s/o Moving outside your comfort zone

[Sebastian (a lady)]

[spinning of Heather in NC's thread on wine in church to talk about why I dwell on minor issues when I have a big life change looming]

 

When we went overseas the first time, we were in a rather unusual position of having a job where we were going to officially represent the US. One thing that I noticed with the other wives preparing for these jobs was an obsession with getting gifts to give while on station and getting appropriate clothes. Now I will grant that selecting gifts and building a wardrobe were important. But I think we put a little too much time and effort on getting it just right, when really there was a much wider spectrum of acceptable choices than we understood.

 

Looking back on it now, I think that given all the uncertainties that we were dealing with: moving overseas, sometimes with very young kids; learning a foreign language; planning to shop and ship foodstuffs, sometimes supposedly to last two years; dealing with issues of culture shock; trying to master a new set of responsibilities that involved hosting people from a slew of other countries in our homes and attending a lot of receptions and events that were far more formal than our normal everyday lives; changes in schooling for our kids; moving far away from our friends, families and support systems; etc. Your "must deal with" list won't match up perfectly with mine, but there might be some overlap. And there will be items that are going to just stay outside your control.

 

There was no way I was going to be able to influence my housing, if people liked me, if the food agreed with me, if we were subject to terrorist attack, if my parents got sick while we were gone, if my kids got sick while we were there, if there was a war or a coup or a health disaster. I couldn't even control whether I had an American style or German style washing machine.

 

I think that is why we tended to latch on to the gifts and the clothes. I could go to the Talbott's outlet and spend a few hours and wave my credit card and at the end of it, feel like I'd done something to prepare myself for what was coming up. Likewise, I could shop the stationary store outlets or the handcraft stores and find just the right cards for a sending thank you or just the perfect hostess gift (assured of conveying just the right nuance of how much I liked her and how much she should like me). If you want to put it in a literary context, I suppose I was getting together my armour and my magical objects in order to complete my quest.

 

Every move is different. This last move, I didn't need the clothes and gifts, so I put my effort into finding great books in English and loading up my iPod. For some people it is the 50 pairs of socks. It is whatever thing you latch onto to make you feel like you are, if not in control of the situation, at least prepared to meet it.

 

But sometimes, it helps to take a step back and say, I would have to write four notes a week to use all this stationary or that I could wear the same two suits to every event and what will matter is how I behave and treat other people. Or that this or that issue is becoming just a distraction and not helping us get ready to go.

[Heather in Neverland]

Um...wow...how did you get into my brain? :D

 

I AM obsessing with lots of small random details...like whether or not to join a church before I leave. I have an actual list of things to buy in bulk and they include a 2 year supply of all kinds of things. It's almost like I am trying to take the U.S. with me. I know part of it has to do with the fact that they are providing so much for us in terms of furniture, etc. and everything is going to look so different so maybe I will feel better if I have 24 bottles of my favorite shampoo? :tongue_smilie:

 

I am trying to prepare for every possible scenario knowing full well that it is impossible. What is wrong with me? :willy_nilly:

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Um...wow...how did you get into my brain? :D

 

I AM obsessing with lots of small random details...like whether or not to join a church before I leave. I have an actual list of things to buy in bulk and they include a 2 year supply of all kinds of things. It's almost like I am trying to take the U.S. with me. I know part of it has to do with the fact that they are providing so much for us in terms of furniture, etc. and everything is going to look so different so maybe I will feel better if I have 24 bottles of my favorite shampoo? :tongue_smilie:

 

I am trying to prepare for every possible scenario knowing full well that it is impossible. What is wrong with me? :willy_nilly:

 

I think it is a totally normal attempt to find some small parts of the process that you can get under control. Now I've moved a time or two. Not as many times as the folks who've been on tracks where they spend less than 2 years at one job or have a year here then a year there, but enough that moving isn't unfamiliar.

 

But the overseas thing is just totally different. There are so many things that you have to get done from passports, visas and shots to what do do with pets to what to take, store and get rid of and on and on.

 

For a while I was sort of obsessing over what kind of washing machine I was going to have. DH wouldn't ask and didn't even understand why it mattered (to his way of thinking, I would get what I got and deal with it). But it was something I was curious about because I thought it would help me envision what my new home was going to be like.

 

I think part of what happens is that you end up dealing with several different adjustment cycles at the same time. One one hand, you are researching, looking forward to and sort of fearing the new place. But on the other hand, there is also a bit of a grieving process as you give up your home, your friends, your sense of normalness. So you end up with the stages of grief overlapping with the stages of culturalization. It can make for some wacky ups and downs. And in your situation, you will also be giving up homeschooling (and having absolute control over your kids' education) and becoming accustomed to your new job (and all the inevitible little personality issues that come with any job).

