Welcome back! I am a new(ish) transplant to Dublin, Ireland, and I am exploring all the ways that assimilating into this culture are similar, and different, to my first expat experience in Shanghai, China from 2016—2019.
In 2019 we moved back to the US near my hometown in Massachusetts. We purchased a home outside Boston the first week of Covid and before we could even move in our furniture my husband took a new job in California. [No one has ever accused us of having good timing on home purchases.] So, after a year of waiting for the world to go back to normal we headed west in June 2021, and thought we were settling into our new forever lives in San Diego. How wrong that thinking turned out to be!
In November 2023, my husband found a great new job based in Dublin and our lives took another unexpected right turn. Officially moving overseas in March 2024, we are a family of four with two young boys who have very strong opinions on where we live and how we spend our time. For the next few years, we will once again explore parts unknown, meet up with friends near and far, and make the most of this unique opportunity that doesn’t come around every day.
Please take a read through some of my old essays on life in China on the Blogging from Asia page. In 2017 when I began this blog, I wanted to answer a few questions:
- What does it mean to be an ex-pat wife and mother of a young child in China?
- What is it like to go from a career woman to a stay-at-home mom in a foreign country?
- How can we replicate the cadence of life back home? How can we integrate ourselves into this new society? How can we find friends, not just for our children but also for ourselves?
- What can we do here that fulfills our souls?
- What will we have to show for our time here when we return to our home countries?
This time around, my goals are still centered around making friends for myself and my children, and traveling as much as we can while we have this time in Europe to explore. The slight shift will be working through what it means to be a mom in middle age who must routinely reinvent herself and push the boundaries of comfort personally and professionally every few years.
Connect with me on LinkedIn as well to see more of what I’ve been up to, both in Shanghai and at home in the US.
Thanks for reading and please feel free to reach out at anoceanaway.ireland@gmail.com.
An Ocean Away 