by Rob Corder

Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its commitment to grant citizenship to expatriates that have qualifications in hi-tech professions.

A naturalisation programme was first discussed in October 2004 when it was announced that expats with degrees in medicine, computer science, and other branches of science and technology would be given priority for citizenship.

A requirement for expatriates to have spent 10 years living in Saudi Arabia was relaxed at that time.
Applications for citizenship have been accepted since May 2005.
It is thought that up to one million of the seven million expatriates estimated to be living in the Kingdom might be eligibile.

Citizenship will not deliver the same rights of a Saudi Arabian national, but is expected to remove the requirement for a migrrant worker to be tied to a sponsor; a rule that greatly restricts freedom to switch jobs.

Citizens would also be able to travel freely in and out of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia’s Interior Minister, Prince Nayef Bin Abdel Aziz, reaffirmed yesterday that King Abdullah had agreed to grant citizenship to foreign residents with scientific qualifications, but gave no further details.

It is expected that citizenship will be dependent on a points system that was first announced in 2005. At that time, it was stated that applicants must accumulate a minimum of 23 points to qualify in the first stage of the process based on the length of stay in the country, the number of family members dependent on the applicant, and the level of qualification.

An applicant was to be given 13 points for a doctorate in medicine or engineering, 10 points for those holding doctorates in other sciences and eight points for a master’s degree.Applicants were also required to present a certificate from the Imam of their local mosque stating that they regularly attended for prayers.

by Chris Pearson

Paris isn’t cheap. We knew that going in, but we were a bit surprised by just how expensive it is to stay in Paris at even the “less expensive” places. So we did lots of research for our Paris trip this coming August, and I will share our findings with you. Perhaps it will save you a few hours in finding a place for, or few hundred Euros on, your next trip to Paris.

There are two main factors that cause Paris to be expensive in our case. The first is that the U.S. dollar is very weak at the moment. If a dollar equaled a Euro (like it did eight years ago) then things wouldn’t be so bad. As I write this, however, a U.S. dollar equals just over .6 of a Euro which means that things are more than 56% expensive in U.S. dollars that they were eight years ago due to the weak dollar. This doesn’t even consider inflation. As recent as 2002, a U.S. dollar equaled 1.15 Euros which means things have actually become more than 70% expensive in just six years (not counting inflation)!

The second factor is that there are four of us. Very few hotels in Paris allow four people in a single room (what are called quad rooms in Paris) which means that we’d have to get two rooms at more than 90% of the Paris hotels. Given that average room rates are near 200 Euro a night, we are talking about more than $600 U.S. dollars a night for something that isn’t all that fancy. Ouch! But there is a better, less expensive way.

Look not for a hotel but an apartment when you want to go to Paris. There are many advantages in renting an apartment in Paris over a hotel room.

1. apartments are usually bigger, in many cases much bigger
2. apartments have a kitchen (not only is this a matter of convenience, but it also means you don’t have to eat out for every meal–saving yourself some more money)
3. apartments frequently include a free-to-use washing machine (and compared to hotels more have free cable TV, WiFi, and phone calls)
4. apartment neighbors are usually real Parisians instead of noisy tourists
5. apartments can usually accommodate 4 or more people
6. apartments cost much less than a much smaller hotel room
7. apartments usually have a big price break if you stay for a week or more.

About the only disadvantage is you won’t have daily maid service. With the above discovered, we narrowed down our search to three places.
http://www.vrbo.com/171594

http://www.vrbo.com/79965

http://www.vrbo.com/117217

We ended up going with the middle one because the first seemed a little cramped for four of us, and the last one was booked the week we needed it. I’ll provide reviews and recommendations (or not) after we stay there in August.

To look for your apartment in Paris these are the two best sites:

http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/europe/france/ile-de-france/paris

http://paris.en.craigslist.org/vac/

Everyone Goes Through the Five-Stage Cycle of Crosscultural Adjustment

By Daniela Montabaur

Everyone who moves to another country goes through a cultural adjustment cycle. Some take longer to go through the cycle than others.

Expatriate Amy Hart, a North Carolina native who has lived and worked for 11 months in Munich, Germany, helps us to differentiate among the five different stages of the adjustment cycle.

1. Honeymoon Stage: At first stage everything in Hart’s her new surroundings was profoundly exciting and interesting. She had the feeling of a dream finally coming true and being in the middle of a great adventure. Just like a honeymoon, the bliss of beginning a new life can be rose-colored, happy, and hopeful for most expatriates.

2. Culture Shock: After six to eight weeks Hart moved into the culture shock stage. “Overall, I hated the feeling of not being independent. It’s as if you are a child again. Your personal freedom is suddenly taken away from you,” said Hart. It’s typical at this stage to physically feel that something is not right.

Hart often complained about headaches and stomach upsets. She felt tired and couldn’t concentrate on her work. Her sleeping patterns changed as well. She felt homesick and as if she was living with one foot in her American culture. This stage lasted for about another eight weeks.

3. Initial Adjustment Stage: After the culture shock period Hart went into what we call initial adjustment stage and became able to connect with local people in social and business situations. Though she was still missing her home, she gained self-reliance. Being needed in her company helped her feel better.

