New Post - New School: 1st day mommy blues

That first day of school….

There was no Ursula to share a joke with about how ridiculously pregnant we both looked and how that would affect our little one starting Pre-k. We had our seconds a week apart and our  friendship was sealed thereafter.

There were no Rola, Emanuela and Dania to wait outside the school gates to chat and offer their friendship unreserved.

There was no Alexandra to grab my hand and cheerfully say: YOU.. yes YOU! You look like a fun mom who can totally fit in with us… in four years I basked in Alex’s cheerful smile relishing every incredible friendship I forged thereafter.

 There was no Nathalie Bourrel to greet me as if I was an old friend returning from just-another-summer-holiday, despite the fact that I had only met her two days earlier in a picnic held for new comers.

There was no Isabelle to engulf us all with her warmth and positive energy as she stood at the top of the stairs greeting all new and returning families. The way those kids ran straight into her hug was my first indicator that my kids would be so well taken care of in this little establishment.

There were no Katie, Nathalie Lambert, Nathalie Lonak, Kika and Melanie to set me off on an incredibly crazy adventure.. I still remember that first outing I joined. A biking trip to the city!!! I was too shy to admit to my mediocre biking abilities, especially on someone else’s bike and navigating very sharp bends and crazy slopes. That didn’t stop me from going… or screaming all the way down to the station either J. It sure didn’t stop them from letting me in.

There were no Anna and Jeanna to organize a small weekly get together for all moms with babies and toddlers. My T3 was only 1 at the time. That weekly coffee was my salvation and the seed of a friendship with Estelle who pushed me to conquer my first 5 k run five years later as a last New York adventure before I set off to ZA.

There was no Ranya to offer to come pick us up so we don’t have to venture into that new world alone on the first day of school.

There was no Noha to turn her schedule upside down to accompany me to the Lycée in Maadi and just BE THERE in case I needed anything. She never asked questions, never pretended to assuage my worries for she knew that with a terminally sick father, three kids in a new and temporary environment, there wasn’t much to say.

There were no ready smiles, extended hands or even the small gesture that recognizes that you are new and very welcome here.  There was no animosity either! And the few I went and talked to were quite nice. They did offer their advice and smile readily enough after a few exchanges, but not their ready friendship!

It’s South Africa, I remind myself. Things take time to evolve and materialize here. Preschool is hardly comparison material with middle school, 4^th grade and a first grader who still can’t fathom what hit her and brought her to this new world.

In New York with Ursula, we were young, a very small group and well, both pregnant and our boys were cute together. In Jordan, our kids were still babies and we were all non-French. This immediately set us apart for some reason and accelerated the process. Back to New York and Lyceum Kennedy was quite a unique place: Small, homey, very international and no one had the intention to mix with only their kind. Celebrating our diversity was key to the school and it permeated everything we did. We all belonged and we all added spice to the mix.

In Cairo, well, it’s my hometown after all and I have the leverage of pre existing friendships that happen to frequent the same school.

ZA impressions are different. While LK had less than 40 kids last year when we left, Lycée JV here boasts over 1000 + students. The spoken language for the past few days has been decisively French. This makes it impossible to feel the international inclusiveness that I was hoping to tap on.  I’m sure it’s there.  But I’ll need time and social skill to fish it out.

In all three countries friendships were established before the first day of school. Some with parents of fellow Lycéens, others with people from all walks. Not in ZA! The only person I met so far, through Walid’s work, is a very sweet Chilean mom who unfortunately doesn’t drive.  So until I master this skill in my new post, hers would be a friendship patiently waiting to be cultivated.

It will come I remind myself. Hopefully a little faster that the national ADSL internet connection that promises to remain an elusive dream for a few weeks at least.

Surviving yet another bad move – Part # 2

10 Bad Move Classics Every Expat Learns to Survive

Just like a long agonizing pregnancy, followed by hours of insufferable labor pain, every move I live through feels like labor day all over again. If you do the math: fifteen years, three children and five moves, that’s quite a toll on any human body, let alone their sanity.

