ITP - 148: OkCupid, Counselors, Cats, and a Baby in Saudi

JP:
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the International Teacher Podcast. I am Jacqueline from JP Mint Consulting. I’m joined today by Greg the Single Guy. Hey, Greg.
Greg:
Hi everybody. Hi listeners.
JP:
And I also have Hannah, the co-hostess with the mostess. Hannah, how are you doing?
Hannah:
I’m good. How about you?
JP:
I’m awesome, here in Mexico.
Greg:
We have to change that title. That’s so corny. Seriously, JP, that is so corny. I’m the single guy, you’re JP Mint Consulting, and Hannah, we’re going to have to figure something out for you.
JP:
Co-hostess with the mostess? It’s awesome. Well, no, she’s the family gal. But today she’s the co-hostess with the mostess.
And we are also joined by guests today, Scott and Amanda. Hey, Scott and Amanda.
Scott and Amanda:
Hello. Thanks for having us.
JP:
We always ask, where are you in the world and how did you get there? Can you give us an elevator pitch?
Scott and Amanda:
Yeah. We’re currently in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This is our second year here.
Working backwards, we were previously in Thailand for two years, in the Philippines for five years, and before that Scott was in Shanghai for two years and Dubai for six years. Amanda was in California. So this goes back to 2008 or 2009.
We actually met online on OkCupid while Scott was moving from Dubai to Shanghai. This was right at the beginning when Tinder started coming out, so it was phasing out of website dating and becoming more app-based. That gives you the little tech timeline.
Greg:
So there’s hope for me yet. I should be on some Cupid thing.
JP:
OkCupid thing.
Greg:
Were you two in the same city when you did this OkCupid thing, or different cities?
Scott and Amanda:
No. Scott was going from Dubai to Shanghai. He was in Italy on a family vacation, and Amanda was in California starting her teaching career. So we did two years long distance from Shanghai to Gilroy, California.
JP:
But wait a second. The apps usually do a location thing, like this person is in your vicinity. But there is a possibility to open it up to the world, right? Is that what you both had done?
Scott and Amanda:
No, actually. Amanda had only done California, but Scott had done worldwide. So when we matched, Amanda read his bio and at the bottom, the very last sentence said, “Moving from Dubai to Shanghai.”
She was like, “WTF? How did we match up?” But then she saw he was doing international education, and thought, “Ooh, tell me about that though.”
We didn’t think it would work out. He was going to China. Why would this match? But here we are, ten years later.
Greg:
Totally. I don’t get it. I haven’t even been on those things because I’m like, “Hey, let’s meet in Paris for dinner.” No fair.
JP:
The algorithm is crazy.
Amanda, had you heard of international education before you met Scott? It sounds like maybe you were curious about it.
Amanda:
Sort of. I had heard about the typical start for many people, which was teaching English abroad. That wasn’t a huge pull for me. In high school, I did think I was going to move to Germany and teach English because I loved the language.
But then other things happened, and I ended up taking a backpacking trip in Yosemite and doing the John Muir Trail. That was like, “Okay, I need to move to California.”
My way in was through AmeriCorps. I did AmeriCorps in California and heard little inklings about international teaching. I always wanted to move abroad.
Then a friend convinced me at one in the morning to join this dating site. I was like, “Sure.” When Scott and I matched, I was drawn to international living and said, “Tell me more about that.”
So I actually learned about it from him.
JP:
And Scott, how did you learn about it? You had been in the States originally, I imagine.
Scott:
Yeah. During my master’s program, it was when the mortgage crisis happened. Career counselors who had been in counseling for 20 or 30 years were losing their jobs in California.
So I started thinking about what else I could do and where else I could go. I had a job lined up in my small Northern California town, and my family said, “Don’t come back home. We love you. You always have a room available, but don’t come back. There’s nothing for you here. Go and do something else.”
They didn’t mean for me to go all the way across the world to Dubai. But I started searching and got in touch with a guy in Australia. He mentioned ISS and Search Associates to me. At the time, ISS didn’t allow people without experience to join because I was still in my internship.
So I joined Search and went to a job fair in San Francisco in February. I had no idea what I was doing. There was a guy at a desk who said, “Hey, come to sunny Dubai.” I had no idea where Dubai was.
