If you are flexible and adaptable and come

If you are flexible and adaptable and come with a smile on your face, you’ll discover that it’s much easier to move abroad than you expected.  It’s all about how you get along with people. If you’re friendly, you’re looking for help and you make your best effort, people here in Panama are like people pretty much everywhere and they certainly will help you out. It can be a pleasant surprise. The locals can often work around the language problem and it’s usually not as bad a situation as people moving or retiring abroad expected it would be.

 

What people are happily surprised by when moving overseas also depends on fears they bring with them. Some of them are frightened and they think where they’re going to a society that is somehow primitive or backward and they discover very quickly that these societies are quite modern, much more so than they expect, certainly more so than let’s say 20 or 30 years ago.  Many of us still have images in our head 20 or 30 years ago of what life was like overseas. It’s changed. It has changed a lot.

 

This is true just about everywhere where people go to retire.  For example, electronics and modern communication are going be very similar. The differences will be the standard ones, like the language. There are very few societies where you feel threatened by the local people. Where this happens are not countries retirees go – North Korea, Somalia, and places like that; not the most popular places for English-speaking expats to go. Otherwise, none of these issues are a serious problem.