Hi! I’m Amanda and that handsome fella next to me is Derik.
We met in college, fell in love, and settled out West (Portland, Oregon to be exact), optimistic and ready to take on the world. After both of us landed steady career jobs we spent a solid year learning how to live life as responsible adults. We had a nagging feeling that our lives were meant to be lived differently. After exploring some options and having multiple late nights dreaming, we realized staying put in one place doing the ‘9-5 thing’ wasn‘t going to work for us.
So, we sold everything and moved abroad.
I started Living in Another Language as a way to keep in touch with our families while we were out traveling the world. Since then it’s morphed into quite the hobby and side-business of mine, and couldn’t be more thrilled in the direction this blog is heading! Enjoy our stories about the strange things that happen to us while we learn to live in new countries/cultures, the photographs we take on our travels, and the few travel tips I may have along the way!
New Reader?
Welcome! My husband and I are currently living in Germany, after previously residing in New Zealand and South Korea (slowly making our way around the continents). We spend every free moment exploring #allthethings, but enjoy a chill Saturday drinking a good cup of coffee and talking about nothing in particular. My husband and I have been traveling since February of 2012, and started our lives abroad as ESL teachers to a bunch of kiddos in South Korea.
Interested in traveling abroad to teach yourself and making some money? Check out ‘So You Wanna Be An ESL Teacher?’ It’ll help you get started with answering some of your questions!
Having just left Korea after spending 2.5 years there we have some fond memories, and encountered quite a few oddities. I go into detail about how I always end up offending someone with ‘Sorry if I’m Rude I’m an American.’ Don’t worry, the locals have also gotten me befuzzled and offended quite a few times themselves, all listed in the post ‘Korea: The Country Where Random Situations Rule.’ If you’re wanting a general gist of what we think of our current home, ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly‘ should do it for you. Except for the part where I didn’t tell you that your whole entire life becomes ‘A Game of Charades.‘
After some time in Korea, we took off for New Zealand, where we spent a year exploring the most gorgeous country on the planet. Not opinion — it’s a pure fact. We were able to live and work in Dunedin, NZ on a work-holiday visa and were extremely sad that we had to leave in 2015 due to our visas expiring. We did however make the most of our year by taking a campervan trip across the country, seeing the southern lights a few times, going on an epic Haka Tour, and of course, visiting Hobbiton!
Once we left New Zealand, we spent 6-months traveling though Asia and Europe, and then settled down back in the United States for a year (Alaska and Texas). In 2017, Derik’s job moved us to Germany! We’ll be here for a few years and are so excited to explore Europe a bit more extensively!