Luckily, I nailed the interview. He offered me the job then and there and gave me 24 hours to decide. I tried to do as much research as I could in that time, called my parents, and they said, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
So I said, “All right, let’s go for it.”
JP:
And you haven’t been back?
Scott:
Haven’t moved back.
JP:
Wow. So that would have been around 2008 or 2009?
Scott:
Yeah, correct.
JP:
You just dove right in. Sold everything. You didn’t have a storage locker?
Scott:
I really had nothing. I was in my master’s program and living with my brother and four other friends. I just said, “All right, keep my stuff. I’m moving to Dubai.”
I thought it would maybe be two years, then I’d move back to California, settle down, and start a family. But that was a long time ago now. I think 17 years. No plan on moving back.
Amanda:
And he’s also a minimalist. I’m the problem. I bring all the stuff. If it were up to him, we’d have almost nothing. So that was probably a big part of it too.
Hannah:
And now kids require a lot of stuff.
Amanda:
That’s right. And four cats as well. We also have cats.
JP:
Scott, you did the initial two-year contract in Dubai. Did you stay at the same school and keep signing on for another year, or did you have two- or three-year contracts?
Scott:
I did an initial two-year contract, and then they did it each year after that. I did four years of elementary school counseling, then moved to the high school side and did high school counseling for a couple of years.
I started a peer counseling program there that was modeled after the peer counseling program I was in when I was in high school.
At that point, I needed something different, so that’s when I moved to Shanghai.
JP:
How did you find that one? Was it through networking by then, or still job fairs?
Scott:
At that point, it was networking. Within high school college counseling, it’s a really tight-knit community. It was through a friend. He was working at that school, and they wanted a grade nine counselor to strengthen that program. So it was a very seamless process.
Greg:
Are you both counselors? I was frozen for a little bit there.
Amanda:
We are now both counselors. When we first got together, I was an elementary teacher.
That’s where I started. I was always on the cusp after AmeriCorps. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do teaching, social work, or counseling. I thought, “Let me do something totally different.”
Greg:
Listeners, we have an infant on the show.
JP:
We have a baby.
Greg:
And look who got up. Daddy got up to take care of it this time. That’s great.
Amanda:
He’s doing a great job.
During AmeriCorps, I was observed by the director of education for that county. At the end, she said, “Have you ever thought about teaching?” I thought, “Okay, if somebody else sees that in me, maybe that’s what I should be doing.”
Hannah:
Dads are best.
JP:
What’s her name?
Scott and Amanda:
This is Maison. She’s spelled the French version because we thought anywhere she is, we’re home. Maison in French is house or home. So that’s why we chose that. And here’s our home.
JP:
M-A-I-S-O-N.
Greg:
Oh, and a cat. Hey, I wish Kent the Cat Guy were here. How many cats do you have?
Four cats. Oh my gosh.
JP:
And Maison is child number one?
Scott and Amanda:
Correct. She’s our first. So it’s been a lot of learning.
JP:
Amanda, we were at the point in your story where you were deciding between teaching, counseling, or social work. AmeriCorps stepped in and said, “What about teaching?” So did you get your teaching certificate at that point?
Amanda:
Yes. After finishing AmeriCorps, I did my certification for California because I already had a bachelor’s degree in early and elementary education.
The reason I decided not to go through with my master’s at the time was because in the US, when Scott was about to go abroad, it was Obama’s Race to the Top administration. We had just finished with No Child Left Behind in the US, and that really soured education, in my opinion.
Then there was Race to the Top, which wasn’t that different. It was still based around test scores. I was jaded because in the program we learned kids are more than test scores, but everything else around us was all about test scores.
That’s where I thought, “I’m not sure what I really want to do.” Then AmeriCorps happened. I got my certification in education, and I loved it. I absolutely enjoyed teaching. It was a fantastic way for me to spark curiosity.
But then COVID hit. Like many people, I pivoted because I felt like the message was, “Even though we’re going through a global pandemic, we’re going to provide the same type of education we would if we were in person.”
I thought, “How? We’re not addressing so many things.” Everybody kept saying, “Kids are resilient.” And I’m like, “But you have to teach skills to be resilient. We aren’t just automatically resilient. Kids are not automatically resilient.”
That’s when I thought it was time. While working full time, I did my master’s degree through TCNJ and took the school counseling route.
I’ve been a counselor now for four years. So we’re both counselors. I don’t think I’ll breach high school. I’ll leave that to him. I’ll do middle school and elementary school.
