We are into our fifth year of living abroad now and looking back on everything that has happened during that time, it feels like we have lived a lifetime of new experiences.
When we left, we had no idea how things would turn out. Would we like it? Would the girls settle here? How would they cope with having to learn a new language, make new friends? The experience was always going to be somewhat of a roller coaster ride.

When you move away, your life is suddenly filled with uncertainty and you never really know what is going to happen. I guess that’s part of the excitement. When you choose ‘the road less travelled’ you can create your own path. Anything goes, there are no rules. Discovering new places, connecting with new people and experiencing new activities. You never get bored.
You face challenges, you get to know yourself better, you learn, you broaden your horizons, meet amazing people, you evolve, adapt and you create memories that will last forever.

But things will never be the same again
As soon as you move abroad your life will change forever. We all adapted to living here in Switzerland really quickly and even if we hadn’t and we hated it we still would have had a valuable life experience. All your senses are heightened when starting out and for a while ‘routine’ does not exist. You learn to improvise and deal with the unexpected. It seems a never ending adrenalin rush. New places, habits, foods, friends, challenges. It all sounds a bit overwhelming but it is actually very exhilarating. You begin to take a more pro active role in deciding what happens to you and never just wait around for opportunities to present themselves. Living abroad builds a respect and an opportunity to appreciate everyone and everything around you. These lessons will stay with you and shape the person you will become.

Embrace the scale of what you are doing

It’s hard to communicate with people back home about what it’s really like. You don’t want to sound like you didn’t like where you were because that’s where they still are. We didn’t move because we didn’t like it (I love London). We moved because, as PE teachers we got totally fed up with the constant rain we had that year, it really affected our mood. But, I like to think that out of every negative situation, a positive will appear. It’s certainly happened to me more than once!

It’s hard to find the words to describe what it’s like because its not like going on holiday somewhere, and you don’t want to overwhelm people with stories of situations that they can’t possibly understand. Facebook has been great because it saves actually having to tell people about all the little details and lots of my friends have said how nice it has been to follow our journey since we moved here.

You feel like you are capable of doing anything

Lots of people have told us how brave we were and that they would love to do it but they are too scared to take the risk. At the time, I guess it was a brave thing to do but looking back on how things have turned out it doesn’t seem that way at all. It’s been pretty smooth sailing all the way. It actually makes you feel that you can do anything, and you can by the way, you just have to take the jump. What’s the worst that can happen? You stand to have way much more to gain than to lose, let me tell you. Big life changes are not as scary as you think they are. We often make things out in our heads to be much larger than they actually are in reality.

You get good at saying goodbye
It makes you realise that most things and people in your life are just passing through. You make the most of the time you have with people, get to know about them really well and then have to say goodbye. That’s the hard part. It’s harder to be the one that stays than goes. For them everything changes, onto a new exciting chapter, but for you, things stay the same, except without them. You share a special time in a special place and for that you have to be truly grateful.

You forget what ‘normal’ is
There is no ‘normal’ anymore as the social and cultural differences between everyone you meet teach you that normality doesn’t exist. I like that. We are socially programmed to live a certain way depending on where we come from or grew up. Moving abroad and living around people from all over the world makes you challenge those perceptions. You do things you want to do, not because you think you should because it’s expected.

You need to learn a bit of patience when you move abroad. Things are not always as easy as when you were back home. Even simple things can become a huge challenge. Which bus to catch, how to get somewhere, asking for help and then trying to understand the response. I’m lucky the girls are now fluent in French so I often use them to help me out.

At first I missed certain things from home. Foods, magazines, certain shops. I knew where I could get the things I needed and liked. But now, I’ve forgotten all of those things and love the new things I’ve found to replace them. Serendipity.

Home is where we are as a family

You will always be part of two worlds. The girls still say they are going ‘home’ when they go back to England. They, unlike many children they go to school with, have firm roots. My husband and I are both English, they were born there and spent the first 7 and 9 years of their lives growing up in North London. To me ‘home’ is wherever we all are. So, for now, home is Switzerland. Having said that, we still get mail sent to our parents addresses and the girls go to the dentist there every time we are back (look at the cost of medical treatment here and you will understand why!)

 

There’s no turning back
The world is an amazing place, a small place in some respects. It also feels like a different place now, more accessible. How can we not choose to keep travelling and discovering all it has to offer? You come to believe that anything is possible. You become a more restless version of the person you were before.

Living abroad can be one of the most satisfying and challenging things you can do. It has changed us all…forever. You can never go back. You can if you want to of course but it will never be the same.

We are not the same people we were 4 years ago. We have evolved and who we are today are different people to those who would have stayed in the UK. The girls have grown up and changed so much, as they would have done if we had stayed. But, they would be very different girls, although we will never know to what extent. I am proud of the way they have embraced our move and the things they have gained from it have been priceless. I think they have been incredibly lucky to have been given the opportunity to have spent this time in an International Bilingual School setting and hope they have made friends, wherever they all end up, for life.

What have we learnt from living abroad?
-Materialistic things don’t matter nearly as much as experiences and memories.
-We stopped waiting for things to happen and have learnt to live in the moment.
-The process of adapting to a new country has helped us discover more about ourselves.
-Surviving out of our comfort zone has helped us face many of the challenges life has thrown at us.
-We have learnt that we can do anything, anywhere.
-We can feel at ‘home’ in a different Country.
-New experiences have inspired us and helped us think outside the box.
-By letting go of what is familiar, we have discovered things we like even better.
-Making new friends from all over the world has helped us see how much we have in common but also has encouraged us to embrace diversity.
-We have learnt so much from people that are very different from us.
-Having to adapt to new situations is a life skill that will prove vital in the future.
-It has become much easier to embrace the unexpected and realise that the best things happen when you say “yes” more often.
-Seeing life from a new perspective has broadened our own.
-It has developed life skills that staying at ‘home’ could never have taught us.
-These new adventures have made us love life like never before.
-It has helped us realise what is important and helped us set priorities for the future.
-Doing nothing annoys us. Being pro active has become our default setting, as has near constant travel planning.
-We have learnt to thrive by trying new things with new people.
-The world truly is our oyster.

The Future
If it wasn’t for this move, we wouldn’t be contemplating the future the same as we are now. We would think it was too hard, too risky but it makes you feel as though you can do anything.

The world is an amazing place. The addiction for more exploring will continue.

Let me know about your experiences living abroad.