It was hard for her to realize that she then had to go through another stage of negative feelings.

Pennsylvania expatriate Kelly Payne lived and worked in Germany and Japan. She found it easier to enter this stage of initial adjustment when she learned how the ways of relaxing in her new host country differed from her own.

North Americans are active and try to crowd as many activities into an hour as possible. Wasting time is wasting money. In cultures where there is less emphasis on competition, people are able to let time “fill itself.” They place more emphasis on quality of actions than quantity of actions.

During the initial 40-minute subway rides to work in Germany, Payne felt the urge “to be doing something.”

“When I forgot to take my book or my walkman with me, I felt so useless just sitting in the subway. It took a while until I learned not to feel guilty when I just enjoyed watching people or letting my mind wander,” said Payne.

4. Mental Isolation: The initial adjustment stage is followed by another wave of integration ups and downs.

During this stage Hart really needed support and help from her friends and co-workers. She felt anger toward the host culture and doubt about her decision to live in Europe. “Maybe the people back home are forgetting about me,” said Hart.

She complained about the fact that everything is “verboten” (forbidden) in Germany and that the food was different. People were staring at her in a way she was not used to. “I sometimes felt as if I had an imaginary American flag on my forehead. People just knew even before I spoke. “I got the ‘you’re different’ type of look,” said Hart. She lost motivation to continue learning German, and you could tell a difference in her personality. The sparkles in her eyes were dimming but her mind was expanding as she transitioned.

5. Acceptance and Integration: Finally, Hart entered the last stage of the culture adaptation cycle: acceptance and integration. She stopped trying to change the host culture and stopped making constant comparisons to her own American way. She developed strategies for everyday life in Germany. She was willing to take German classes again, tried to speak German to everyone in the office, and seemed to be more content and less moody.

“My sense of time was mixed up in my first months here in Germany. At a restaurant with my German friends, I felt strange when they kept sitting at the table after finishing dinner. I felt the urge to pay for the meal and leave. I was ready to go to another bar or cafè. I learned not to be in such a rush and to have dinner for two hours or more instead of 45 minutes. I began to let go of the feeling that having a tight schedule was important and productive.”

The key to overcoming cultural difficulties is being willing to look behind the façade of appearances and learn to understand the basic human emotions we all share. For individuals from different cultural backgrounds, the possible ways of perceiving the same event can differ greatly.

“You can only see what you know.” Learning this is the key to understanding.

Sitting at home and gazing out across your windswept and rain soaked garden it is easy to picture yourself enjoying a new life in a new country, but just how does this picture in your mind’s eye live up to the reality once you have moved overseas? Well, this is not perhaps as easy a question to answer as you might imagine.

Probably the most significant problem is that there are so many variables to think about and so many factors which are quite simply not known at the beginning. It is very easy, for example, to believe that the fact that you do not speak the language is unimportant as, in the short term at least, you may well be able to get by in your mother tongue and can always pick up the language in the longer term. Just how easy is it however to learn a language and just how easy is it to pick up the language of your chosen country?

You may also be looking forward to all that exotic food, but just how is a perhaps substantial change in your diet going to affect your health? You may very well have experienced some wonderful restaurant food on holiday trips but is this really the type of food you will be eating every day when you are cooking for yourself?

The problems are of course relatively minor when it comes to comparing them to trying to adjust mentally to living in what is not only a different country, but possibly a very different culture. Those things which you have considered both curious and fascinating during holiday trips could well present you with considerable problems when they become part and parcel of your daily life.

Most countries with a sizeable expatriate community develop a large support network, which often includes an expat club which holds regular meetings, organizes events and outings, distributes its own newspaper and considerably more. At first sight this may seem very comforting but it is worth considering why the expats in the region have found it necessary to create such an extensive support network. Indeed, when you see the extent to which the lives of many expats revolve around the expat community you may well find yourself asking why they chose to live overseas in the first place.

In fact many expats find that, once the novelty wears off, they regret their decision but have frequently burnt their bridges and now find themselves with no alternative other than to stay where they are and to make the best of their situation.

Of course this is not the case with all expats and, as an expat myself, I can tell you that there are also many of us who are extremely happy with our decision to move overseas and would not wish to turn the clock back. For many hundreds of people each year the decision to live abroad is the best decision they have ever made and one which they assuredly do not regret. By how can you tell which group you are likely to join before you take your decision?

Regretably, you can never be certain, although there are some things which you can do to increase the chances of your decision being one which you are glad you made.

The most important thing that you can do is to test the water so to speak and this means effectively living in your chosen country for a fair period of time before you cut your ties with home. But the critical word here is ‘living’.

It is no good just visiting your chosen country from time to time on holiday, staying in hotels and dining out in restaurants. Ideally you need to spend at least a year in the country and to throw off any thoughts of being on holiday. You have got to make a conscious effort to live as you would want to live in the longer term, staying away from tourist areas and activities and becoming part of the local community. Live just like a local, doing your own cooking and taking the time to learn something of the local history, lifestyle and culture, as well as making the effort to learn the language.

By steering clear of the expatriate community and integrating yourself into the local community from the very outset you will rapidly find out whether or not you would be making a wise decision to move overseas permanently.

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