After leaving small-town Texas in 2017, Tyson and his wife began an international life that has taken them from Thailand to Germany and, most recently, China. Now based in Shanghai and raising a young son, he shares the realities of adapting to new cultures, navigating bureaucracy and digital life, building friendships abroad, and balancing a love of expat life with the growing pull of family back home.
Where, when and why did you move abroad?
My wife and I first moved abroad in 2017, leaving our lives in the United States and starting a new one in Thailand. We lived there for three years before moving to Germany. After three more years, we moved to China, where we are currently based.
Moving abroad has always been a desire of mine (shared with my wife). I grew up reading so much expat literature that I knew I had to experience this one day. The final push was maybe too political for most: Trump was elected in November 2016 … my wife had a contract signed in December. But once abroad, I have loved the feeling of being the outsider, of being othered, of feeling out of place wherever I am. If I get too comfortable, I know it’s time to move on.Â
What challenges did you face during the move?
During our initial move, the biggest challenge was explaining what we were doing to those around us. We grew up in small-town Texas, and the idea of moving away from family was completely … foreign to them. Traveling was a 5-day cruise out of Galveston, not a two-year contract in Asia.Â
Each move has provided its own challenges. Thailand was about learning how to be an expat, how to navigate a new culture, a new language, everything. And how to create our daily habits in this new place. In Germany, the challenge was always the bureaucracy. For being known as an efficient people, Germany was a weekly fight against the most brutal inefficiency I’ve ever seen. In China, the biggest challenge was the digital ecosystem. You cannot survive in China until you’re fully plugged into this world of paying apps, group chats, miniprograms within miniprograms, and the ever-present challenge of finding that perfect VPN.Â
What do you enjoy most about life in your new country?
In my current location, Shanghai, the most enjoyable aspects of our life are efficiency and culinary diversity. I can get practically anything delivered in less than 30 minutes. I can get every regional cuisine of China and any international cuisine I want. Steamed buns, specialty coffee, Texas BBQ, all delivered to my door.
What is the hardest part of expat life for you / your family?
Even though we have no desire to move back to the US, the hardest part is always the distance from family. And this has become exponentially harder since the birth of our son in 2024. The grandparents are more pushy for us to come back (for good reason). And when we are visiting, it’s lovely to watch our son play with his grandparents, his aunts and uncles, and his cousin. Even though we don’t want to give up our lives abroad, we feel guilty about the distance constantly.
What is your relationship like with locals and other expats?
This has varied from country to country, largely because of the language barrier. The locals we befriend are usually somehow connected to the international population, usually by marriage. So while we rely on these friends for local knowledge, I know we’re getting a skewed perspective that still comes through the international lens.
We have made lifelong friends among other expats in each location, maybe even closer than some of the friends back home. We travel regularly to meet up with friends around the world. Just in the rest of this year, we’ll meet multiple friends who moved to or still live in Bangkok back in Bangkok, a friend who moved to India in Krabi, and a friend who still lives in Germany in Sri Lanka.
What advice would you give to someone thinking of making a similar move?
This needs bullet points:
- Do it! Even if it lasts one or two years, it will be an experience you cannot recreate otherwise, an experience you will never forget, and an experience that will make you a better person.
- If you think there is the smallest chance of staying longer than two years, do not (DO NOT!!) put your stuff from home in a storage unit. You will end up paying for it for seven years before you get a chance to empty it, regretting every single penny spent on it.
- Make friends outside of your work situation, whether locals or other expats. This makes your life abroad not only about work, opens you up to different expat experiences, and gives you a chance to breathe (or even exist) outside of work.
- Do not be surprised by the 3-month wall. Almost every expat hits a low point around 3-6 months and decides they need to move back home. Every person I know who acted on this (breaking or ending a contract) ended up regretting it a few months later.