Every mother knows there is no such thing as a good labor experience. So does every expat wife going through a move. There is no such thing as a good moving experience.

In all my moves, the bad ones and the worse, here are a few staples an expat wife suffers through:

1  1-    Wrong size assessment

I have yet to meet a fellow expat wife who hasn’t had her container emptied out at least once in her career as a roamer, because packers made a wrong judgment call on how big her box should be.

I’ve had one container emptied out in the streets of Manhattan and left to weather it overnight. Hanan my friend had hers shipped to a warehouse to be emptied out and reloaded into a bigger one. 

To add to the inventory of horrors, we had one stocked-up container loaded onto a vessel and out to sea, before the second one arrived to load up all of our leftovers. We ended with two small containers, double the costs, double the paper work, and double the pain. Why they never unloaded and waited for a 40 foot is beyond me!

2  2-    Not enough wrapping material

Movers arrived at my house four hours late and fifty boxes short...50!  I’ve heard of two, five even ten boxes short, but fifty? Really??

Beware of packers who come up with such lame excuses, as “my car battery went dead and strangely enough, my phone battery too.” Chances are, they got another quick job for the morning and will try to blame you for the shortage of material that they have incurred. 

My not-so-decent mover blatantly accused me of over-shopping between the time of assessment and packing day. To his bad luck, I was so busy with move logistics that I forgot to shop for over three weeks. When threatened to prove him wrong, he gave up the argument and focused on loudly cursing” that crazy bitch” aka me to all his colleagues instead.

3  3-    Over-charging for “special requests”

Decent movers would give you a proper assessment from day one, including required crates for glass frames, paintings and other delicate needs. Most movers however, would come to you on packing day and try to oversell.

This last mover wanted to charge me $400 for four closet boxes. When I asked him how he originally intended to pack dresses and coats, he gave me that (are you seriously packing long dresses and coats?) look and said that custom dictates they would be packed in medium sized boxes just like kitchenware and utensils! 

When every question you pose becomes a “special packing request”, know that you’re in for a really bad packing job.

4  4-    Over-packing

A novice expat can be fooled into thinking that the more bubble and crushed paper, the safer her things would be.  A practiced roamer knows that over-stuffing = more boxes = more volume = bigger space required = added costs

There is no formula for proper use of packing material. I can tell you to use your judgment but in reality, there is no telling if a packing job is well done until you start unpacking at your destination.  If 95% of your stuff makes it safe than you can start writing that Thank You note to your movers and go online to give them a good rating.

5  5-    Under-packing

Unlike over-packing, under-packing is easy to detect. Anyone can see when table corners are stacked uncovered; when chair legs pop out ready to dig through the closest available box. Better pray it’s not your china box.

Your biggest challenge is  NOT to identify under-packed objects. It is to convince an arrogant mover that that specific item needs further protection! Be ready to hear some condescending “who are you to interfere with my job” and “I’ve been doing this all my life and I’m the best at it” remarks.

6  6-    Bad stacking Strategy – How does an elephant fit into a Coca-Cola bottle again?

Your furniture is wrapped. Your canvas is crated. Your memories and whole life are boxed. Now you wonder: How does an elephant fit into a Coca Cola bottle again?

Watching your life-long belongings fit like 3D puzzle pieces into a container is quite the show.  But when one piece turns out to be a misfit; and when your packers have no clue which piece exactly has caused this imbalance, you know you’re in for more than you bargained for.  Unloading and repacking a container is the lamest and longest show that puts an expat’s patience to the test.. More often than not, your character fails you. But unlike a bad show at the theater. You can’t just walk out and leave.

77-    Step away lady.. We know what we’re doing

Another classic some of us humbly take on.  In many cases that man is right. He knows what he’s doing and you are just in his way. In most cases, there is no way you can stretch yourself to cover five or six packers, working simultaneously to kick the Energizer bunny out of business.

