1. Be flexible
There will inevitably be something that does not work out quite as planned. I naively expected to dive into work right away, but it turned out that my basic school German was not good enough, even for teaching English. My original plan was to get steady work and then work on my German – that plan had to be reversed.
There could be problems with visas or living situations. The previous owner of our apartment kept asking for more time to move out. The Verlobter purchased the place in the spring with the promise that the previous owners would be out by September, so we were not terribly flexible on that.
You can’t anticipate what will go wrong, but you should probably anticipate that something will. Prepare for many deep breaths and looking on the bright side.

Sometimes you drop an unopened jar of off-brand Nutella on…