It is always challenging yet a different experience when you leave home country where you have spent your entire life since birth and moving to a different country with Zero knowledge about it.
To add up to it, being a vegetarian is whole different story!
As the say “ it’s not about the destination , its about the journey” quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson
I still remember the day I landed in Manila, Philippines with my little munchkin Aryan who was just 1 yr,8 months old with all luggage stocked up only with Indian groceries, and my husband was there to receive us with all arrangements made.
The sky was covered with high rise buildings as I looked up and boarded our taxi and was amazed with the structures, though the city was almost similar to Mumbai (while I expected it to be like States kind of style as imagined in movies …haha) , we checked up in an apartment and was amazed to see private pools, club houses, basketball court, I have not seen such facilities in my life before. These were the good part. Coming to the really challenging part,
The traffic was super bad, felt I never came out of my town. The smell of pork, just bothered me everywhere I went !
From taxi to food that we bought (Indian food) was very expensive!! And most difficult part was language, where I had hard time communicating with them in English.
Then we had to move to Iloilo a different city from Manila as my better half was working from there and to my surprise the city was very calm, no traffic small enroute from airport to the condo where we moved too. The condo was expensive with rent but the space was not even good enough for 2 folks, but we managed to live there with our munchkin as our expenses were to be worked upon.
That 6 months were very difficult yet got to learn so many things, from budgeting, to running the house, communicating with new people, learning the culture of Philippines, taking care of my baby, exploring the places around. There was a time , where I and my son moved back to India for an year as my husband couldn’t manage the expenses with low compensation, and had to work in Play group school in Chennai and take care of my son in the interim while my husband dealt with other challenges and then we travelled back to Iloilo, Philippines again in 2019. This time, life was better, we moved to better place, bigger space, manage expenses better, I got comfortable with communicating with locals here,
Enrolled my son in school, teaching my son ( being a mother + teacher) , training myself to work upon on my profession but then new challenge awaits, My Father in law had to undergo knee operation and my better half was travelling between India and Philippines and the global pandemic hit us bad!..
Seems like the challenges never end and we prepare ourselves to face them in some situations and in some situations, we have to deal with it and learn.
Schools were made online, all countries were in WFH, while in our city, managed better with stricter controls and my better half had WFO-WFH scenario, my son had to be joining online classes as part of school curriculum being withing four walls, kids not allowed to interact staying at home, increase in their tantrums, screen time, this was quite hard for us to manage and local government being more strict with policies as only one person was allowed to go get necessary groceries, to adapt to this situation was very tough and to be panicked about us and family members in India every day, is something that cannot be expressed with words. Yet we managed to overcome and still fighting the current wave while we get ourselves vaccinated.
I decided to motivate myself, invest my time in areas like physical fitness, teaching online, teaching my son, making him do activities. There has been huge transformation within me, and with god’s blessing, I was able to teach couple of kids online to make some earnings to support the family and teach my son every day something new along with studies. I face new challenges every day, and I try to overcome them by facing them.
In picture :Subhashini Krishnan
Instagram page : @thepikachu_discoveringzone
About Author
I am Subhashini Krishnan (mother of Aryan-5 years), born in Chennai and brought up in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh a college graduate (B.Ed) , 7 years of experience in teaching, migrated to Hyderabad after my marriage and then to Philippines. My hobbies are arts & crafts, traveling, trying out different foods (vegan) , reading, Instagram.
I love to keep myself physically fit, like to implement new crafts and works and engage my son into new varieties of activities, love to upgrade our home library as my son enjoys reading and I love to support him to read new things and imagine new stories. During my lean time, I plan to enhance the curriculum and upgrade myself to the latest teaching techniques to inculcate to my kids who are learning from me. I love to keep my session joyful, interactive and ensure more learning.
“Happiness is seeing the SMILE on a child’s face as they LEARN”