THE LITTLE THINGS

The past couple of months for me have been kind of hard for many reasons. One reason, I’ve been working since we arrived in Amman 2,5 years ago, but since this summer I’m at home. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being able to be a stay at home mum, but most of my friends work and are not available during the day. But with only 5 months left in this beautiful country, I should feel lucky. Lucky that I have the opportunity to focus on my studies and have time to enjoy these last few months before we move onto pastures new.

Moving overseas might seem a daunting proposition. Just from an organisational point of view it’s a huge task but funnily enough often it’s not actually the move itself which I find most difficult, it’s adjusting to a new environment and all the little things that gets me down.

Little things, like trying to find the words in a different language to explain myself in a pharmacy (I had a couple of dental treatments in the past week and was in so much pain!). Or unexpected events such as our car breaking down a couple of months ago, running out of water for the fourth time this week or searching for that secret ingredient for your favourite recipe that would be easy to get at home.

Not to moan but adapting to doing normal stuff in a way that’s alien to me is difficult. During which all the time I’m trying to keep a semblance of normal family life going to help everyone else out.

It might sound paradoxical to say the little things are more challenging than the big things but let’s look at it this way.

If we know a big challenge is coming, uprooting and moving overseas, then we can prepare ourselves for that challenge – we expect it and we deal with it.

But what we cannot do, however hard we try, is prepare ourselves for the unknown – the actual living abroad part. You can research yes, but you can’t fully prepare for how you’ll cope with the changes.

Bearing this in mind, what I find really important is, rather than feeling frustrated because I can’t do it, is to acknowledge that we’re living in a new culture and that we are learning lots of new skills.

Similarly, just like it’s the little things that affect us, also it can be the strangest things that you miss. Things that you didn’t particularly realise that you even valued! Home Comforts!

And don’t get me started on tea! I don’t know what it is about British people and their tea, but my husband is fussy about it, for sure. But getting the right one is so difficult, if not impossible, to get it here (we stockpile ours from UK visits now or we order of Amazon).

How to get over it? Because you do need to get over it.

Well, I guess it’s just a question of attitude. I ask myself, why am I missing that? Is it just because I can’t have it?

I can acknowledge that I am over-reacting about tea or sausages, or the lack of communication by the school, but it means a lot to me at the time and that is OK. Just as it is OK to get worked up over something minor in the grand scheme of things. The most important thing to remember is that all of these emotions are completely normal and I don’t let anyone tell me they are not.

Because the fact of the matter is that when we move on from where we are now in 5 months, we’ll miss some funny things from this place too.