Distinguish between a tourist, a temporary resident, and an ex-pat. That's ex-patriate, not ex-patriot. Ex-patriots used to love their country, regardless of where they live. Expatriates live in another country because of retirement, work, or school. Their location says nothing about their patriotism one way or the other. However, a great way to feel very American is to be the only one in a room full of people speaking English.

According to a recent UN report, not counting active-duty military personnel, about a million native-born American citizens -- that's 0.3% -- live in other countries, about half of them in Europe. In contrast, about 6% of native-born Dutch citizens live in other countries. About 25% of Irish do.

The Spanish web site Just Landed has information and forums for all of our countries and an extensive guide for eight of our twelve countries.

professionals working abroad, often on limited length assignments
lifestyle migrants
students
economic migrants

Study Abroad

Because Medaille does not have a formal study abroad program, there is no problem associating yourself with another school, and you don't have to lose any progress toward graduation.

Several Medaille students have studied abroad through a program with Arcadia University. One recently went to Australia for a semester and another to Italy, and both speak highly of their programs.

SUNY's Study Abroad programs

SIT's Study Abroad

StudyAbroad.com

GoAbroad.com's directory

Global Student Experience

Teach Abroad

As a teacher, I would consider it a big success if, at least partly because of this course, you spent a couple years of your life teaching English in a foreign country. In realistic terms, I'd be happy if you would at least give it a hard look. I can make a good argument that you owe it to yourself to honestly, if only internally, understand why you won't pursue this career option. If you can't convince yourself that you shouldn't consider it, then perhaps you should consider it.

If at the end of two years' teaching English in a foreign country you apply for a teaching job in the U.S., you are going to be so much more employable than you will be when you graduate from Medaille. You will be especially attractive to school districts with students for whom English is not their native language and who don't speak English at home.

For example, Buffalo schools have more than 5,000 ELL (English language learners), up from 1,500 in 2007.

Does it matter that you can't speak the language of the country where you will be living? No.

Many people in every country already speak English. You will not necessarily be teaching beginners.

You can begin to learn the local language.

If you're teaching in a certain place, there will almost certainly be other ex-pats there and English will almost certainly be the common language.

The best list of relevant links I found is the Center for International Education's opportunities for teaching abroad.

Others:

TeachAbroad.com's article Is Teaching Abroad For You?

GoAbroad.com

Council on International Educational Exchange's CIEE Teach Abroad -  teach English abroad in Chile, China, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, Spain, or Thailand with CIEE.

Teach Abroad's K-12 and University Jobs

Teaching Abroad's Advanced Strategy for Landing the Perfect Teaching Job

From Brooklyn to Beijing, and Into a Caldron
by Xiyun Yang
NY Times, November 3, 2010

China had captivated the imagination of Paul Cabo (photo on right) for as long as he could remember. Maybe it started with the documentaries he saw as a child about the Great Wall. Or his desire to understand his recently immigrated Chinese classmates at Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island. Or maybe it was kung fu movies.

Whatever the cause, four years ago it finally propelled Mr. Cabo, now 35, from a job as a Starbucks manager to a position as an English teacher in Beijing.

Work Abroad

Business organizations

If you become an expatriate living or working in a foreign country — it is imperative you try to learn all you can about the local culture so you can understand the culture and avoid being beaten by your competitors

You could work for a business in a foreign country. Or for an American business. However, given the transnational nature of most large corporations, it makes increasingly less sense to make that distinction. For example, what you know as "your music" is controlled by fewer than four large corporations, one from Britain (EMI), one from France (Vivendi), one from Japan (Sony), and one from the U.S. (Access Industries bought Warner Music in summer 2011, but most of its operations are non-U.S. -- Russia and northern Europe. Thus, if you work in the "American" music industry, you most likely work for a foreign company.

Cross-Cultural Solutions' Intern Abroad - Gain a Competitive Edge with an International Internship

Work Abroad Programs

NGO - non-governmental organizations

If you want to spend some time in a foreign country, but teaching isn't quite what you had in mind, here's an alternative, another path to the same goal.

NGO - non-governmental organization. That umbrella includes organizations that operate independently from any government although they are often funded totally or partially by governments. Much of what we call "foreign aid" is funded through NGO's, often on a competitive basis through grant proposals. NGO's often pursue a wider social goal. This goal may have political aspects, but NGO's are not overtly political organizations such as political parties.

Duke University's NGO Research Guide

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become increasingly influential in world affairs. They often impact the social, economic and political activities of communities and the country as a whole. NGOs address a host of issues, Including, but not limited to, women’s rights,  environmental protection, human rights, economic development, political rights, or health care. In numerous countries, NGOs have led the way in democratization, in battling diseases and illnesses, in promoting and enforcing human rights, and in increasing standards of living.

