The first time you stand beneath a monument, wander through ancient ruins, or sit at a table savoring a new cuisine — it imprints on you. But after you’ve done this five, six, ten times in different places, something happens. Another statue, another waterfall, another restaurant — it all starts to blur together. Tourism, by its very design, has a limit.

Residency, however, is different. When you commit to living in a country — really living there — the world opens up in ways no guidebook could prepare you for. You stop being a spectator and start becoming a participant.

It’s the little things: figuring out how to pay a utility bill in another language, getting to know the owner of the corner shop, or being invited to a neighbor’s family dinner. When you’ve spent three years in a hillside town in Umbria where the baker saves your daughter the last cornetto, or two years in a Thai village where your son plays soccer with local kids every afternoon — you begin to belong. And belonging changes you.

You learn a culture not from the outside looking in, but from within — noticing the subtleties, sharing in the traditions, and adapting to the rhythms of daily life. The friendships you build there aren’t fleeting. They last a lifetime, especially in a world where technology keeps us connected across oceans and time zones.

That’s the difference. A photo of a famous landmark will eventually fade in your memory. The taste of a meal, no matter how extraordinary, won’t sustain you. But the people, the lessons, the shared perspective you carry from embedding yourselves in a place — those stay with you forever.

And when you do this with your family, the impact multiplies. Your spouse and children are transformed right alongside you. Together, you develop a kind of secret language — a private perspective on the world that only you share. It shows up in how you see daily life, in the way you respond to people, in the conversations you have at the dinner table years later.

That shared experience becomes a thread running through your life together. It makes the bond with your family richer, more textured. You all know what it’s like to live “inside” a culture instead of just passing through it. And that shared knowing? It changes how you move through the world as a family — with more empathy, more curiosity, more comfort with the unfamiliar. It becomes one of the most unique and precious things you carry together.

Tourism satisfies curiosity. Residency transforms identity. And when you do it as a family, it transforms not just who you are, but how you belong to each other.