Reflections on 12 Months in the USA: The Highs and Lows as an Aussie Expat Living and Travelling Around the USA

12 month ago, we made the wild decision to move across the world to Texas, USA.

It’s been truly an adventure with many highs and lows. From the chaos of packing and moving, flight cancellations and learning to drive ignoring speed limits. To stunning landscapes, delicious food and sipping cocktails by a Mexican beach with friends.

There is nothing like moving away from your comfort zone to grow as a human.

To move away from familiarity, family, friends, career, home and society norms you understand.

To a similar yet vastly different country has been eye opening (to say the least)

Today, is a big essay. I’ll be sharing some highlights and challenges over the last 12 months of living and travelling based out of Texas, USA.

Five Big Highlights of Living Abroad

1. We’ve done a lot of travel!

One of the “selling points” that tipped the scale to moving across the USA was to take the opportunity to travel more and explore the Americas a bit more.

Go to places that are slightly harder to get to, unless you had a lot of time or lived in the USA. Instead of just someone who’s flying from Australia to the USA for a few weeks and only has time for the big cities.

When I looked back at my trip plans that I stored in Notion to write this post, I was shocked to see I’ve travelled 85 days out of the 12 months!

My husband has limited leave while working full time. So these were mostly short 3 to 5 day long weekend trips, with a couple of big 2-3 overseas trips.

Domestic travel included places like:

• San Francisco
• New Orleans
• Yosemite National Park
• Dallas-Fortworth
• San Antonio
• Austin
• Chicago
• New York City
• Corpus Christi

International destinations included places like:

• Cancun Mexico
• London
• Paris
• Bordeaux
• San Sabastian
• Malaysia
• Vietnam

Looking at our travel plans for the remainder of 2024, we have another ~50 days of travel to close off the year! Especially since we’ll likely have some family visiting us in the second half of 2024.

I guess that’s where a lot of my “free time” has gone towards… juggling the logistics of settling into a new country and culture, and travel planning!

Very grateful for all the travel and experiences we’ve had in the last 12 months.

2. Rekindled my passion for photography (and took 12,000+ photos in 12 months!)

When I looked through my Adobe Lightroom catalogue, I wasn’t surprised to see it’s exploded with photos.

But I didn’t expect an additional 12,000+ photos over 12 months! This is the most number of photos that I’ve taken over a 12 month period.

I’ve always struggled to keep up with photo editing when I had a day job back in Australia. Funnily enough, I’m in a no better situation… I’m still taking more photos than I have time to edit, share and blog about.

Historically, I mostly take travel and street photos, and a handful of client photography assignments each year.

Most years I would only take around 2000 to 5000 photos a year (according to my Lightroom stats), and even less during the Covid pandemic era when we hardly travelled.

The truth is, over the last 3 to 4 years, besides client work, I didn’t have much time for personal photography.

And if I’m honest I lost a bit of that “spark” for photography. Feeling burned out during the pandemic year, work and personal life commitments meant I had less time for photography. I only had time for the “essential” and important, and unfortunately photography took a back seat.

Moving across the USA, doing a ton of travel again and getting to experience so many new things has made everything interesting to photograph.

And I’m loving it.

In fact, I’m making a point to take a lot of photos and video on both my Fujifilm camera and mobile phone, to really capture our day to day life and experiences.

Going on sabbatical and living in a different country is truly a once in a lifetime experience. I want to make sure I make the most of it and also document our experiences along the way.

3. Met some amazing friends

Moving cities let alone countries is an intense process.

First is simply the logistics of shutting down life as you know it in one place, and re-start a life in another place.

USA looks and feels familiar, at least on a superficial level since we all see and hear about the USA in the media all the time.

But I can tell you from first hand experience, setting up a life here is very different to being a passing tourist.

We’ve been fortunate to have made some great Aussie expat friends since we arrived who understand what we’ve gone through, having gone through it themselves.

In fact, we were invited out for drinks to meet them on very next day after we landed.

The cool drinks were much needed when we landed in the worse summer weather, persistent 40 degree celsius days!

We share the common bond of settling into a new city with different cultural norms, and bonding over some of these experiences as Aussies:

Examples of some positives

• 2 hour Amazon deliveries
• Cheap sales (there is always a reason to have a sale in the USA…)
• Sharing travel itineraries and recommendations (all expats aim to travel while they’re here!)

Examples of some negatives

• The terrible hot and humid weather in Texas
• Frustration with a healthcare system that often feels non-sensical
• The dangerous and sometimes life-threatening driving (that you have to just get used to if you plan to leave the home)

With these strangers turned friends, life has been less lonely, and more fun.

4. Growth from adversity

It’s weird to say adversity is a highlight.

Trust me, at the time of experiencing it, it’s no highlight.

But on reflection, they’re exactly the events that helped me personally become more resilient, flexible and pragmatic.

When you live in your own home country for a while, things becomes routine. You know how things work like the back of your hand. Moving to a new city where grocery shopping takes you 3x as long because they call things by different names, personal safety is a big concern, banking is different etc… suddenly everything takes 5x as long to figure out than back in Australia!

It took a good 3 to 6 months to really feel comfortable and settled into our new city.

If you’re a new expat in the USA, planning to move across or simply just visiting the USA as a tourist, expect a lot of domestic travel delays and cancellations if you’re planning to travel around the country right now.

5. An opportunity to explore other aspects of life and learn the art of business

Being on sabbatical has given me the freedom to explore other passions and interests —travel, writing, photography, entrepreneurship.

I’ve spent some of my time freelancing, learned a heap about entrepreneurship and spent a lot of time reading and learning.

