I’ve found, both as an exchange student/exchange host and as a military spouse on overseas tours, that there’s a point in time, usually at about Week 6, where you get past the “I got here!” euphoria and realize that it’s all completely alien and that you want to go home. This is where you have to stick it out and find that positive attitude. If you can last a few more weeks you will feel way, way more comfortable, you’ll start to meet people besides your sponsor and your feelings about your new home will change for the better.

Overseas tours offer some unique advantages. First, you’ll make lifetime friendships. When you’re all strangers in a strange land, you find ways to forge deep bonds with people. Most of my best friends now are all people we met on our first overseas tour – in 1986!

Second, you can give yourself and your children the gift of travel and the international perspective that comes with really understanding another culture. I promise, if you get out and learn about your adopted country you will never be the same, and it will be good.

Third, you can save money if you try really, really hard. Overseas housing allowances are generous, and there are many ways to save even if you travel a lot (only use one car, camp or share lodgings with friends, shop at the commissary…). You can come home with money in the bank if you don’t fall victim to the “I’ll never see it again so I have to buy it now” mentality.

Fourth, you can become closer as a family. You have to work together for an overseas tour to succeed.

I must point out that honesty is very important if you are considering an overseas tour. People with quasi-broken relationships who go overseas without the intent to work towards a real solution will come home divorced. People who lie on the overseas screenings will find their children’s (or their own) chronic health problems will flare up, and they’ll discover that the hospitals in other countries may not work like ours. At all. The active duty member and spouse must, must, must be honest about wanting to share this experience together. Deployments are hard, but deployments from a base in, say, Japan, where Grandma and Aunt Susie are 3,000 miles away and can’t help babysit – well, they’re harder. And they happen.

We loved our two tours in Italy so much that we hope some day to go back to Europe to live. We’ve given our children the gifts of travel…and food adventure…and seeing issues from several angles. We’ve learned to cook some pretty fantastic dishes. We’ve gained lifelong friendships and an endless stock of memories. For us, the joys definitely outweighed the sorrows.

I totally agree that overseas’ bases promote a sense of unity and camaraderie that Stateside bases don’t usually instill. Virtually everyone is away from home and family and thus very open to forging new friendships, and for the most part everyone is excited about the opportunities for travel and learning about the local culture, thus giving something instantly in common with new friends you meet.

We’ve never been to Asia, though! I hope you keep enjoying your time there and take every opportunity to travel when you can! Thanks for sharing your experience!