I’d say in that case, sit back and chill. You can’t tell a packer how to pack without stepping on a few big ugly toes. And believe me, you really don’t want to do that. So let them pack and focus your energy on praying that everything would be all right at the end.

8  8-    If I can’t stack it.. I’ll buy it.. at 5% of its original cost!!!!!!

That one did happen to me in Jordan. He walked away with a brand new 8 velvet seat dining table because it wouldn’t fit.  I was alone, with three kids and so eager to push that baby out.. Oops I mean to see that container gates sealed, that I was ready to accept anything.

When a mover offers to buy your left-overs, know that there will be left-overs; that he has an eye on a few; that he will get them in the end; that he will package the deal as if he were doing you a favor in the end.

9  9-    He said.. She said

Many expat wives like me never see their husbands’ back until the container is sealed. In Egypt, Walid was in Israel. In Jordan, he was in New York. This time in New York, he was in South Africa.

Packers rarely see the husband’s physical absence as a source of concern. Why do you ask? Because this provides the best alibi for a job badly done, with full pre-meditated intent. “But your husband said over the phone.”… “Your wife is the one who made those request, know get your cheque book ready.” And the creative list of he saids - she saids list goes on..

1  10- Split packing… Where are my nails?

Here’s a novel one that can seriously bring out the worse demons you never thought existed in you.

They pack your bed frame in one box; the nails to put it back together in another. They attach a bunch of screws and nails to a desk, only to discover that those nails probably belong to that bed frame they forced you to leave behind because “there is no room for it, sorry.”

You have that show rack missing a connecting piece; storage boxes missing a corner; your own master bed missing its nails!

Nothing I can say would help you should you face that predicament. Hopefully you have a personal toolbox, -a legacy of a UN husband who once thought he would have time to cultivate a Bob The Builder hobby. And with some look, you might find just the right nails to fix your immediate problems. I struck Nickel.. Which in that case was more valuable to me than gold.

One last thought before I go dig into some still-unopened boxes in the hope to find that shoe rack corner piece…  just like a mother’s memory of a long and arduous pregnancy, a roamer tends to somehow forget all about this trauma a few months after it’s over.  You curse and you scream and you swear you will never ever do this again.  I cannot recall how many times I promised to be out of home and out of country before the movers circle in. So far, I don’t see myself doing a good job keeping that one.

You get through it somehow. A piece of you breaks however: a kind of trust, a sense of fake security. I don’t know what it is but it does break. Miraculously, you learn to carry the damage with a lot of dignity and pride. You flaunt your misadventures on social media desperately seeking moral support, even if virtual. People tell you, you are doing a fantastic job. ..You are a hero.  And you truly are… Every roamer is a hero in my view. Every time we survive a bad move we come out more resilient.  You arm yourself with good friends and a supportive family and you go into it the same way you conquer a Mud Run.. You know it will be crazy, painful, humiliating at times. But you also know there is a finish line in sight and all you have to do is find a way to get there.  You’ll get a good hot shower after and get to brag about how incredibly brave you were for weeks to follow J

Moving out - How to Compress Five years of your Life in a Container Box - Part 1

Four closet boxes, check… Boys winter clothes, check… Shoes, check… China and silverware, check… Camping gear, check…….

Why does it look like the more I pack, the more clutter spills and takes over my floor space?

The system is quite clear in my head. In fact, I have fleeting moments of sheer pride in my planning and organization skills. But if you pop in for a stroll around my house, you’ll probably think, poor Laila, what a mess she has to deal with. No one seems to be able to read the system behind the Labyrinth of cardboard and plastic I have created. At times, I think I can’t navigate it either. Put I quickly push any doubts aside. The one secret to a smooth move is CONTROL.

This is my sixth move and by far the most chaotic. My last was five years ago and the eldest of my children was only four. All I had to do to make him happy was make sure his Blue Lightning McQueen would make it safe to the other side of the ocean. It never did, but by the time our container was opened, He had lost all consciousness of the 15$ toy. The lure of a trip to Target to replenish the toy closet in his new room had all but wiped away all shreds of memory he carried along from his previous life. That simple!