We joke that with both of us being counselors, it could be either really good for Maison or really bad.
JP:
“Tell mommy all your problems.” “I already did to dad last night.”
Amanda:
Exactly. We do find at times that we’ll use counseling skills on each other, and we’ll say, “Don’t you do that. I know what you’re doing right now.”
JP:
Don’t you counsel me.
Hannah:
From a TCK perspective, that would be great to have parents who are counselors because then they understand what it’s like and how to help you cope. Not all parents do, especially when raising TCKs.
Amanda:
Absolutely. Hannah, are you a TCK?
Hannah:
Yes. And raising TCKs. So I’ve got that experience.
JP:
You’ve got that insight to know what they’re going through. Greg?
Greg:
Thanks for calling on me. I have a counselor question. Not every school, but I’m wondering if you both have the experience where parents deny that there’s a problem going on. They don’t want to accept a label for their kids. They think no matter what, it’s going to label and hurt them. How do you handle that?
Scott:
That’s a good question. I would say every school we’ve been to.
In both of our master’s programs, we talked a lot about the cultural elements of that. Some cultures don’t believe in mental health or don’t believe in that sort of treatment.
So we have to look at it through a different lens. If we come in with a Western mindset of “You need to be an individual, and you need to tell people what you want and need,” it goes over the heads of some families.
You have to meet them where they are. If they believe more in a collectivist or family mindset, we have to understand that.
This also comes up a lot in college counseling. When we think about fit, some families are looking at ranking. As much as we want to say, “There’s so much more to a university experience than the name or ranking,” for some families, the name matters so much.
So we’re always looking at it through that lens.
Amanda:
A lot of it is also educating people on what counseling is and is not. That comes into play quite a bit.
I’m not a clinical counselor. I’m not going to prescribe things. I’m not going to diagnose things. I’m here to support you and your child, or children, in the best way that helps them be successful.
I picture it as a warm walk, not a warm handoff, because we’re not passing them yet. It’s like, “I will guide you through this. You don’t have to do this alone. I’m happy to answer questions. If you want to take a step back, that’s okay too.”
Greg:
In a safe place.
For the listeners, anybody who has not taught overseas should know that a lot of our international schools, at least the better ones, have not only curriculum from the US, Canada, Australia, or Britain, but also sports, music, languages, and counselors.
I’ve always been best friends with our elementary counselors. As a male elementary teacher, I tend to have a lot of the problem kids in my classroom. No matter where you are in the world, there don’t seem to be many male elementary teachers.
So I’ve always become very close to the support I need as a teacher for my students who have problems and need a safe place to exit the classroom for a bit because they’re climbing the walls or being disruptive.
For teachers going overseas, they should know that a lot of these schools have counselors. You are the example, both of you, that we have counselors in our schools. It’s a real shout out to these international schools to have counselors, especially since in a lot of countries, there isn’t the same structure or belief in mental health.
Hannah:
My husband has taught in inner-city Houston and now overseas with kids who have a lot of money. He always says, “Kids are kids.” Whether they’re from inner-city Houston or exorbitantly wealthy, they have the same problems.
Inner-city kids need counselors. Wealthy kids need counselors. It’s not just a division between different areas of the world or social classes.
Scott:
Certainly in high school, we are still seeing the same things I would be seeing back in California: students with eating disorders, self-harm, anxiety, and depression.
It might be fewer and farther between, but we’re still seeing the same things. Then there’s the added element of parents both working and traveling, or one parent working and traveling. There are other elements that come into play that I might not see as often in California, for example.
Every school has a very different approach to counseling. We still have the same standards we would have back in the States or other parts of the world. We have the International School Counseling Association, similar to the American School Counseling Association. So we have those standards and map them with curriculum.
In elementary school, that may be more classroom lessons. In high school, it is more individual work with students or larger presentations with whole groups.
JP:
Do you have a hand in forming advisory groups or homeroom groups and their curriculum?
Scott:
Absolutely. Each school we’ve been at is at different stages in that process. Some schools have really strong advisory programs with prescribed lessons, and they spiral the curriculum each year. Other schools are in the infancy stage and are still trying to create that.
As counselors, we certainly have a role in that and work closely with the school. For example, our school here in Riyadh has a grade-level leader for each grade in 9 through 12. We have four counselors, so each counselor works closely with one grade-level leader. That works out really well.