 

Hang in there. Probably most of what you're feeling is a totally normal reaction to the situation. Try to keep the main thing the main thing.

 

BTW, I ended up with a German washing machine. It could take up to three hours to wash a load (whites washed on high, almost boiling water) but boy were they clean.

[Amira]

Can I just say that Sebastian's advice is totally right? I'd forgotten many of these things until the last few weeks when it's come up that we might get to move back to a country we lived in a few years ago. Moving overseas to a new country is a completely different thing than any old move within the US.

 

(I'm still using tampons I bought for our year in Kyrgyzstan- that was in 2005. Maybe I was a little too obssesed with the mundane?)

[Friederike in Persia]

We're living a long way from the capital of Tajikistan, in a rural town. A lot has changed over the last 10 years here, but by now you can get most Western conveniences (tampons, whashing machines, dish washers, Western brand toiletries and cleaning materials,...). And this is rural Central Asia.

So my bet is that Malaysia will have all those things and more!

If you can somehow manage to not be too concerned about the exact brands, than you can just relax and maybe do some reading on Malay culture, raising your kids as Third Culture Kids, how to learn new languages, maybe even do RS in Malay,... rather than spending a lot of time shopping.

This is the sort of thing we hope people do before they come and join us, cause it helps them to start up out here.

[Heather in Neverland]

You ladies are so awesome and funny (I had tampons on my list of things to buy in bulk! :D). Remember my American culture thread that got everybody so riled up? Well, I think I've figured it out and it boils down to one word: convenience. We are a culture of convenience. You want it? You got it. And I think my fear is a lack of convenience. Is that pathetic or what? :tongue_smilie:

[saw]

Good food for thought here -- I realized that if I just have my Crest toothpaste in the big American-style tubes, and not the tiny little European Colgate tubes, I'm happy.

[Laura Corin]

I always obsess about clothes during changes. I spent endless time on warm clothing for the boys and husband before we moved to Scotland. On the one hand, I do think it was worthwhile: Calvin and husband get very miserable when chilly (and get chilly easily) and I do think that the ability to stay warm and dry did help the transition. On the other..... I think I was trying to avoid thinking about bigger issues.

 

Laura

[Heather in Neverland]

I always obsess about clothes during changes. I spent endless time on warm clothing for the boys and husband before we moved to Scotland. On the one hand, I do think it was worthwhile: Calvin and husband get very miserable when chilly (and get chilly easily) and I do think that the ability to stay warm and dry did help the transition. On the other..... I think I was trying to avoid thinking about bigger issues.

 

Laura

 

:lol:

 

For me it is shoes. I need shoes that are professional yet comfortable yet good for hot weather yet good in rain since it rains a lot there. My boys need shoes that are durable yet good in hot weather yet good in rain. As does my husband. Then I am thinking about buying multiple pairs of shoes as my boys feet tend to grow pretty quickly. Shoes, shoes, shoes.

 

Then I have to stop myself and think..they do wear shoes in Malaysia, right? So they must get them somewhere, right?

 

I think I need a drink (but don't tell my pastor!).

[Sebastian (a lady)]

:lol:

 

For me it is shoes. I need shoes that are professional yet comfortable yet good for hot weather yet good in rain since it rains a lot there. My boys need shoes that are durable yet good in hot weather yet good in rain. As does my husband. Then I am thinking about buying multiple pairs of shoes as my boys feet tend to grow pretty quickly. Shoes, shoes, shoes.

 

Then I have to stop myself and think..they do wear shoes in Malaysia, right? So they must get them somewhere, right?

 

I think I need a drink (but don't tell my pastor!).

 

My dh had a phrase, "German solutions for German problems." What that meant is that Germans had probably already figured out ways of dealing with issues that we didn't see because we were approaching them from an American viewpoint.

 

One example, we have a small refrigerator. It was a little bit bigger than what you'd put into a college dorm or find in a hotel room. The freezer was the size of a shoe box (I could put ice cream in, but not a frozen pizza). One of the obvious things about this is that it reflected an emphasis on more regular shopping. You might get deli meat three times a week, not expect it to stay good in plastic packaging for weeks. But this also means that you can find little plastic reusable deli boxes that perfectly fit on the little shelves of your refrigerator (much of my plastic ware was too big).

 

So part of the fun will be figuring out how to deal with local conditions using your own combination of American and local resources. So maybe for the shoes, you will have one pair for getting to school and a different pair for at school. (I sometimes wore snow books with a nice suit and then changed into dress shoes once I got to where we were going.)