Table of contents
- Life Update
- Two Years Abroad
- Readers’ Favorite
- Stuff
Life Update
My 12-year-old reads on a Kindle. In English.
My 8-year-old learned to read in English before he learned to read in Hebrew.
Both of them speak English fluently. They watch movies in English and understand everything.
We also came back from Boston with some new clothes, a Japanese mattress I carried in a suitcase, a LOT of Lego and kids' toys, and two laptops that replaced the ones that died on us over there.
That's the entire physical inventory of two years abroad.
But that's not what we brought home.
We brought home the experiences. The skills. The drive from the East Coast to the West Coast. The cities. Our kids walking into an American classroom on the first day and walking out of it two years later with friends. My wife and I, 1000s of kilometers from home, figuring out every single thing ourselves.
None of that took up any space in the luggage.
Would we do it again?
Number 167!
Tools and Tips
When we landed in Boston, the apartment already had furniture.
Not ours. The previous tenants left it.
The fridge, the stove, the microwave, the coffee machine. The plates, the forks, the sheets.
We bought mattresses because the old ones had a smell I couldn't identify and didn't want to. 🤢
Everything else, we inherited. Second-hand furniture from my wife's relatives. Outgrown clothes for the kids from cousins.
There was also an old couch. My wife loved it. I hated it.
We kept it for two years.
🔵 The Couch I Hated
You don't replace a couch you're leaving behind in 2 years.
That's the whole logic of the place, and it applies to EVERYTHING in your life abroad.
Every kilogram you bring from home costs money. Every kilogram has to come back, and costs money again. So before anything goes in a suitcase, you ask whether you actually need it.
And the answer is almost always… NO.
You adopt a minimalist lifestyle. I LOVED it.
Then there's the money. A fellow's salary barely covers the month: rent, school, car, food, and that's the salary. There is nothing left for a better couch.
Our money went into a car you can drive in the snow. It went to New York. To Washington. Once, across the entire country. Into flights when I had a real vacation.
It's a strange thing to own almost nothing and feel like you're getting richer.
🔵 Reading in English Before Hebrew
My children went to an American school for two years. Not a program for foreign kids. School.
They made friends. They learned what you say in a hallway and what you don't, how a birthday party works there, how a classroom works there, how a huge American city works - and none of it was translated for them.
My eight-year-old learned to read in English first. Before Hebrew. That happened simply because that's where he was.
Today we make sure he reads in English and Hebrew. To keep it natural for him. His older brother reads in English by choice. Both of them watch movies without subtitles.
It isn't that they studied English. English is just the water they swam in for two years.
And they learned something underneath the language:
There is more than one correct way to behave. A child cannot get that from a book.
For my wife and me, it was different.
Ten thousand kilometers from everyone we knew, there was nobody to call. Not for the car, not for the lease, not for the insurance company, not for the school, not for whatever broke at 11 pm.
You are the one who deals with it. All of it. Anytime.
Nobody gives you that. You get it by not having a choice.
🔵 One Year Is a Trip
There's a world of difference between one year abroad and two.
One year goes fast. The first months are paperwork. The middle is finding your rhythm. The last few are packing. When you look back at a 1-year stay, it feels like a long trip you took.
Two years feels like living somewhere else.
At one year, my kids would have been VISITING America. At two, they were American kids. To a point.
And I'd stop there.
A third year wouldn't have made me a better surgeon. I'd learned what I went there to learn.
And a third year is when kids start losing the friends waiting for them at home, the ones who make coming back feel like coming back.
Two years is long enough to live there. Short enough that home is still home.
Would we do it again?
Maybe.
I know how to do it efficiently now. I know what to skip, what to buy on day one, what never to ship.
But the effort of the move itself, out and back, is enormous.
Enormous is an understatement. It's more than enormous.
And our boys are older. What they took so easily at 4 and 8 is a much harder ask now.
The window doesn't stay open forever.
And I'm so glad we took it.
Readers’ Favorite
Why did we come back at all, when the offers were on the table? My answer is here.
Stuff
💡Gear I use - A Japanese-style folded mattress (shikibuton).
The one thing I insisted on bringing home in a suitcase.
This mattress is one of the best purchases I EVER made.
I wrote about it here: Six months of sleeping on the floor.
Epilogue
If you received this newsletter from a friend and would like to join Friday's Digest, visit https://newsletter.shaysharon.com
That’s it for this issue.
See you next week!
Shay
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