It’s Saturday morning, Freeda is peacefully sleeping on the couch and I finally sat down to do some work. A work that is different than laundry, dishes, or cooking. Although I mostly enjoy the role of a housewife, I know that I have to work on myself. I can’t be a housewife for all my life. Honestly, I don’t want to. But I know that I will be a mother for the rest of my life and that’s beautiful!
To make some work done, I made myself comfortable, warm socks, coffee, and a blanket. It’s just half of November but the weather here in Taiwan is getting cold. Not at every part though. The east coast, where we live, is usually colder because of the ocean we are facing. And the mountains! Those lovely mountains next to our house seem to keep all the cool and fresh air in here. It’s great weather to wrap Freeda up and go for a walk with a dog. She’s snuggled and warm. A nice change from summer when we were both sweating like crazy and stopped babywearing for a while.
During the fall, I always tend to get sentimental. Not only because of the weather. Christmas is coming and that always reminds me, that I spent the last 4 holidays here in Taiwan without the Christmas spirit you could feel in Europe. Every year, I‘m trying to bring some more of the spirit to our house. This year even more, because of Freeda.
However, it is hard to be apart from your family during Christmas, it also has some pros. For example, you don‘t spend money to buy them all those gifts haha. In general, there are pros and cons when you are living with your husband and baby abroad. These are mine. :)
Let’s start with pros because they’re more fun! And let me skip Christmas since I covered them already.
Currently, the biggest pro is the safety of Taiwan! You can’t even imagine how we appreciate living in Taiwan right now. All the pandemic scares are far behind us and we can live like before. We can even travel around Taiwan or go to parties because Taiwan has over 200 days without a local case!
The fact that you live so far from your family gives you the freedom of raising your child without their interventions. It is easier to deal with a typical “you should“ and “you shouldn’t” via messages or video calls. We don’t have to face any of this because our families are mostly very open-minded. I understand that not everyone would appreciate this or consider it as a pro, but we do. I and my husband were always independent people that are used to do the thing in their ways.
You don’t have to follow any system or social setting! As two foreigners living in Taiwan, we don’t have to send our children to school, we don’t have to vaccinate them if we don’t want to... and we won’t be punished. I know that now due to the pandemic things are different, especially regarding schooling. Since we started thinking about having a family, we knew that our kids won’t go to school and they’ll be homeschooled. And if we ever decide to move somewhere else, no problem - we just keep homeschooling.
Languages, languages, languages! That is the best thing that we could give to our children. Just imagine that they grow up here and have Taiwanese friends! Then they could add Mandarin to English, French, and Czech.
Flexibility and independence. As two foreigners living in a third country, you must be flexible and independent. Some of us learned it when we moved out of our home county. And there is nothing better than teach this to your kids. We never know where we’re going to end up next, and there’s always no need for a plan.
Open-mindedness. I truly believe that people, especially the teeny tiny ones, exposed to different cultures, languages, and places, will always be more tolerant and nice to each other. One of the great things we can offer our kids.
A deeper connection with your partner. My husband is my best friend at the moment and my only adult family member here. We're building our relationships and improving it every day. We have just each other and it makes our bond even stronger.
The last, that comes to my mind will be the neutrality of the place. Each of us comes from a different country, different continent, and culture. We found that living in the third country, which is not a home for neither of us, suits us right now the best. None of us have any advantage and we are in it together.
(Just a friendly reminder, above mentioned pros are our perspective. Nothing general that could be applied to everyone. I’d be glad if you hit me up if you see any other advantages of living abroad as a young family.)
I believe that many people will find more negatives about the life we live in. I’ve heard countless times, how brave we are living life abroad and having a baby on top of it. Some of my friends told me, that they couldn’t imagine not having their parents around to help them with a baby. We’re pretty OK like this and honestly, nothing is freaking scary about having a kid. At least not for us. However, living abroad has some cons of course... so here we go. Listed below are the cons that I found.
You miserably miss your family and friends. In this unpredictable time, we don't know when we'll be able to see them again. And the most painful part - they can't see our baby.
No family members to babysit and help with the baby at the beginning. Well, we don't need babysitting now, and I can even imagine that someone else will be alone with our girl. But I know that some people can't imagine bringing a baby home without the help of the family.
You will miss playdates with your friends and their kids. I miss this thing a lot! My best friend and my cousin have babies and I'm dreaming about having a coffee with them, going out, or just hanging out together and discuss baby stuff. The fact that we're living in a relatively small city makes it difficult to find people to hang out with. Maybe I could just embrace myself and start hanging out with Taiwanese moms.
I might have found only three cons but they're very painful ones. Family is very important and you realize it once you have your one. Moreover, this is the life we live, we chose and we're happy living it. We're always free to move...wherever we want.
Wiring this article I got an idea for another "pros and cons" piece haha. But I won't tell you...😂
Thanks for reading me and see you soon ❤️
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