Write Your Story Abroad

Healthcare workers are in demand across the world, and countries are competing for doctors, nurses, veterinarians, all sorts of medically trained professionals. If your dream is to head to the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, or any other English-speaking country, you may need the OET: the Occupational English Test. It's built around clinical communication.Suzanne, a certified OET examiner, former healthcare professional, and experienced teacher, walks us through common OET mistakes: doctors using too much jargon, candidates jumping straight into timed practice tests, writing “in view of the above” filler, changing a provisional diagnosis in the prompt, and retaking the exam too quickly without knowing what went wrong. For healthcare workers preparing for the OET, this is a great strategy session to listen to before starting your preparation.

The US student visa interview lasts under two minutes. According to Inesa, a US visa consultant who has prepared many F-1 and J-1 applicants, consular officers make their decision in that window, and most of it doesn't come down to your documents. The interview is not to recheck your papers. It's to check you.This is Part II of a 3-part series for international students. Last week, Christian Akwara walked through Canadian study permits. This week, Inesa breaks down what consular officers may ask, the difference between F-1 and J-1 visas, why one-word answers are the most common cause of denials, and her three-sentence formula for answering interview questions in a way that demonstrates ties to your home country without sounding rehearsed.Next week, Megan chats with us about her experiences studying abroad in California and compares them to growing up in Indonesia.

According to Spain's Instituto Nacional de Estadística, nearly one in five people living in Spain was born in another country. Spain remains one of the most asked-about countries by our audience, so this is Part II of a two-part series. In last week's episode, Raquel of Salas Immigration walked us through the full visa landscape if you're looking to relocate to Spain: NLV, DNV, Golden Visa, etc, and common mistakes that get visa applications rejected. This week we're back with Marta to hone in on 1 particular route that so many of you have asked about...the Digital Nomad Visa! Marta breaks down the minimum income requirement, applying from inside Spain versus from a US consulate, and a laundry list of other helpful tips for those of you looking to work remotely across the Atlantic.

I sit down with Qi Zhai-McCartney, founder of Seeing Qi Therapy and Coaching in Singapore, to answer burning questions from our audience around expat life, mental health, career pivots, and maternal health abroad.I'm sure many of these topics will resonate with those of you already abroad as Qi takes us deep on the idea of the "adaptation tax," or the energy it costs to code-switch between cultures every day. We also talked about the patterns she sees across expat clients: burnout that high-achievers dismiss as weakness and the "invisible labor" that falls on expat mothers.Her advice for the first 90 days in a new location: build a personal "board of directors." Same-sex friends to vent to, couple friends to go out with, playdate friends for emergencies. No single person, especially a spouse, can fill every role, least of all when you're living 3000 kilometers away from your parents and friends.

We've lived in South Korea, France, Spain, and Singapore. In this episode we tell our full story and how living abroad changed who we are.We chat about the highs, like the moment a foreign language clicks and you realize you can function in it. And the lows, like being homesick in a country where you don't have a support system, or dealing with a health emergency far from home.One of the ideas we talk about all the time is the "triangle to circle" metaphor. When you move between cultures, you stop fitting neatly into any one of them. You become something new. Your identity isn't the country you came from or the country you moved to, but rather a melting pot of many different people, foods, songs, and languages.We also get into the practical side: how to research a city before committing and how to filter through the noise when every country looks like a good option from the outside.