JP:
That is a great infrastructure for support. I know a lot of counselors are stretched thin. I had a client who was a K–12 counselor, and I was like, “How do you do that?”
If the school is 300 kids, you can understand how K–12 might make sense, because otherwise it gets expensive from a school perspective. But you need so many skills to be able to address all those issues.
It sounds great when you hear year-by-year support in high school. That serves the population so well.
Scott:
We are still comprehensive counselors and have students 9 through 12. We do the academic, social-emotional, and college/career pieces, with that global piece added in.
In terms of advisory, that’s where we work with each individual grade level. It’s nice to have both worlds: advisory and our day-to-day with everything else.
You mentioned mental health earlier. It’s something I think we’re hearing more and more about, for better or worse. It’s a huge passion of mine. I’m actually an instructor for Youth Mental Health First Aid. That program helps support the mental health side of things that often gets pushed aside or not addressed.
I’m hopeful that continues to grow and pick up steam over the next few years.
Greg:
I have to jump in here. This all sounds very interesting, and counseling is amazing, but we have a baby on the screen. Can we talk about having a two-month-old overseas? Obviously, Hannah, you have experience, but look at that.
JP:
Were you overseas?
Hannah:
Yeah.
Amanda:
And having a baby in Saudi Arabia. That whole experience.
Greg:
You had her in Saudi two months ago. Come on. Tell us some stories. Tell us what support you had or didn’t have.
Amanda:
We did. She’s a Saudi.
It was going to all the prenatal visits. One difference we noticed right away was that the doctor didn’t touch me until the very late stages of pregnancy. Scott’s mom is a midwife, so he comes from that background of what that’s like and had this idea of what is supposed to happen. It was obviously very different here.
There are different rules and regulations.
JP:
Presuming the doctor was male then?
Amanda:
No, actually. There are quite a few female doctors. I ended up switching doctors, and my doctor was also female.
JP:
But why would the female doctor not touch you?
Amanda:
I don’t know. To be fair, I have nothing else to compare it to.
Hannah:
I’m trying to think back. That was right on the cusp of COVID, so my memory is shot. But I don’t think that up until I gave birth, the doctor really touched me either. She had an assistant in the room who would do the ultrasound on my stomach, but I don’t think she did anything else until I was in labor.
Scott:
Another interesting part here was that they have two teams. There is a team of doctors for Amanda as she is giving birth, and then as soon as the baby is born, there is another team for the baby. More of the pediatrician side.
There’s a curtain that separates the two. As soon as the baby is born, they pass the baby through the curtain to another team that never sees Amanda.
Amanda:
They don’t talk to me. There’s nothing with me. It’s only for the baby.
JP:
I’m getting Handmaid’s Tale vibes right now. With the curtain and never seeing.
Hannah:
Not the curtain thing, but I think having a team for the baby is somewhat common. When I had my second in Texas, I remember the birthing team was out in the hallway, and our nurse was yelling for them to come in because she needed someone to catch the baby. He was coming faster than they anticipated.
They were waiting for my doctor, and she was parking her car.
Greg:
Catch the football.
Hannah:
The birthing team was out in the hallway, and I’m like, “Just go catch my baby.” I had an epidural, and I couldn’t do it right then.
I think it was the same in Kuwait, but again, I’m having problems remembering. That was six years ago, right on the cusp of COVID. I do think it’s somewhat common to have a team for the baby and a team for the woman.
JP:
I love that idea though, because each person has their specialty and knows what they’re looking for. You know your baby is getting taken care of by a whole team.
Hannah:
It irritated me at first. With Lincoln, I just wanted him on my chest right away because skin-to-skin contact in the first 30 minutes is so important. I was like, “Just give me my baby.” They said, “No, we have to do all the measurements.” I said, “I don’t care. That can wait. Give me my baby.”
Scott:
We had to advocate for that and share it with different nurses and teams. Unfortunately, it became an emergency C-section for Maison. Her heart rate started dropping, and they had to make the call.
What’s different here is that as soon as it’s an emergency C-section, the father can’t be there. They had to wheel Amanda into a surgical room. I couldn’t go past the red line. I had to come back.
Greg:
And you went back to have a cup of tea. They’re like, “Inshallah, it will be okay.”
