Existential crisis, that is. One might expect this from a recent college grad: someone undertaking a gap year abroad, before they start their career, find a significant other to settle down with and have kids. This is not what is expected of a 35+ year old woman who has graduated from college twice, who can count trips abroad on hands AND toes, who has had a career, found a significant other (uhhh, twice), settled down and had kids. We have just completed 100 days abroad and I thought that I would have been neck-deep in projects by now. I would be volunteering in an orphanage, I would be amazing my family with culinary Thai-American fusion delights, I would be on my way to fluency in Thai, driving a scooter carefree down the roadways, writing children’s travel books, maintaining a successful travel blog and spending my spare time becoming a svelte, tan Muay Thai fighting mom warrior. Alas, this has just not been the case.
Ben finished his TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification and began working part-time as an English teacher to young teens. This has really challenged him and generally keeps him out of trouble most weekends. His obsession with CrossFit resurfaced briefly until a new, minor injury sidelined him. He is taking some private Thai lessons and has a scooter to zip around town. The kids have found their groove going to daycare twice a week and have made some expat friends that meet around town for playdates. However, we had an epic fail trying to enroll them into extracurricular activities. It turns out that American kids (or maybe just my American kids) are not as disciplined as Thai kids, and they spent the majority of a karate class making faces at themselves in the mirror. Needless to say, the teacher very politely refused to let them return so we spend our afternoons playing soccer in the yard instead.
I’ve found that even abroad, I’m only really good at cleaning the house. I compared my idleness to all of Ben’s activity and started stressing out. I also found myself wondering why we came here. What did I want to get out of this trip? Was it meeting my expectations? And most importantly, how will things be different in Oregon when we return home? I looked back on my original bucket list to see how we were faring and I was pretty pleased to see that we had ticked off many of the items.
- Make paper out of elephant poop
- Take a Thai cooking class
- Ride a motorcycle across Laos (Ben)
- Lose the baby weight
- Scuba dive (Kara)
- Raise a lantern during Loi Krathong –the Lantern Festival
- Fight Muay Thai
- Volunteering TBD
- Take a junk cruise in Halong Bay, Vietnam
- Eat lots of new fruit
- Explore the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore
- Teach the kids how to swim
- See the sunrise over Angkor Wat
- Master the art of using chopsticks
- Teach English (Ben)
- Jump off the cliffs at Chiang Mai’s Grand Canyon (Kara)
I started to have a change of heart about this crisis-thing. Moving abroad with two little kids and setting up a new life takes time and the fact that we got on a plane with one-way tickets is an achievement all on it’s own. It doesn’t necessarily have be defined by rushing through the typical backpacking checklists of 1) see the temple, 2) ride the elephants, 3) try Muay Thai once, 4) ride a tuk-tuk, etc. Furthermore, I should be proud of the things that I have accomplished this week. I rented a car and taught myself how to drive on the left-hand side of the road–in traffic–where lanes are just guidelines and speed limits don’t matter. I completed a doula training course and I can either use these new skills to help my friends in labor or start a brand new business. And I weighed myself at the little gym in our building and I have semi-intentionally lost 10 pounds since we arrived 3 months ago. Ben may be more decisive and outgoing in his planning, but I was accomplishing things too.
I’m still hoping to discover some hidden talent for like, reiki, drum circling, essential oil application, or shamanism. đ Instead of fretting over getting weird diseases, I really want to rekindle my passion for studying diseases. I dream of learning a useful language or writing something and getting paid for it, starting an Etsy shop, or even doubling down and getting all those plastic surgeries I’ve joked about having over the years. Ultimately, I decided that the goal of this gap year should be to do what makes us happiest. If that means that we move to Nepal for a month so that Ben can hike to Everest base camp, then that’s what we do. If it means that I get Thai massages twice a week and grow out bushy eyebrows from not plucking, then that’s what I do. If Falcon wants to eat peanut butter for every meal, and Blue wants to play in the sand on a beach for hours then we will try to accommodate them (within reason). Hopefully, in the process we will learn more about ourselves, discover new passions and skills to achieve them, at the very least, get all this stuff out of our systems so that we can return home refreshed and more well-rounded.
Under 6 Overseas 