Helping Haiti Help Itself
by Meredith C. Baker
Harvard Crimson, Thursday, October 28, 2010

It has been nearly a year since the earthquake that left Haiti—already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere—in shambles. With 1.3 million people displaced by the earthquake living in squalid conditions outside Port-au-Prince, 284 confirmed deaths in a recent cholera outbreak, and 19 candidates in the upcoming presidential elections, it seems as if international help and continued support would be welcome now more than ever. However, although there are nearly 14,000 NGOs and relief agencies operating in Haiti currently, their fragmented and isolated approach to work in Haiti has also indirectly caused long-term harm. Now that the “rescue” part of the “rescue, recovery, and reconstruction” plan is complete, it is time for the people, the government, and the foreign influence in Haiti to develop comprehensive and communicative plans that will allow Haitians a larger role in their country’s recovery.

List of INGO's - international nongovernmental organizations

Major INGOs include:

• Amnesty International
• CARE International
• Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières
• FIDH - International Federation for Human Rights
  
• Friends of Peoples Close to Nature
  
• Oxfam International
  
• Save the Children Alliance
  
• The Library Project

Much of this kind of funding is done through the United Nations. Organizations maintaining official relations with UNESCO

Volunteer Abroad – International Volunteer Programs & Work

United Planet

Global Routes

Volunteers for Peace

Sankalp's Shake Hands India Volunteer Program

Mission Finder - Classified Directories of Christian Mission Opportunities

Kids Alive International Missionary Opportunities

Gap Year

Gap year

taking time out to travel between life stages. It is also known as sabbatical, time off and time out, referring to a period of time (not necessarily 12 months) in which students disengage from curricular education and undertake non curricular activities, such as travel or work.

GapGuru

GapGuru is a gap travel specialist offering a wide range of exciting gap year volunteering, teaching, travel and internship opportunities across Asia, Africa, South America and Europe. With GapGuru you could be caring for orphans in Africa, working on medical and journalism internships abroad or even enjoying adventure travels in the Himalayas!

GapYear.com - travel, experience, share

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
-Albert Einstein, (1879-1955)

First Gap Year Travel

Taking a gap year can be both an exciting and daunting prospect for students as well as people taking a career break. There are so many gap year opportunities available today for the independent or budget traveller from travelling the world with a backpack to working abroad. First Gap Year Travel aims to provide basic information as a starting point for planning your gap year and will cover a variety of subjects including:

Making the decision to take a gap year

Reassuring parents about taking a gap year

Kaya Responsible Travel

Don't just travel as a tourist - with Kaya Responsible Travel experience the real world and make a difference. Kaya gives you the opportunity to volunteer abroad, learn a language abroad, gain valuable work experience overseas, take a gap year or become TEFL qualified.

Volunteer in Central and South America, Africa or Asia-Pacific and get involved in environmental and conservation research, building projects, teaching and education, wildlife conservation, community development, child care and sports coaching. Check out our excellent medical and health placements, for those with experience or studying medicine or a related health science.

Ex-Pat resources

You might want to start hanging out in a foreign county online, that is, listening in on the conversations of people who are doing what I'm encouraging you to think about doing.

ExpatExchange - a world of friends abroad

Expatriates.com - the community web site created for and by expatriates and internationally minded people everywhere

Transitions Abroad - Since 1977, a pioneering travel resource for meaningful work, living, and study abroad

Forums

Forums, aka discussion boards, are often hosted by sites with lots of interesting information, links, and ads.

AlloExpat.com - the meeting point between the expat communities and the professional expatriate service providers. Get the latest offerings for relocation, real-estate, financial planning, leisure, lifestyle…

ExPat Forum - the largest community of expatriates on the internet. We now have over to 100,000 members who have either moved abroad or wish to emigrate, with 100′s of new members joining up everyday.

InterNations - Connecting Global Minds

Blogs

Blogs are great sources of information from people a few steps ahead of you. Try a Google Blog search for < expat [country] >. Blogs can be very insightful. For example, here's Tasty Thailand's on teaching in Thailand.

If you find a blog you like, see whether there's old postings going back to when the writers first came to the country and note the adjustments they had to go through. If you're reading their blogs, then they are the ones who at some point in their lives were exactly where you are today, who made the leap, and who adjusted successfully. Or not.

As you can see, thousands of expatriates live in every country and hundreds of them are talking to each other online. Fortunately, English, often broken English, is the common language. Needless to say, these people get together "for drinks," as they say, all the time. The great thing for you is that you get to eavesdrop on their conversations before you have to buy a plane ticket. The blog writers can usually be emailed directly if you have questions. By the time you get there, you will have already started participating in those discussion forums. You will know when is the first time after your arrival that everyone will be meeting for drinks. You have Google Maps to show you how to get to the bar, and probably Street View to show you the front of the place. With a little online effort on your part, you will have a support network of people before you even leave the States.

Personal contact

Here's another idea. If the culture you are interested in has a distintive cuisine with a restaurant in Buffalo, go to the restaurant during a slack time, like mid-afternoon. For the price of a meal, I think you could have an interesting conversation with the waitress about that country. Tell her what you're thinking about doing, and ask whether she would mind talking to you about it.