Scott:
Exactly. It was definitely nerve-wracking not knowing if the baby was okay, if Amanda was okay, or where they were. I had to keep checking in to make sure that once she was out of surgery, I could go see her.
Hannah:
Question along with the C-section and Saudi culture: once women have a C-section, do they offer a tummy tuck or something? Some cultures do that. They’ll do a C-section and a tummy tuck all in one.
Amanda:
No, they don’t. Or at least they didn’t offer it to me. Maybe if you’re important enough here, they do.
It was definitely something where I don’t know if it was a language thing or if we just weren’t very clear, but some things in our birth plan didn’t get honored. There was miscommunication around it.
For example, we put “delayed bathing” on the birth plan because we wanted the vernix to stay on and have that skin-to-skin time. What happened was they wiped her down and took all the vernix off, then just didn’t wash her. So maybe we weren’t clear enough.
Their priority is probably to present a beautiful, clean baby. They think they’re doing what we would want them to do.
Greg:
For the listeners, I want to reassure people that at least where we live in Saudi, there’s a lot of English. I can imagine someone listening and saying, “Oh my God, you don’t even speak the language.” But you probably didn’t have a translator in there. There are doctors and nurses who speak English with Westerners.
Scott and Amanda:
Exactly.
Greg:
A lot of people have babies overseas. Back in 2002, my friends Brynn and Shannon had their first child in Honduras. I remember we have a picture of three of the guys sitting there with the baby, like Three Men and a Baby.
I also remember the nurse coming out, taking out a cigarette, and having a drag in the hallway while all this was going on. She was like, “Yeah, she’s okay.” I’m like, “This is a freaking hospital.”
That was years ago. But with healthcare, you don’t always know what you’re going to get. It’s going to be a different package. Still, a lot of international teachers have kids overseas. We have three of you online right now who had kids overseas.
It’s a shout out to teachers that they don’t have to be worried about that in most cases. Every country is different, but there are a lot of successful babies. It’s even cheaper for some. Insurance plans often cover it, and the quality of care can be great.
Hannah:
I’ve had a child in the US and a child in Kuwait. My care in Kuwait, prenatal care, labor and delivery, everything, far outranked my care and delivery in the US. And we paid nothing in Kuwait.
We paid an arm and a leg to have our child in Texas. The difference was astronomical. Like I said earlier, my doctor was literally parking her car while I was in the middle of giving birth in the US. In Kuwait, my doctor was right there in the room with me.
If you talk about prices, we paid absolutely nothing. Some countries also offer maternity leave, breastfeeding hours, and things like that. I was given 10 weeks maternity leave in Kuwait and breastfeeding hours until the child was two.
Greg:
I don’t get breastfeeding hours in my contract.
JP:
That’s a whole other kettle of fish, OkCupid.
Greg:
So everything went well with your insurance package? You’re not going poor just because you had a baby?
Scott:
Not at all. We didn’t pay anything. We were waiting for a bill to come, but nothing came other than maybe the initial emergency room fee, and that wasn’t much at all.
Amanda gets 84 days. Then she can extend it for another month as unpaid leave. She’s doing that. She does have the breastfeeding hour that she can use to either breastfeed or pump at school.
Amanda:
The care was great. Even though during the C-section they didn’t really talk to me because they were busy doing what they needed to do to make sure the baby and everything was safe, I did have one nurse who came around and gave me updates.
The nurse care afterward was great. I think the standard is four days, but we ended up staying three. The nurses came in to help care for us and make sure our meals were okay. We’re vegetarian, and they supported us with vegetarian meals. They made sure I went to the bathroom. That was new for me, having somebody help me shuffle to the bathroom, but they were just in there. So I was like, “Okay, we’re doing it.”
JP:
And Scott, did you get paternity leave?
Scott:
I got three days. Luckily, it was right before December break, so I was able to take three weeks and be with Amanda and Maison. It was the three of us for three weeks.
I can’t imagine what life would have been like if I had done three days and then said, “All right, I’m going back to work.”
To the listeners, if you’re thinking of having a baby, maybe try starting around March because then that gets you to December break.
JP:
Timing is everything.
Hannah:
Or if you can time it so you have the baby in April, then you get maternity leave up until summer, and then you have all of summer break too.
JP:
Timing is key. Hannah, did Jake get any paternity leave in Kuwait?
