Moving abroad is hard. There’s no way around that fact, yet deep in the recesses of my brain, I can’t seem to shake my expections of fluidity and ease.
What a ridiculous thought.
Fluidity? Ease? Like lava flowing down a hill, the reality is that problems come in a barrelling flow and my mistakes just make it easier for that flow to pick up speed.
Just recently, the tiniest, most mundane thing momentarily broke my resilience. It had been a measly 10 days since moving to Edinburgh, and while things could have consistently gone worse, they weren’t always ideal either. At this point I was still unable to pay my half of the bills and rent, so my flatmate had to make up for my bank woes. I’ve ended up paying triple what I should have on the bus one day and watched a man bite off his dead nail on said bus. I won’t describe all the issues I have faced, but just take my word for it, things could be going a bit better.
One of the most awkward things about moving abroad is your whole living situation. Maybe you’ve done things similarly your whole life or maybe you’ve been able to see different ways of living, but regardless, living with people from other cultures can be rocky. I’m a frugal kiwi at heart, but there are some things I won’t skimp on, for the sake of serving my flatmates and making it a more welcoming environment. For example, I like to refill the kettle with a good amount of water so that the next person (me or other flatties) can enjoy the ease of rocking up and just clicking a button.
I guess that wastes too much power here. I was informed it’d be better to only fill up the kettle with what you need, because turning it on will save some power. Fair enough. I just wanted to be nice, but I’m totally fine with adapting.
You’d think the fact that I’ve lived with people all over the world and that having flatmates boil their eggs in the kettle would bother me more. You’d think not having a bank account for the first two weeks in a country would bother me. You’d think spending oodles of money with no income would bother me.
But no, the kettle situation made me cry. For the first time in quite awhile, I broke. And at such a trivial and normally unimportant thing.
Cerebrally, I could tell you that I know it was a build up of emotions throughout the whole leaving and arriving process. Or that I was surmounting a steep learning curve. But I think the reality is a bit more complex than that.
You see, I like to be right. I like to be in the know. I like to do things the right way, and normally a quite economical and logical way. So the idea that I might be doing things the wrong way, even if it’s subjective, that offends me. You could link that my sometimes rampant in(un?)teachability, sure, but it’s all wrapped up in pride.
There is nothing like moving abroad that can humble you to your very core. You know nothing. You often know no one. You do things “wrong” according to the locals, and you will never say things “right”.
I find travelling, living, and working in other Western countries to often come with a bit more baggage than experiences in radically different countries. I come to places like the US, New Zealand, and now the UK with weird expectations that are rarely met. When you arrive in a place that looks like and even feels like what’s familiar, it seems a bit harder to let go of what you’re used to. Maybe the way you cook or when you eat is considered “bad”. Maybe you don’t have enough differences to be considered exotic enough to be given a “pass”, so you’re criticised or teased instead. I think when people move to a dramatically different place, they leave with the expectation they will be met with weird and uncomfortable experiences. But me? Perhaps in my folly I left with the expectation that the UK would be similar to New Zealand. That I’d be able to do my dishes the same way, or that I could live a similar lifestyle.
But the reality is, one should expect wherever they move to be totally different. I hope you don’t expect criticism and mockery, but you will be teased a little bit. Especially if you look like the people you live with.
I’m still figuring things out, and I still don’t understand why Great Britain uses so much plastic, but I’m trying to adapt.
I will endeavour to only put the kettle on at appropriate times, and especially to adapt to a different way of living. It’s not that it’s a necessarily better way of living, but it seems that as a global phenomenon we like people to do things the way we do them. You don’t have to do as the Romans do in Rome, but for the sake of loving the locals, I can adapt.
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