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.
How far ahead did you plan your international move?
No clicky. Just want to hear experiences. We spent a huge chunk of last year in a holding pattern while all the logistics of DH's transfer (including immigration redtape) were ironed out. And that was with his company doing almost everything for us.
If we wanted to just up and do this ourselves, I have no idea how much planning would be involved, but I imagine at least 6-9 months lead time.
Re: How far ahead did you plan your international move?
I did an international move in about 6 weeks, but I'm in the military so a lot of the "to do" list and procedures were already established, and I just had to follow a bunch of checklists. And I was moving by myself (not married, no kids, didn't bring my cat). Even so, the military normally recommends 90 days, and I had to pull a bunch of strings to do it so quickly.
I think it really depends on the country you plan on moving to, and whether or not you already have jobs lined up. Without jobs lined up, the move might not be possible at all for visa reasons (depending on the country). With the job and the visas sorted out, I think I would recommend 3-4 months. If you have pets then you might need more like 6 months to meet quarantine requirements.
The most recent (China to Norway): 3 weeks
That doesn't count the time to get the visas. They told us it would take 3 months, but it was done in <1 month. When we called the embassy to check on them, they said they were done, which was a huge surprise! So that's when we started planning the move. We went to buy some traditional Chinese furniture (because that's what you do when you leave China) but had to settle for custom finishes on pre-made pieces, because three weeks wasn't enough to make custom pieces. We bought a painting. I got another silk dress tailored. We ordered plane tickets. We got rid of some stuff. We fought with our landlady who held our belongings hostage in our apartment. Then we were off.
...I have a feeling the prep work for that move was rather atypical!
We lived in a temporary apartment for a month until we found an apartment and our furniture shipment arrived. Then it took about 6-8 weeks of administration to get the cats here from their temporary home in the US.
The first (US to China): 2 months
We found out we'd be moving to China around 8 months out, which is when we started language lessons, but we didn't do much prep work back then. I think the moving company might have come to do estimates around 4 months out.
The planning really started with our house-hunting trip about 2 months out. We learned about the city, found a flat, and got our residence visas during that trip (it's amazing how fast things go when you have the right guanxi!). Once we got back, we started getting rid of stuff and arranging with my parents to take the cats. We were working 12-hour days at that point, so we didn't really have much time to focus on the move.
DH started applying for overseas jobs right after we got married. He had a phone interview 3 months later, got the offer and we moved 6 weeks after that. We moved on our own so had to do all the paperwork and organise everything ourselves but we rent and it's just the two of us so that part was easy - we sold a lot of stuff, packed the rest in our parents' basements and flew out here 'for a few years'... 6 years later and all that stuff is still there and we're still here.
Not particularly recommending our way of doing things!
BFP Apr 2012, EDD Dec 19 2012 * twin h/b at 6wk, 9wk scan * Baby A lost at 12wks, Baby B was my rainbow born at 36wks
I believe we got the paperwork from H's job that we'd be moving two months prior to our move date. The company did very little to help (but a lot to make things more difficult!) so we were on our own. We had to pay for everything and got reimbursed most of it when we got here.
We actually moved two years ago today.
Thinking about the move and how logistically annoying it was angers me to this day. H's company gave us so much misinformation, or info after the fact. Ugh.
I found out that DH wasn't going to get the work visa for his job transfer. Booked my ticket within a week. Then 5 weeks later I moved to Switzerland. 5 days later we moved into a friend's living room in Zurich. And then two weeks later we were in our apartment.
Oh and DH didn't have a new job yet by the time I arrived in Zurich. He had offers thankfully and savings because he was planning to relocate to the US. Oh and we specifically moved to Zurich Kanton because it was the only one were a US citizen could get married on a tourist visa.
Yeah that was a whirl wind. Glad we had a little more planning for our move back. But again neither of us had jobs when we moved back to the US.
2012 Reading Challenge
Now Nesting from Chicago, IL My nail blog:
Yeah, not very much time at all. I can't imagine planning something like that for months - the anticipation would drive me crazy and I would feel as though my life were on hold until the move happened.
When I first moved to China it was within about 3 weeks or so. When I moved to China the second time we had about 2 months to prepare. When we moved to the UK I was given about 1-2 weeks notice and then moved, DH stayed in China to finish his contract and save a bit more money and he and the critters moved over to join me in the UK 8 months later.
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk
Ha! My answer ranges anywhere from 2 years to "still in progress". Seriously though, when my husband traveled to China for the first time 2 years ago he got the feeling that it could eventually become a "we want you to live here" situation. After my visit this summer we realized it was even more of a reality. Then his company when back and forth about the details, length of stay and expat vs just using the 6 months total allowed time per year for non-expat. Then... I came here with the notation that we were either staying for 6 months or staying for a year +. A few weeks into this visit his company decided to offer and we decided to accept the expat deal. Now we have an apartment and are still trying to figure out the logistics of getting the rest of our things here.
I guess for planning I spent all of January working out the details of storage units, where my cats would stay (with my parents), and trying to get some medical things in line.
Our first move (Canada to Vietnam), H got the job, then he moved 3 weeks later, I followed him a month later after I finished a work contract. Our other two Canada - Vietnam moves were a bit longer, we were moving without jobs and shipped some personal goods over.
Our last move which was Vietnam to France took about 6 weeks from when we decided to when we arrived here. Our container of furniture etc arrived 6 months later, once we found a permanent place to live.
my first one - I think I decided and then just up and moved to London to be dh in a very short period of time. But then, I was only moving with a few suitcases and dh had found a place to life.
this last move to Australia we started planning 18 months in advance because we had to save a lot of money because we wanted to travel for a year+ before settling down in Australia.