Hannah:
You should ask him. He got COVID. Well, I shouldn’t say he got COVID physically, but he took maybe three or four days, then everything shut down for COVID. So he had about six months at home.
He joked with our head of school at the time, “Hey, thanks for the paternity leave. I really appreciate it.” That was back when we had no idea what was going on. It was February 2020, and COVID hadn’t really hit most of the world yet. We shut down and were like, “What do we do now? I don’t know.”
JP:
There were those pockets. I was in Oman on Chinese New Year when it struck Iran, and then everybody in the area started scrambling and thinking, “What can we do?” So it wasn’t just focused in China. There were pockets all around.
Scott and Amanda, you’re looking to raise Ms. Maison overseas?
Amanda:
Yeah. Like Scott, I don’t ever want to move back to the US. Fortunately for both of us, we have family support with that.
I do think it’s a little different now that we have a little one. Families abroad know it’s difficult being away from family and missing traditional memories.
But we do plan to stay out and have her be a TCK. It’s such a gift. We’re so privileged to be able to live this life and provide that lifestyle to our little one. It’s incredible to grow up with different experiences and cultures. We can’t imagine doing anything else.
Hannah:
It’s not always easy, but as a TCK and now raising TCKs, it’s definitely been worth it. Like you said, I don’t have a lot of traditional memories. I do to an extent, because we have been back in the US sometimes, and same with my boys.
But they also get to say, “I was born in Kuwait,” or “I have no legal middle name because the US embassy messed up my name.” They get to say fun stuff like that for two truths and a lie. It enriches their lives.
JP:
I grew up in Ottawa and had one set of grandparents six hours away by car and another set 13 hours away by car. To get to those grandparents, it was planned. It wasn’t every weekend.
Sometimes we forget that with flights, if we plan ahead, we might even see family more when we move overseas because we’re more intentional about seeing them than if we lived six hours away.
Scott:
Absolutely. That’s something we want to continue. Each summer we go back home and visit family. Amanda is from Virginia, so we go to Virginia for a couple of weeks. I’m from California, so we go to California for a couple of weeks. After that, we’re probably ready to go back international. So we try to balance it.
JP:
At some point, you might decide to make a home. A lot of my friends with families overseas decide after doing the suitcase thing and the guest room thing in parents’ or in-laws’ houses that they’re just going to buy a house and let everyone visit them. Then they have a home base. Is that something you might see on the horizon?
Scott:
We’ve talked about it a lot. The trick is where. We’ve thought maybe we’ll go in the middle and have them come to the middle. There’s also owning a place, whether or not we want to rent it out when we’re not there, whether it just sits, who maintains it, and do we buy a place only to be there for a month?
A lot of it is also planning for the future in terms of retirement. That’s a whole other podcast for international educators. We’re not there yet, but never say never.
Greg:
I want to say something. I’m not really a baby guy. I don’t have kids of my own. Love kids, love babies. Two things.
Number one, I hope you have one of those baby carriers where the baby faces out and has the little legs and arms out. Those are the happiest babies I ever see. You can switch them around if you want, but rather than a backpack like the seventies — I think I was in a backpack on my dad’s shoulders.
Number two, now that you have a baby, you’ve moved up in the airlines because now you get to go right to the front of the line. But if you’re ever in Suriname and you try to get over the border, don’t expect Scott to go first. They would only let Amanda go first. Then Scott would have to wait behind everybody else. We did an episode with Scott and Tara, episode 8, about that.
And if you haven’t heard Hannah’s episode about having her baby in Kuwait, episode 99, you have to hear it. It’s the COVID baby story.
Hannah:
For listeners, we do own a townhouse in the US, and we’ve found it to be a wonderful benefit because we have our own space when we go home, especially traveling with kids.
We have family who are willing to open their homes to us anytime, but having our own space for the boys to run around and recover from jet lag is great. We chose a townhouse because they take care of the outside for us. We got a Ring doorbell, security cameras, and a Nest thermostat, so we could control things from overseas.
It just so happened that my sister-in-law lives there now because her lease was up and she needed a place. It worked out immediately for us.
Greg:
Scott and Amanda can just get one somewhere between Virginia and California. Wisconsin is beautiful. Missouri. Just don’t ever go to Texas.
JP:
The danger is that then everybody still has to travel. Ultimately it might be a flip of the coin, or it might be affordability. A California house versus a Virginia house might be very different.