Now,11, 8 and 6; my kids are very conscious of the move and have been yo-yoing between dumping their fears and insecurities on me, and shooting three pointers filled with anger and frustration straight at my head. They always score!

Generally speaking, they are handling the process much better than I thought. But they are THREE, and I am ONE. It doesn’t take a genius to quickly do the math and conclude that I’m officially outnumbered!

If there are any skills I have gained from this move, here is a list I have been using as my default setting to smoothly ride this avalanche of emotions, logistics and details.

1-    Be Positive. The UN alone employs thousands of internationally designated staff. Add the private sector, foreign ministries across the globe and I immediately feel less alone.

2-    Investigate the new destination. Many roamers have to deal with pit of the earth destinations. That alone can be cause of serious mental stress, and in many cases, a separation of the family for more child-friendly shores. But if like me, you have been blessed with a destination you are actually looking forward to explore, do just that. Virtually explore and plan your first series of adventures ahead of time. I already have a list of Tree House hotels I want to take the kids to. Silly, yes.. Trivial, definitely yes.. Crucial for my mental health.. YES YES YES

3-    Engage the kids in the process. New beginnings always bring new toys and new spaces in tow. My boys helped choose the car. We debated for days the merits of another 7-seater versus a sporty looking Sedan. My eldest two are boys, talking cars with them is always surprisingly very enlightening.

4-    Be flexible. Two weeks before departure, I was boxing my house up, planning the dates for the container to ship when Walid zoomed in on a great house very close to school – my one and only big condition. The house is furnished! My mind went into loops and hoops.. What do I unpack? How do I separate what goes into storage and what I have to absolutely take along? Do I really have to take anything along? I need to create three separate spaces: stuff that goes to storage, stuff that we take along and the packing for our summer in Egypt. I have two weeks to go. I CAN DO IT! The house is worth it.. Keep repeating that.. The house is worth it. Even if has no kitchen per say and non-existent closet space… the house is worth it.

- -  You are a Butterfly in the making.. It seems that my kids have made a secret pact to keep me on my toes. We are one family, they are all the offspring of one drained body, we are moving together to the same destination and YET.. they can't seem to agree on how to collectively deal. Accordingly, their needs and expectations from me are just as incoherently varied. As I said, I find myself constantly morphing in response to each of them. I can't remember how I personally feel anymore because my mind has been overtaken by three young but oh-so-capable armies of sorrow, eagerness, sadness, can't-wait-to-go excitement and then some.. I'm expected to embrace and understand. I do, at least I think I do. And every time I stop to think: where am I in all this? I pull hard on my mental brakes. It Matters naught... For I'm in a Morphing stage and soon I'll emerge more beautiful and free. (Unrealistic and totally untrue, and you're probably lollll-ing right now. But hey.. it works)

5-    If you absolutely have to whine about the misery of it all, make sure you do it with an energizing spin. I chose to whine and hike. Poor Hanan, a dear friend who has been quite accommodating. As we tread unchartered trails and gasp at every wild animal sighting failing miserably to capture the moment with an IPhone Selfie, she listens patiently and offers what I need the most, JOKES! We laugh so hard as we share the various anecdotes that have marked each and every move we both endured as career Roamers. Believe , we all go through it and we have loads to tell.

6-    Stay in CONTROL.. That’s key.. Boxes are cluttering your home… Kids are testing your ability to morph into mood soother,., anger bouncing ball, beacon of hope, anxiety catcher net, all in one afternoon… cooking, cleaning and driving to activities remains unchanged despite the added cardboard load… Stay in CONTROL.. Please don’t ask me how, I’m still figuring that one out!