Ironically, in some ways, I feel just as busy (if not more busy) compared to when I was in a day job in Australia!

But it’s a different kind of busy when you’re weaving in learning, applying your skills to freelance work, adapting and setting yourself up in a new city, understand the cultural norms.

Six Challenges Every Expat Should Know Upfront

1. Setting up shop in any new country has a steep learning curve

Australia has many similarities to USA but rules and systems are vastly different.

Here’s just one simple practical observation: Despite how high tech USA is, I found is that the USA is still quite old school in some aspects

They use a lot of paper. Their forms are not the most user friendly things to use.

Banking is surprisingly backwards (and more complex) than Australia. People routinely send and receive cheques in the USA! I don’t think I’ve handled a cheque as an adult until I moved across to the USA.

Getting a credit card is a catch 22, because you need to “build your credit” to get a credit card. But you can’t get a credit card to build your credit ‘cause you have no credit history!

Bottom line is, give yourself grace and time. Expect to take 3 to 6 months to settle in. Ask other expats for their tips and advice on how they handled a lot of the practical set up.

2. The healthcare system is a beast

After 12 months of living in the USA, I can safely said I don’t feel I even understand 1% of how the whole mammoth system works.

With my background in healthcare, I find this has been the toughest thing to navigate. Sometimes, I feel like they don’t make it easy to understand on purpose!

To date, dealing with anything healthcare related is something I dislike.

Facing some personal health issues over the last 12 months has meant I had no choice but to deal with it and learn to navigate the system.

I’m grateful for the insurance coverage we have because without it getting healthcare is near financially impossible.

In the USA, you have access to world class healthcare (for those who can afford it). And for those who can’t, unfortunately it doesn’t go well for them. Medical debt and bankruptcy is a very real fear living in the USA.

My first hand experience of the USA system has given me immense appreciation of how good the Australia Healthcare system is, despite all it’s flaw.

And I know first hand since I spent my career working in public health.

I still find it odd to be pounded with so many pharmaceutical ads on TV (most medications are for highly expensive and complex diseases). It’s a contrast to Australia where pharmaceutical advertising is highly restricted.

I’ll stop there though, because I could write a book about my experiences otherwise.

3. Being away from the comfort zone of your family and friends can be tough

The great thing about being an expat or doing long term travel these days is that you can stay connected with family and friends as long as you have an internet connection.

Whatsapp, Facebook Messager and Zoom have been tremendously helpful to staying in touch with people back home.

I always enjoy my calls with family and friends back home.

For example, despite the 13 to 14 hour time difference, I still make a point to keep up with the bookclub girls back home and update each other on our lives.

4. Travel in USA feels like chaos 50% of the time

We’ve spent around 85 days travelling and honestly it feels like we had at least 50% of our flights delayed or cancelled.

We’re constantly keeping track of our bags and the incoming flights to see if there’s a chance it will be delayed so we can start making back up plans. We’ve mainly travelled with United Airline and American Airlines, and the airline apps are actually really great with giving a lot of detailed tracking and updates.

I’ve learned so much about travel and travel planning over the last 12 months and have a bit of a routine I go through for researching and booking flights, accommodation and creating our travel itineraries.

This is something I’m eager to share on here for our last 12 months of living in the USA.

Whether this is just our bad luck with travel, just the way aviation culture is in the USA or a symptom of the post-COVID world I’m not too sure.

These are stressful experiences, especially when most of our trips are 3 to 5 day trips. Being delayed by a day or two cuts our trip short by 20 to 40%!

To minimise these problems, we’ve become more savvy with how we book our trips. We prioritise:

• Maximising the chances to getting there to start our trip
• Making delays less painful to deal with.

Practically, an example of this is that we always looking for direct flights with no layovers (even if it’s a bit more expensive), especially on our way to a destination, and paying the extra $30 for the added benefit of free cancellation up to the day of check-in for hotels.

5. Making friends in your 30s is vastly different to your 20s

You don’t have the history and social ties like in your home city —friends you went to school with, co-workers turned friends, community groups you’re part of etc.

This is especially hard if you’re the accompanying spouse rather the working expat. Fellow expats have joined hobby groups, used apps by Bumble Friends and met other parents through their kids’ schools.

6. Suddenly you don’t have people you can rely on

Without your usual close friends and family to support you when you’re going through something difficult or need help with pick ups and drop ups (if you have kids as an expat), logistics and life can feel a bit more challenging.

The strangers turned new friends you make (other expats or locals) quickly become that support group.

When you hang out with expats from your home country, there is a common bond and understanding of the struggles we face. And even inside jokes that only Aussies will understand.

For that we’ve been grateful for the help and support of the expat friends who we’ve become fast friends with.

Wrap up

I hope this has been helpful insight if you’re an Australian planning to move to the USA or is someone considering moving out of your home country temporarily or permanently.

I really enjoyed writing this. It helped me reflect on the year that’s passed, all the highlights and challenges. I’m excited to share more tips, recommendations and experiences travelling based out of the USA and living as an expat.

Travel Resources

Over the 12 months of planning over 13 trips (and another 5 trips to come in 2024), I’ve been building up a big catalogue of resources that has help me as an expat living and travelling around the USA, and to take better photos when documenting travel and life.

It seems like a waste to keep that to myself. So I’ll be sharing these resources, along with some insider expat updates, in short email newsletter a few times a month.

Once subscribed, you’ll also get my free Travel Planning template in Notion that I’ve been using the plan my 13 trips.

If you found this post helpful and you are someone who enjoys taking photos while travelling, an Aussie expats or just someone who is planning a trip to the USA in the future, then you’ll enjoy this newsletter.