Amanda:
When we first got together and I took Scott to Virginia for the first time, he was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s so green here. What are all these big spaces?”
I was like, “Those are yards. Those are people’s lawns.”
Andrew Hallam’s book talks about investing and how having one property can be good because it gives you a place to call your own, while two or more is really investment. We’ve gone back and forth on it.
JP:
Right now Maison is really small, so she’s adaptable. But with Hannah’s two boys, that would be awkward for a guest room. At some point, you might say, “This makes sense.”
Hannah:
We do have some family members with more than one guest room, but it’s still awkward. I didn’t want my family to be up in the middle of the night if they heard the baby crying. I also wanted my own space that wasn’t just one room.
Traveling with kids is not easy. Get the bassinet seat. They will sleep when they’re newborns, practically the entire flight.
Greg:
With the help of Jack Daniels.
JP:
You’re probably looking at a big two-month tour this summer, right?
Scott:
Yeah. We’re actually moving to Indonesia this summer. It’s four cats, a baby, and a shipment. We’ll go through that experience in the next few months.
JP:
So you were recruiting this year while having a child. Holy kudos to you.
Amanda:
We’re not afraid of challenge and change, I guess. We go big.
Greg:
Let’s have a baby and move at the same time. Where in Indonesia?
Scott:
Jakarta.
JP:
So will you do some US time to balance that?
Scott:
Yeah. We’ll be back in the US for maybe three weeks to avoid the physical presence test and spend a little bit of time in England or Canada. We’re looking at Banff National Park or something in England.
JP:
What do you mean, physical presence test?
Greg:
For Americans, for taxes, you can’t have more than 30 continuous days in the States.
Hannah:
If you’re earning foreign income, you have to prove that you’re outside the United States. There are two ways to go about it. One is the physical presence test, and the other is bona fide foreign residence.
JP:
I’ve never heard this.
Greg:
Just think about it like this, JP. When we go back home, we don’t stay more than 30 days and you’re fine. That’s basically it, with some caveats.
Hannah:
You can qualify for bona fide foreign residence if you are living overseas from January 1 to December 31. It doesn’t matter how many days you’re visiting the US, but it’s a judgment call by the US tax people, so you don’t want too many ties to the US.
JP:
This is a chance for somebody listening. If you’re hearing this and frustrated because you know the actual rules, write to us so we can understand.
I was in the dentist chair yesterday working through my calendar to make sure I was six months less a day in Canada because I’m a non-resident in Canada. I sold the house in 2003, but I always make sure I’m six months less a day.
Greg:
We’re trying to explain this to a Canadian. She’s not going to understand any of this.
This episode is going all over the place. We’ve got babies, countries, taxes, OkCupid. But we have two main questions.
When we talk about the three things, you can’t include anything with a heartbeat. So it can’t be your four cats or your baby. What are three things that make you feel at home in a country?
Scott and Amanda:
See, “at home” changes it a bit.
In the Philippines, we picked out a couch and a bed. Wherever we’ve gone, we bring the couch and bed. As soon as the shipment arrives, we can make it homey again. So definitely the couch and bed. They’ll be going to Indonesia with us.
JP:
So they’re going to Indonesia with you? Wow.
Scott:
It’s comfort.
Greg:
Obviously the bed works. I mean, look, she’s right there in front of you.
JP:
TMI. Or the couch. We’re not judgmental.
JP:
Furniture overseas can be really uncomfortable, so a comfy couch and a comfy bed will help your quality of life immensely. Are there other things that make you feel at home?
Amanda:
The third one is harder because we’re trying to downsize. Maybe it’s the little pictures or trinkets we carry around with us. We have family pictures, magnets on the fridge, paintings we’ve gotten from travels. Things that help us make the space our own.
It’s the memories. Not one particular object, but the things that hold memories.
JP:
And our second question is about a police story you can safely share on air. Do you have one?
Scott:
We actually have one together, and we knew you were going to ask this, so we were talking about which story to tell.
We’re not breaking laws everywhere we go. I won’t go into the Dubai 20s. It was a different time before I met Amanda.
The one we think of most happened in the Philippines. We were actually going to the police station to get fingerprinting done for the FBI background check to send back to the US.
Some of the traffic laws and infrastructure in Manila can be tricky and confusing. We were coming up to a light and needed to do a U-turn. We couldn’t tell from even 50 meters out whether we could turn left or not.