Ask her advice about where she thinks you should go to teach in her country. Are English teachers really needed? What about the city where she came from? Where is that? If you take with you a printed-out map of the country or have Google Maps ready to go on your phone, she can show you exactly. Can she recommend any resources in Buffalo where you can learn more about her culture?

The absolutely best thing you can do is learn a simple sentence in the native language, such as "Can I ask for your help?" and butcher the pronounciation. She will be thrilled that you tried and be delighted to correct you. Try hard a few times to get it right, until she's satisfied. Great ice breaker.

If you go to Google Translate, you can type in the English and get a phonetic pronunciation of several hundred languages.

reasons NOT to live in another country

When I talk to students about going abroad for more than a quick sight-seeing trip, they frequently tell me that they can't live or work in another country because their family wouldn't like it. When I ask for details, I hear personal reasons that I don't address. For example, "My grandmother would die if I didn't visit her three times a week." I also hear several other reasons, often couched in family terms. One is a variant on "My father told me that it's too dangerous." The other is "My father told me that I need to stay on a straight career path, not wander off to Europe. When I get back, employers will think I'm flaky."

Terrorism

Where's the data? Here's the chart I could find that had the most people killed from terrorism, worldwide:

During the worst year, 2007, almost 13,000 people (not just Americans) died. That's 0.00018% of the world's population, eighteen hundred thousandths of one percent, i.e., miniscule.

But they're killing Americans, aren't they? Well, the U.S. State Department has a web page for learning about the Death of U.S. Citizens Abroad by Non-Natural Causes. The top 10 from 2006, when 881 Americans (excluding military) died from non-natural causes, a record high. It has another for Current Travel Warnings, that is, countries that thay recommend Americans avoid or consider the risk when traveling to that country, as of March 2012.

In other words, take public transport and learn how to swim, and you'll be quite safe abroad. Compare those two hundred homicides + terrorist deaths to the almost fifteen thousand murders in the U.S. every year. You're much safer outside the U.S.

Here's how many people die from other causes, according to researchers at Oxford University. Almost twice as many people die from (non-terrorist) guns in the U.S. every year than died from terrorism at its worst. Combining the two sources of data leads to summaries like this, based in part on data from the National Safety Council: NSC Study Shows You are More Likely to Killed By a Cop Than a Terrorist

You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack

You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack

You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack

You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist

What the folks worried about terror are really talking about is the anxiety of terrorism that has been marketed to them. In the 1950's, when I was in grade school, we had monthly events when we had to get under our desks and assume a fetal posture during "air raid" drills in case the Russians dropped the atom bomb on us. The teachers all stressed, every month, that we didn't know whether this was a drill or the "real one", so we had to take it seriously. I spent a fair amount of time as a 7-year-old clasping the back of my neck while lying sideways under my desk on the cold, often muddy (in winter) floor, contemplating my eternal fate. Looking back, I realize that it was a waste of time. The threat was never even close to being that immanent.

But the teachers loved it. Their big problem, as always, is keeping 7-year-olds focused, and thoroughly scaring us on a regular basis helped.

We will look back on this current age of terrorism in the same way. Then the question becomes, who profits from keeping you scared as my teachers profited from keeping me scared? They also tried to force me to write with my right hand. Neither worked.

But people want to kill Americans whereever we go!

If that's your concern, get out of the U.S. as fast as you can! Well over half the countries of the world have a lower homicide rate than the U.S.

Career path

We live in a global economy. If you work for any organization, the larger it is, the more likely it is to have customers in other countries, suppliers in other countries, corporate owners in other countries or some other transnational connection.

Native speakers of English are about a quarter of those who are online.

If two people apply for a job or a spot in a graduate program and they are equal in every respect except one spent a year in Thailand and the other didn't, it's unclear to me why the one with foreign living experience would not be preferred. For example, Buffalo's decades-long population decline seems to have bottomed out. The city itself is now gaining population.

Who is moving to Buffalo? Refugees from other countries, about 2,000 per year. As of the most recent U.S. Census, 2.5% of the population of the City of Bufaflo are Karen refugees from Burma. That's a lot of school children who speak an Asian language at home. Fora job teaching those kids, why wouldn't they prefer the candidate who has spent a year immersed in an Asian culture?

For another example, countless graduate programs have an international connection, like an international business concentration in an MBA program or an international contracts concentration in a law school or a British Commonwealth literature concentration in an English PhD program. When you apply for that graduate program, why wouldn't they prefer the candidate who has significant international experience?

For businesses and corporations in general, with a little googling, you can find all sorts of reports like this, from the U.S. Defense Department: What Business Wants

The National Security Education Program (NSEP) ... has undertaken one of the most systematic efforts, to date, to assess and understand the needs for global skills in business.

Knowledge of the culture of a country and region is just as important as knowledge of the language. This is an integral part of a skill set not only for global professionals, but for any successful professional operating in a U.S.-based multicultural market. ... With the rise of globalization, more businesses need to be better informed about different religions and cultural symbolism, particularly concerning marketing campaigns.