7-    Don’t ignore your own personal sadness. If you are too eager to leave then you haven’t really lived this last post. The more you live a destination, the deeper and more intricately twined your root system becomes. Letting go isn’t easy. Better deal with it while you are still at it. Because if you are like me, you bottle up and compress till the moment is gone; it will be so hard on the other side, you won’t know what has suddenly gripped and crushed your essence. But newly established and still rootless in your new destination, you won’t have the support system to lift you up when you whither and fall. I know that’s exactly what I should be doing. But I’m still stupidly bottling up.

I’d like and keep this list flowing, but I’m running out of excusable time off of boxes. More purging awaits in the kitchen.. By the end of today, I intend to claim victory with seven more Checks next to my to-pack list. But before all, Taymour forgot his homework at home and I need to rush to school to save the day.. aka shield myself from the torrents of emotions should I decide to let it go.

10 Ways to Break Sad News to third Culture Kids – Expat Families

Before I took on the prestigious job of ummm … a trailing spouse, I was drilled with wise and no-so-wise advice on how to raise my future expat kids.

Make sure to speak to them only in Arabic. That one proved difficult but really vital.

They have to have daily contact with their family back home. Skype, photos, virtual dialogues, and visits helped with that. Long uninterrupted summer vacations in Egypt have also anchored my kids to my homeland.

Cook Egyptian food, Show pride in your homeland, Remind them of our traditions…..

Eleven years later and a myriad of school international fairs later, I take pride!

BRAVO... I have managed to raise at least one very Egyptian kid, one semi-Egyptian, and one oblivious to what that really means but still happy to be called Egyptian.

Tarek, 11 speaks Egyptian as good as I do. Taymour, 8 has an accent and funny translated vocabulary but the character of a true Egyptian street kid J, Tamara, 5 is struggling with Arabic but has no problem swaying her little figure to the drum beat and proudly wears her costumes at culture days.  It does help that Egyptian dresses have lots of bling and bright colors.

Molokheya is a staple on our table and Foul is our favorite Sunday brunch dish. But my biggest achievement is their sense of belonging!

When my kids speak about family, they don’t just mean the nuclear, immediate, uni-cell family that most expat families identify with. They mean their grandparents, aunt and uncles, cousins despite the wide age gap and a few best friends (although friendship has a very different meaning to them, but that’s another blog altogether).

And that’s when it backfires.. I’ve had the misfortune to deal with a strong family tie that has to be severed from afar twice in less than 3 years.. or is it more?

First, with the passing of my dad... One day he was there.. The next the kids had to go back to New York with their father because BiBi (my dad) was in hospital. Ten days later, they were told they would never see him again.

I don’ think they quite understood back then, but they kept true to their identity and they have consistently kept his memory alive; even Tamara, who was only 3 at the time.

But now, I had to break yet another sad news. Their grandfather, Walid’s dad had passed. I was aware of two new facts: 1- They are much older now. 2- Walid is not with us and won’t be for a while, which means I have to break the news, absorb all aftershocks and do it alone!

And when you do a job too well, sometimes all you reap is … Heartache!

As I go through a week of shock, mourning, blocking, pretending, denial and anger with them, I learn a few lessons no one 11 years ago has prepped me for.

11-   Expat kids have a deeper emotional attachment to extended family. They simply don’t take such ties for granted. Never under-estimate the impact of such loss, especially if it’s so sudden.

22-    When in mourning, Expat kids resent the isolation this lifestyle imposes on them. They want to be there, feel what everyone is feeling and see how things are done.

33-    Blocking comes handy when you live so far away. What you don’t see, you simply don’t miss as much. That however, makes it so much harder when summer comes, kids go back home, they start dealing with the apparent loss but everyone around them has already moved on.

44-    It is wrong to push the news to a later “more convenient time”.  I was tempted to do so, but I was wrong! An eleven year old sometimes needs to reach out and share, not in retrospect.

55-    Kids are more resilient and bounce back much faster. So any attempt, no matter how tempting, to dig deeper and probe with emotionally charged questionings is simply unnecessary torture. Don’t fool yourself into believing you are doing this to make sure they don’t bottle it all in.

