and "bad" expat situation, I probably wouldn't do India, to be honest. I'm not averse to change, and I think I'd probably handle it OK, like I am fine with Turkmenistan for the most part (although it is worse than India in terms of internet availability, expat community, things to do, isolation, etc.).
But after having seen the poverty in Nepal, and thinking that India would be worse... I don't think it's something I'd enjoy that much. I don't want people constantly trying to take advantage of me because I'm rich. I don't want to see stray dogs and cows everywhere, I don't want to live in really bad pollution and have horrible traffic all the time. Is it adventure? Sure! Is it one I would enjoy? Probably not.
At this point I would really only consider moving to Europe, Singapore, KL, major Chinese cities, Cape Town and South America. I just don't want to live somewhere that in order for it to be considered "a good deal" you have to get tons of extras that none (or very few) of the people who live there actually get.
Sorry, but I have to point out that this is very much the case in most of China. It's not necessarily the case in Hong Kong, but everywhere else (including Shanghai and Beijing) you probably don't want to live like the locals. In Beijing, our language teacher spent an extra hour to take the bus across town, because the extra 50? to take the subway was "too expensive."
And I would absolutely never ever rely on the public hospitals in China. Ever. And that's after my medical tourism in India. We had to take ExH to the Chinese hospital for an MRI, because they have the machine, and the place was completely filthy, there was an IV room where dozens of people hooked up to IV meds were sitting in wooden school chairs waiting for their IV bags to empty, and the payment counters are next to the entrance, so while we were in the huge line to pay we actually saw them squeeze through the crowd with a construction worker on a gurney who had clearly been in a drastic accident and had very broken misshapen limbs.
And in Beijing, there's the pollution that's so bad their own scale doesn't always go high enough to record it. On bad days, it really is as bad as people say.
So, if an offer comes along for one of the major Chinese cities, you might want to think twice!
Have you been to South America? Aside from Chile and Argentina I am not sure many areas of SA would be considered 'easy'. SA is very very poor in most of the countries.
I'm surprised by some of those comments.
I would do it if the package/benefits were right. As some have mentioned, there would be a large expat population and I'm sure terrific private healthcare. There are a lot of wealthy Indians who I'm pretty sure would not use public hospitals for care. (this is the way it was in Vietnam at least).
My experience being pregnant and giving birth in Vietnam was excellent. I was at a brand new hospital being followed by a French OB and midwife. My hospital room was like a hotel and way nicer than the new hospital here in Cannes!
I had Indian friends in Vietnam who would actually go back to India to have their babies as they weren't comfortable to do it there.
You should try to find an expat forum specific to India, you can probably find some great resources to help you with this decision. (like InterNations etc...).
My main concern would be the pollution.