Far From Home & Absolutely Fine

We were defrosting in front of a fire, in a beautiful snow-covered town in Finland, when we decided we were going to move to Saudi Arabia.

My son was playing outside in the snow, on the second day of our trip of a lifetime, on a high I feared would never end after meeting Santa Claus earlier that day.

As I sipped hot chocolate and watched plumes of powdery snow rise and fall on the other side of the glass, my husband wrote an email that would change our lives forever. Again.

Sitting there, I pondered the weeks ahead and absentmindedly opened Instagram to upload a picture from earlier that day. My face was almost fully covered in dark snow gear and a black balaclava. The only thing visible was my eyes. I wrote something along the lines of ‘another magical day in Lapland’. The irony of how I looked in the image was not lost on me. Saudi Arabia, here we come.

The move, when eventually announced to friends and family, was received with little fanfare. I wondered when you’d be off again, my brother said. How long are you going for, my mother asked. I thought I detected a brief eye roll.

No one expressed concerns about the move, about packing up our lives, about starting again in a new, and on this occasion, decidedly different place - because we have done it many times before. They were (lovingly) sick of us.

A friend of mine joked that I should write a book entitled ‘Can’t stick it at home? How to start again in a random country in four easy steps’.

“You make it look so easy”, she said. “You just pack up and go. I think I’d freak out”.

'“It’s just like getting on a bike”, I said. Which was only partly true.

We first started schlepping around the world in 2007. It was just the two of us. No child, no dogs, and very little baggage - both figuratively and literally. Now, more than 13 years later, there are a lot more people, animals, and material things, but the process for the moves we make remains the same.

We arrive, we find a place to live, I throw a few Whiskey Tango Foxtrots around, and then we calculate how long it will be until our belongings arrive. We figure out what we need to buy, and where to get it from. Supermarkets are located, sim cards are purchased, internet is installed, routes for dog walks are mapped out, and house tours are feverishly filmed for friends and family back at home. A normal routine is created; breakfast, school, work, calls to home, and so on.

Once this groundwork has been laid, we’re all a little calmer, a little more settled, and so we start to build on the foundation of our new life. This build nearly always starts with coffee.

In all the years we've spent living overseas I have learned that everything you need to know about a new place and who’s who and what’s what, can be found inside a local coffee shop, for the price of an Americano.

Arguably one of the world’s most unifying subjects, coffee truly is a draw for everyone. People of every age, of every race, of every culture, of every belief, of every different walk of life. We’re all there, in the queue, scrolling mindlessly on our phones, ready to hand over our cash, for a cup of the good stuff.

This queuing, and eventual sipping nearly always leads to questions and conversation, and sometimes an impromptu game of charades - depending on the language barrier. Are you new here, where are you from, do you know where I can get this, you should try this other coffee shop, and this local bakery, etcetera.

The radius we rotate in inevitably grows from this point onwards. We visit more parts of the city we’re in, we drink more coffee, we meet people, we make friends. We start to feel more established, more stable. And when we get back to our house, we realise that suddenly our new foundation has a first floor.

I can’t say that I’ve ever tired of this approach. There is something truly intoxicating about arriving in a new city and knowing approximately nothing. Everything is exciting, even the mundane. Small wins turn into enormous events; Kerrygold is discovered in a local supermarket! My son makes a new friend! Sephora delivers to our neighbourhood! And so on.

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and happiness, and we’ve definitely experienced our fair share of drama over the years; job losses, the Arab Spring, that time we drove five hours through the desert when I was nine months pregnant - but if anything, the tough times have only served to make us more resilient, and more practical.

I do sometimes wonder whether we’ve become a little too practical, perhaps. Maybe even a little blasé. Case in point, a recent exchange I had with my husband; ‘Was that a fighter jet flying overhead just now, babe?’ Yeah, I think so. ‘OK cool.’

People ask all the time whether we miss home, and of course we do. It goes without saying that living overseas is very different to living at home. But really, the two can’t be compared. We learned early on in our adventures that we must compartmentalise home, and the before, and the familiar, in order to live successfully overseas. Both feet must be firmly in the door of whatever foreign land it is we find ourselves in. It’s all or nothing, as Milli Vanilli once said.

I think this strategic approach is why we’ve made so many moves over the years. We know how to create the life we want to live, we know what to do to make ourselves happy, no matter where we are, no matter how far from home we may be. And I’d like to think that when something, or someplace isn’t working for us, we know when to call it a day, too.

Saying that, this move to Saudi is our fifth big schlep overseas, and although I’m enjoying it (as much as one can in the midst of a pandemic) I do wonder whether it may be our last.

Living overseas is certainly exhilarating and exciting, but what’s not exhilarating is my high-speed approach to turning 40. I’m more aware than ever of the passage of time, of people I love getting older, of my son spending time with his grandparents, of my free and easy access to a good bottle of rosé (that last one may just be related to living in Saudi, but whatever).

Whenever we do decide to take the long road home, however, I won’t be sad about it. In fact, I’ll embrace it. There’s nothing like living away for 10 years to make you appreciate all the good things about home and want to put down roots. For a little while anyway ;)

Simone Gannon, June 2020.