66-    Engage third party helpers.. Nothing helped my son more than his conversations with his peers in school. He came back one day and told me: “it seems that everyone of my friends has lost at least one grandparent already”.

77-   Stop the urge to lure your kids into your own web of chagrin. If they see that you are fine and can live passed this horrible experience, they believe they can too. SO suck it up! My bathroom floor can attest to the millions of stifled tears it has witnessed in the past three years.

88-    Some kids, one of mine included, can’t quite cope with the concept of imminent death. Their fear becomes so exaggerated that they start questioning, when your turn will come, or worse, when theirs will. I still remember Tarek’s first knee-jerk question when I told him that my dad was gone. “What if it happens to you?” I told him I was confident it wouldn’t. I lied and hoped to God, he won’t fail me on that one, at least for now.

99-    Pray.. Kids need to believe in the afterlife; that their beloved didn’t simply cease to exist; hat they are out there somewhere receiving all our positive thoughts. It really helps during those first few days. It doesn’t matter how you chose to pray, just allocate that time everyday to channel some positive thoughts and send them straight to heaven.

110- Follow their lead. Don’t impose your grief or the way you chose to express it on them. Give them space to mull, roll and chew on the concept. They will come to you when they decide to share and they will impose how they wish to do just that!

I don’t wish this upon any trailing wife, especially one like me, who feels stranded out here in snowy Westchester while my whole family and friends are all gathered in mourning, seeking comfort from and around each other.

Rest in Peace Oncle Abdel Halim and may this be the last of our family sorrows for some time to come.

Expat on the move - Packing lists

Relocating to a new country has a very unique effect on our dialogues.  I can’t claim that our conversations lately were as free flowing and fluid as they’ve always been. As we grow older and our positions in life become so vastly different, the common threads that usually weave themselves into interesting conversations begin to thin out. 

He talks mostly about work and I listen only when he mentions the kids, my friends or my workout routine.  I talk primarily Yoga, Soul Spinning and Swim classes and he listens only when the words “lucrative” or “paid consultancy” permeate my free flowing monologues.  Otherwise, we communicate great! (Smirk)

So when I started telling him about my plans for packing up the house, I didn’t expect much. I was proud with my decision to designate all the Thomas tracks and trains as family heirloom, his silent appraisal of the car roofing came as no surprise.  At least he wasn’t rolling his eyes… yet.  I kept talking anyway.

-      -  I don’t think I want to give the kids’ Thomas stuff away.

Silence

-      -  Maybe just the train table but not the tracks

More silence

-      -  I mean those tracks represent years of our boys’ early childhood

Silence .. I’m thinking: eventually he has to give in and engage, or else, his neck will go stiff on him for staring at the car roof for so long.. and we still have five more traffic lights to cross before I drop him off..

-      -  You know what? I’ll put it all in a big box.. Maybe I’ll send it with you on your first visit

There is a sudden neck movement. Yes, I finally got his attention. I keep staring ahead, focused on the road

-      -  Why would I take a box full of train tracks on my first visit?

-       - I don’t know, you’re going anyway, you might as well take some stuff with you

-       - Yeah, but after that first visit, I will go and settle for 6 months. So I’m thinking: I need to carry as much of my personal stuff as I can. Otherwise I’m stuck for months till the container arrives.. You know, essential things like suits, shirts, shoes….

-       - Really?? You want to take your clothes? But a single box of Thomas tracks is too much for you? That’s just silly!

Oohhh, did I just say that? Did I actually just say that?

Blessedly, I only had one traffic light left and he was kind enough to laugh, just laugh!

He did do the Choo Choo signal as he left the car however, and I think I heard him sing: they’re 2, they’re 4 they’re 6 they’re 8.. Shunting trucks and hauling freight………..♩♪♫♬♩♪♫♬♩♪♫♬

I have to concede to the fact that... when overwhelmed I tend to panic about the ridiculous stuff, start packing the trivial "heirloom" items, spend hours making to do lists with all the things I should have done in the past 5 years, never bothered, but now must, absolutely must do before I go!