Expectations

After weeks, perhaps even months or years of preparation you
finally board that plane and fly to your new homeland. If preparing for
a move isn't stressful enough, you find yourself in an unknown place
wondering where on earth to buy toothpaste, find english magazines and
your new favourite coffee place.

You spend your free time
filling in paperwork, finding your way around your new neighbourhood
and then of course, learning a new language and reading up on the
country's history and traditions. It will take a lot of energy and you
will try and get as much sleep per night as possible and in the end
wonder why you still feel like you've partied all night long, five
nights in a row.

One
of the things that is expected of you, when you move to another country
is that you learn to speak the language. And so after unpacking,
registering as a brand spankin' new citizen, and finding a job one will
look immediately for a language course to attend. It is what you do,
what is expected of you and perhaps also what you expect of yourself.

During
the weeks of preparation for the move i expected to be able to have
more free time once i had actually moved. I expected to get my normal
energy level back soon and of course I expected to attend a Finnish
course asap.

But I was wrong.

A few weeks after the move it started to dawn on me that doing all that
might be a little bit too much. On top of all the things you have to
deal with when you move, you try to adjust to a new culture and learn a
new language (apart from living a life at all) which is a lot.

Even
though it is expected of us immigrants, we too are only human. Which is
what I forgot. After all, I'm not superwoman. And so I pushed back the
Finnish course a few months and stopped trying to adjust and learn
everything right here, right now. I took a step back, I lowered my
expectations and guess what...?

Everything worked out just fine.