I crept into the intersection and saw a police officer in the middle of the road directing traffic. I rolled down the window, and he said, “Come forward, come forward.”
So I started turning to get to him, and then he said, “You can’t turn. It’s not allowed.”
I said, “You told me to come this way.”
He told us to pull to the side of the road. This was the second or third time we had gone to the police station because the first time they made a mistake with Amanda’s birthday, so we had to go back and redo it.
That same trip, we also got pulled over because we were in the turn lane but didn’t know, and we went straight.
JP:
That guy was baiting you. He was under quota. “Come on, come on. I caught you.”
Scott:
Exactly. Needless to say, we didn’t pay a fee. They didn’t take my license. There may have been a few tears shed. He said, “Go ahead. I’ll actually take you to the police station.”
So he helped us get there because we were lost and flustered, and it was close to closing time. We got a police escort to the police station, which was very nice. But it was definitely one of those “Oh my gosh, again” moments.
JP:
Indonesia is still right-hand drive, right? Not like Japan, Singapore, or Thailand?
Scott:
Yeah. Thailand is on the other side.
Greg:
Have you driven on that side?
Scott:
Yeah. I’ve done that in Cyprus, Australia, and England. Whenever I do it, Amanda gets very nervous because I’m very much on the other side of the line. It’s harder to adjust.
Amanda:
He’s a close-line driver, and I’m just in the middle.
JP:
Which line? The center line or the sideline?
Scott:
I’m on the shoulder, way on the other side. And whenever it’s a stick shift and it’s my left hand rather than my right hand, that’s even trickier.
JP:
I was just in the UK with my mom, and we rented a car for about 10 days. I paid extra for an automatic. Little did I know, I actually reserved a manual because it was the cheapest. I didn’t notice the fine print.
Once we got there, I was like, “I am not doing this with a manual shifter.” My right hand will want to change gears, and I’ll be rolling down a window or something.
Greg:
I did that in Ireland. I was nominated to drive for five days. Oh my God.
I have good advice for anybody who goes to one of those countries. When we got out of the airport in Ireland, the shuttle driver who took us to the car rental said, “Always turn left.”
I was like, “Damn, that’s pretty good advice.” I just kept turning left the whole vacation.
Scott:
It takes you a little longer to get where you need to go, but it works. It’s like a slinky. You just keep spiraling.
Greg:
I could talk to you guys for another four or five hours. I really could. But I think we need to draw this to an end.
Let’s do some final thoughts from you, Scott and Amanda.
Scott and Amanda:
We’re really excited for this next chapter in our life. We’re raising a child and going back to Southeast Asia, which we miss a lot. We enjoy hearing other people’s stories, so thank you so much for having this podcast.
Usually we’re the ones asking questions, so it was hard not to throw it back to you all so much. We really appreciate you taking the time and letting us be part of it.
Hannah:
Thank you guys for joining us on the podcast. It’s great to have parents on the podcast and parents who have given birth overseas. For listeners, it can be an amazing experience. We’ve talked about a lot of the positives on the show, but also some of the realistic things. So don’t be afraid if that’s your scenario.
JP:
We’ve heard so much from you about so many different things. OkCupid, obviously, can work out even when you’re not in the same country. We also heard about going from teaching to counseling and that trajectory.
This has been such a rich episode of different stories and pathways. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing a little slice of your life. And Maison as well.
Greg:
Yes, this whole episode is about Maison, her first podcast at two months old, from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
We did not talk enough about cats. If Cat Guy Kent had been with us, we would have talked a lot more about cats. JP is a dog person. Hannah, we haven’t talked much about pets, but I love cats and dogs.
If you’re a listener who loves cat stories, jump back to episode 16 from 2021. We had the greatest cat story ever with Aaron and Tabitha. I think they’re banned from an airline forever because of a cat story.
On behalf of Scott and Amanda in Riyadh with Maison, thank you very much. Hannah in Pakistan, JP Mint in Mexico, and I’m Greg the Single Guy. We’ll see Scott and Amanda again sometime soon in Indonesia, with their next child or with Maison as she grows up.
JP:
Or a fifth cat. You never know.
Amanda:
No more. No more.
Greg:
Thank you very much, everybody. That’s an episode. We’ll see you next episode of the ITP.