The adventure so far... part 1

Marc shares how he is feeling so far...

how am I doing? Well, good and bad. Some things are just harder than I expected them to be.

Unlike Rachel, this is my first time living abroad. We dreamed about living abroad for a while. We love Seattle! We love our house, our friends and just the overall vibe of Seattle so of course it wasn't easy to leave. But this adventure presented itself and we couldn't turn it down. Our friends and family (except Rachel's mom) said we were crazy not to go and most said just go and do this, don't even think about it. I mean Christopher Columbus wouldn't have discovered America if he had not gone on an adventure.

Apparently I was a little over confident in myself before we moved. I thought I would be able to handle the changes no problem. As I said, I love Seattle but life there had gotten somewhat routine and now we get to go an adventure in a world class city and I get to work at my dream company. I knew that the European apartment standards would be different and it would never compare to
our house in Seattle. I knew we were going to have less space. I knew we wouldn't have instantly have a group of friends. I knew it was all going to be unfamiliar and weird. But I just felt I was ready for this change.

Well, it has been harder than I thought. What has been hard? I miss everything I thought I was fine leaving. I miss our house and my car. I miss familiarity. I miss the ease of life where most things are understandable and easy to figure out. On top of all that I struggle to be ok with the uncertainty.

When will Rachel get a job? What happens when we want to move back to Seattle? And why am I even thinking about moving back so soon?  Even though everyone assures us not to worry, Rach will get a good job and it will be pretty easy for us to go back. I still let the uncertainty get the better of me.

The good part of course is I am loving Spotify. It's fun exploring Stockholm. We have a nice apartment. Gaby and Rachel are having a ball. And with each day Stockholm is starting to feel more and more like home

I am not trying to sound like a complainer and have you think that life just plain sucks.  (Rachel thought this might be good for me, too.)

I also know that if we didn't do this, I would always regret it. Seattle isn't going anywhere and I expect we'll be back, eventually. But we're here and going to take Stockholm by storm and see where this adventure leads because "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

In-Schooling...Settling in

We have survived our first week in our Stockholm apartment.  I think I average climbing the 5 flights of stairs about 2x a day, luckily I usually only carry G up them once.  Both M and I are feeling the walking and the climbing in our legs and it makes us wonder when will it just be natural to do all the climbing and not so much work.  But all of this is really for another post since the main focus this week was getting G settled into daycare.  

A little background

Every kid has the right to go to förskola (daycare) from 1 years old.  (Paternal leave is about 1.5 years here at 85% pay so for the first year the parents, both mom and dad, are able to take time and care for the baby.) The cost of förskola is a percentage of the combined income based on amount of kids with a maximum fee per month.  In order to get into a center you apply to either the municipality centers or there are private centers that have their own queuing system. The only difference I was able to find in public vs private was the queuing system and even that is changing and the private schools are being placed in the municipal system.   

As I mentioned previously, we got into a förskola very quickly.  As part of the helping parent and child adjust to this new environment and routine there is a period of time called in-schooling.  For the first 3 days, parent and child attend the school from about 9:30am- 3pm.  The parent acts as the child's guide through the days activities. On the first day though if the child doesn't take a nap, you go home early and try again the next day. If those three days went well then the following 2 days are still short days but the child attends the school alone.  

G Amazes us all

G and I started in-schooling on Monday.  When we arrived the first day there was circle time where there was singing and greeting the new kids, another child started too that day.  After which was some free play followed by fruit and lunch.  It was looking pretty good but then all fell apart at nap time.  The school has a room dedicated to napping where there are pads, blankets and pillows for each kid that sleeps.  The kids are assigned a spot so each day they go to the same pad and for the most part lie down and fall asleep.  WELL not my kid.  She kept looking around and sitting up and refused to nap.  I decided rather than fight her we would leave and the teachers were all very sympathetic and said "new place, tomorrow will be better." (G fell fast asleep the moment we left the building.)

The next day went about the same BUT this time I was talking to one of the teachers about how G doesn't fall asleep with me and that I need to just leave the room.  And that is exactly what we did.  I put G down for a nap, she whimpered and then slept for 1.5 hours. The teacher exclaimed that she had never seen a kid fall asleep like that on the 2nd day of being there.  

The third day was a little bit of a mess.  M came with us and that was all well and good. The kids started out playing outside which G loves and she barely looked up to see where we were once she got out. It was when we had to go inside that her whole world fell apart and from that moment on she was a bit of a mess.  Luckily the teachers saw that G was very independent and didn't need me around so the rest of the week she went by herself.  On the first day when I showed up I could hear her giggling from down the hall and was greeted with hugs and laughter.  

All and all I think G will do just fine in school, leaving me time to get a job, learn swedish and catch up on some reading. ;)